Stories

Navid Attary, a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has created a seismic protection device to boost the resiliency of bridges and buildings to earthquakes. His innovation, which uses a new and novel method to dissipate the destructive forces of earthquakes,...

A 70-pound “cheetah” robot designed by MIT researchers may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that the robot — about the size and weight of an actual cheetah — wastes very little energy as it trots...

A new method for getting semi-conducting polymers in line could pave the way for cheaper, greener, “paint-on” plastic electronics. A Michigan Engineering team created a liquid polymer solution that they could brush over a surface, automatically aligning the molecules with one another in the direction of...

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego are developing nanofoams that could be used to make better body armor; prevent traumatic brain injury and blast-related lung injuries in soldiers; and protect buildings from impacts and blasts. The nanofoams are made up of a honeycomb, or porous,...

A University of Chicago research group manufactured granular materials of various shapes in a 3D printer to test their aggregate properties when jammed into a confined space.

Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open up airspace to unmanned aircraft by October 2015, a decision that will likely see thousands of domestic drones soaring the sky. Many are excited about the many innovative possibilities of the autonomous technology,...

Air travelers of the future could have quieter, greener and more fuel-efficient airliners because of NASA research efforts that are moving into further development and testing.

The School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has recently designed a new aircraft lavatory especially for the visually impaired by providing an organized system for reading Braille and other tactile information. This unconventional design is called...

A humidity sensor developed by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the SEALDH laser hygrometer, has proven its worth when used aboard an aircraft; it fulfills all pre-conditions to be used as a transfer standard for conventional humidity-measuring instruments. This...

An interdisciplinary team of mechanical engineers and autism experts at Vanderbilt University have developed robotic systems that will enhance the basic social learning skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

New optical technologies using "metasurfaces" are nearing commercialization, with potential applications including advanced solar cells, computers, telecommunications, sensors, and microscopes.

Images transformed into pixels and projected onto a headset can help the visually impaired in everyday tasks, such as navigation, route planning and finding objects, according to a study led by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

A team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology has developed self-healing integrated chips. The technology will allow chips in a smartphone or computer, for example, to repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery...

Reactions ranged from outrage to apathy when Google announced that it would be shutting down its Google Reader RSS client. The search giant said that the move was due to a decline in usage. Some fans of the 'Reader' and RSS cite its centralized features and its way of organizing a user's content. Others say that...

Researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM) have developed a new generation of image sensors that is more sensitive to light than the conventional silicon versions, with the added bonus of being simple and cheap to produce. They consist of electrically conductive plastics, which are...

Three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide field-of-view soft X-ray camera for studying "charge exchange," a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space.

A new NASA-developed, laser-based space communication system will enable higher rates of satellite communications similar in capability to high-speed fiber optic networks on Earth.The space terminal for the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD), NASA's first high-data-rate laser...

Crickets use sensitive hairs on their cerci (projections on the abdomen) to detect predators. For these insects, air currents carry information about the location of nearby predators and the direction in which they are moving.

A 70-pound “cheetah” robot designed by MIT researchers may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that the robot — about the size and weight of an actual cheetah — wastes very little energy as it trots continuously for...

When biologists study proteins, DNA, or other biological molecules that are represented in the computer as sequences, they rely on known information but also must predict missing data. Given that reality, major challenges exist to having accurate results. At the University of Arizona,...

Purdue University researchers are improving the performance of technologies ranging from medical CT scanners to digital cameras using a system of models to extract specific information from huge collections of data and then reconstructing images like a jigsaw puzzle. The new approach is called...

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have developed a new simulation capability to model a classic plasma configuration. They have demonstrated for the first time a fully kinetic model of the dense plasma focus (DPF) Z-pinch device, including the electrodes, in a...

A single photon may not seem like much of a catch. But detecting photons one- by-one with near-perfect reliability is formidably difficult. It is also an extremely important research goal, not only in fiber-based telecommunications, but in numerous other fields from quantum information science...

A team of MIT researchers has developed a coating that outperforms others not only in preventing foggy buildups, but also in maintaining good optical properties without distortion. Preventing glass from fogging or frosting up is a longstanding challenge with myriad applications, including eyeglasses,...

As many users anticipate the arrival of Google Glass, augmented reality technology shaped like a pair of glasses, some technologists are questioning the privacy issues associated with the use of these wearable computers. Many express concern about users' ability to secretly capture audio and...

Computer-generated holography, they say, could be used in conjunction with a technique called optogenetics, which uses gene therapy to deliver light- sensitive proteins to damaged retinal nerve cells. In conditions such as Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) - a condition affecting about one in 4000 people in...

A century after Western explorers first crossed the dangerous landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have successfully deployed a self-guided robot that uses ground-penetrating radar to map deadly crevasses hidden in ice-covered...