Stories

Consumers can currently pay for products with mobile apps, and many tools are available to turn smartphones into mobile cash registers. Sixty-five percent of respondents to a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey say that by 2020 most people will have fully adopted the...

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center flew its Ikhana MQ-9 unmanned aircraft with an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) device for the first time last month. It was the first time an unmanned aircraft as large as Ikhana – with a 66-foot wingspan, a takeoff weight of more...

Navy unmanned aircraft will be able to distinguish small pirate boats from other vessels when an Office of Naval Research (ONR)-funded sensor starts airborne tests this summer. Called the Multi-Mode Sensor Seeker (MMSS), the sensor is a mix of high-definition cameras, mid-wave infrared...

Researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain have developed an automatic air navigation and collision avoidance model using an automatic learning system. Based on how human beings learn to perceive motion, the model builds software using a simulator-based...

Researchers are developing a technique that uses nanotechnology to harvest energy from hot pipes or engine components to potentially recover energy wasted in factories, power plants, and cars.Researchers have coated glass fibers with a new thermoelectric material they developed. When thermoelectric materials...

A new Northwestern Medicine brain-machine technology delivers messages from the brain directly to the muscles -- bypassing the spinal cord -- to enable voluntary and complex movement of a paralyzed hand. The device could eventually be tested on, and perhaps aid, paralyzed patients.The...

Scientists have for the first time visualized the transformation of powder mixtures into molten glass. A better understanding of this process will make it possible to produce high quality glass at lower temperatures, leading to significant energy savings in industrial glass manufacturing. The...

Taking advantage of the force generated by magnetic repulsion, researchers have developed a new technique for measuring the adhesion strength between thin films of materials used in microelectronic devices, photovoltaic cells, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).The fixtureless and...

On Wednesday, Google previewed an initiative called Project Glass. The company created wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The wearable-computing technology streams information to the lenses and allows the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. A built-in...

No chip manufacturer will take a chance on an innovative chip design without overwhelming evidence that it works as advertised. A new software-simulation system offers more accurate evaluation of promising — but potentially fault-ridden — multicore-chip designs.As a research tool, an...

High-gain nuclear fusion could be achieved in a preheated cylindrical container immersed in strong magnetic fields, according to a series of computer simulations performed at Sandia National Laboratories.The simulations show the release of output energy that was many times greater than the...

Clinicians who treat severe wounds may soon have powerful new diagnostic tools in the form of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) devices, calibrated to new NIST standard reference spectra, which will provide perspective on the physiology of tissue injury and healing.The team produced the first prototype...

Today, a typical computer chip might have six or eight cores, all communicating with each other over a single bundle of wires, called a bus. With a bus, however, only one pair of cores can talk at a time, which would be a serious limitation in chips with hundreds or even thousands of cores, which...

Some electric car companies have begun to change their ownership models. The French automaker Renault, for example, has reduced its prices under a model that has drivers buy the car, but rent the battery separately. The idea of renting out an electric battery separately has inspired an Israeli...

Robot squirrels have shown how real-life squirrels signal to snakes with heat and tail flagging. Through field experiments, researchers from San Diego State University and UC Davis aim to learn more about rattlesnake behavior.The engineering lab built a squirrel with a heatable tail and a tail...

Cornell chemists have developed a way to make porous metal films with up to 1,000 times the electrical conductivity offered by previous methods. Their technique opens the door to creating a wide variety of metal nanostructures for engineering and biomedical applications. The new method builds...

New algorithms could enable heaps of ‘smart sand’ that can assume any shape, allowing spontaneous formation of new tools or duplication of broken mechanical parts.Unlike many other approaches to reconfigurable robots, smart sand uses a subtractive method, akin to stone carving, rather than an additive method,...

The first prototype of a new, ultra-compact motor will allow small satellites to journey beyond Earth’s orbit. The goal of the micro motor: to drastically reduce the cost of space exploration.

Last week, Google released a video that demonstrated the potential of its self-driving car. The video showed a legally blind man, who after taking the driver seat of one of Google's robotic cars, maneuvered from his home, through neighborhoods, and into a commercial...

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity. The electrochemical formate production and the biological carbon dioxide fixation...

A tiny prototype robot that functions like a living creature could be safely used to pinpoint diseases within the human body. Called ‘Cyberplasm’, it will combine advanced microelectronics with latest research in biomimicry (technology inspired by nature). The aim is for Cyberplasm to have an...

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have invented a dart-like, self-guided bullet for small-caliber, smooth-bore firearms that could hit laser-designated targets at distances of more than a mile (about 2,000 meters). Sandia is seeking a private company partner to complete testing...

Long hailed as windows to the soul, the eyes also might provide insight for researchers at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM), who are evaluating and working to improve methods for detecting traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in soldiers while they are still...