Chemists at Pennsylvania State University have been doing some remarkable work to create self-propelled nanobots, and lately the investigators have focused their attention on using nanobots to stop nerve agent attacks. The nanobots intake chemical compounds, react with them, and push the product of the reaction out of one end. This makes the nanobots move in a fluid, kind of […]

Submarines and aircraft can’t talk to one another, but that may one day be routine if a new MIT technology pans out. The Translational Acoustic-RF (TARF) communication system uses a combination of acoustics and radar to allow messages transmitted underwater to be directly received in the air without the need for any sort of physical link. The technology holds the […]

Strong as steel and tougher than Kevlar, spider silk is one of nature’s most impressive materials, but try as we might, we just haven’t been able to harness it for our own use on a practical scale. Most synthetic versionsaren’t completely up to scratch, but researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have now engineered bacteria to produce biosynthetic spider […]

“Smart” internet-connected devices could indeed make life easier for us, but the things do typically have to be equipped with battery-powered electronics. That may not necessarily be the case for much longer, however, if the Wi-Fi-based LiveTag system reaches fruition. Developed by a team at the University of California San Diego, the system incorporates simple low-cost tags that can be […]

For the last couple of decades, security measures in places like airports, schools, stadiums, and other public venues have continuously ramped up. X-ray machines, surveillance cameras, and bag searches have all become commonplace, but still concealed weapons, bombs, and explosive can slip through the cracks — sometimes with tragically devastating effect. Looking for a new way to help solve this […]

Freezing is one of the simplest methods of preserving food, biological tissue and other perishables, but the formation of ice crystals can damage cells. Now, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed a new way to “supercool” water and similar solutions to keep them in a liquid form well below the usual freezing point. Everybody knows that water freezes […]

SAY “AHHHH.” Do you dread going to the dentist just as much you disdain attending children’s birthday parties and doing your taxes? Researchers at Columbia University’s Center for Precision Dental Medicine want to change that. (At least the bit about dentists. You’re on your own for the other stuff.) They’ve transformed a 15,000-square-foot space into their high-tech vision of the dental […]

For would-be parents who are unable to have children without medical assistance, one possible option is to use an egg donor. This method involves a donor anonymously giving her eggs to an infertile patient to help them give birth. But after undergoing the (sometimes tough) decision to have fertility treatment, hopeful-moms-to-be are faced with a second question: “Will my kid […]

Birds can cause a surprising amount of headaches for airplanes. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this was the 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson” incident, when pilots were forced to land on the Hudson River after U.S. Airways flight 1549 was struck by a flock of geese after takeoff. Engineers at the California Institute of Technology recently turned to […]