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SpaceX, the company responsible for shipping cargo on and off the International Space Station, which wants to implement global access to the internet with a swarm of satellites, has confirmed a $1 billion investment from Google and Fidelity.
Inspired from mud daubers (a species of wasp), designer Massimo Moretti managed to develop a new 3D printing technology for creating cheap houses. Working with architects, he developed bio-architecture which may go a long way towards fighting the housing crisis in some parts of the world.
Princeton researchers demonstrated a novel type of microwave laser - called a maser - so small that's the size of a grain of rice. The laser is powered by individual electrons that tunnel through artificial atoms known as quantum dots.
German researchers have designed shoe devices which harvest power as you walk. The technology could be used to power wearable electronic sensors without the need for batteries.
Despite ebooks and their corresponding electronic reading devices have become extremely popular, surprisingly most young adults and children prefer reading in print than digitally. Moreover, this trend seems to be on the rise after a momentary preference for ebook readers.
Half of young drivers who were killed in car crashes in the United States had consumed alcohol, marijuana or both. Out of the 7,191 fatal accidents studied, 36.8 percent were under the influence of alcohol, 5.9 percent used only marijuana and 7.6 percent used both substances. Researchers analyzed accidents involving drivers between the ages of 16 and […]
Researchers at Stanford University coated flexible textile fibers with metallic nanowires to form a cohesive network that acts as a fantastic thermal insulator. The flexible material, made of silver nanowires and carbon nanotubes, is knitted together so closely that the space between individual strands is smaller than the wavelength of infrared radiation. As such, the radiation emitted by our bodies bounces between the skin and cloth.
A novel type of nanowire crystals was demonstrated by researchers at the University of Copenhagen that can fuse together both semiconductor and metallic materials with atomic precision at their interface. This way, nanowires and their electrical contacts have been fused in one hybrid material which might lay the foundation for the next generation of semiconductor electronics. […]
Based on fossil evidence and genome analysis, scientists know that the two groups diverged from a common ancestor around 420 million years ago, but we've yet to find actual fossil of it. Things are shaping up though after paleontologists have identified an Early Devonian fish from Siberia, approximately 415 million years old, which bears features of both classes.
Apart from sand castles and elaborate water pranks, many beach goers enjoy drawing in the sand, be it simple doodles, love statements or football pitch size intricate works of arts (you have to check out Tony Plant's work). To put human beach drawing to shame, Disney just unveiled a mechanical rake wielding robot, designed to look like a cute turtle, that can automatically draw any planar shapes with ease.
Researchers have found that just by analyzing your Facebook Likes, a computer can judge your personality better than even your close friends. They went even further than that, and calculated how many Likes the algorithm has to analyze to figure your personality traits.
We’ve come to understand that human players will never stand a chance against a computer with enough fire power at finite and open games like checkers or chess. Poker is sensibly different because the computer doesn’t know his human opponent’s hands. No matter, a group of computer scientists from the University of Alberta in Canada […]
Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently demonstrated a new technique for building complex and very fine 3D micro and nano structures out of 2-D shapes. The whole process is very similar to how a children’s pop-up book works, starting as a flat 2D surface only to expand into a 3D shape when prompted. The authors note that the pop-up method has various advantages over 3D printing, including use of multiple materials during the fabrication process and integration with electronics.
By combing biomechatronics and aesthetics, William Root developed a prototype that's a custom fit for each wearer, uses a minimal amount of top class materials and assures high mobility, all while looking as fit it came off a SciFi movie.
Major automaker Toyota announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that it would release all of its nearly 6,000 patents pertaining to hydrogen car technology royalty-free for the next five years. Officials most likely hope that this sort of move will encourage other auto manufacturers and capital to invest in the hydrogen economy. […]
For the very first time, engineers have used the DNA origami assembly method to build complex DNA-based mechanism that performs a repeatable and reversible function. Mechanical engineers at The Ohio State University built their devices such that they may function like any regular macro-object, like opening and closing hinges. Their approach, however, is different than other […]
More than 2.5 billion people around the world lack access to clean water, making them vulnerable to diseases. To help address this delicate world problem, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded Janicki Bioenergy to build the Omniprocessor – a self-contained system that processes nasty sludge and turns it into electricity, pathogen free ash and pure water. […]
It’s not Jedi technology, but it’s pretty close – scientists and students from China have devised an umbrella that eliminates the need for awkward and hard to wield umbrellas; the technology creates a force-field of air around you to shield you from the rain. We first wrote about this technology in June 2013, when the technology was […]
Some findings are just counterintuitive. I mean, you’d think that adding water to materials would always make them softer, right ? Well according to Yale researchers, that’s not necessarily the case. The team found that you could improve the strength of a composite by 30 percent by embedding droplets of water into its structure. Adding pockets […]
We’ve probably all experienced it at some point – you really have no reason to stay online… but you do so nonetheless. But six percent of the global population actually suffers from internet addiction (IA). Addiction is defined as a substance or activity which is initially pleasurable, but the continued use/act of which becomes compulsive and […]
The latest in brain-computer interface technology was recently demonstrated after woman with quadriplegia shaped a sophisticated robotic hand with ten degrees of freedom using her thoughts. Through the interface, she instructed the robotic hand to move up, down or sideways, pick up small or big objects and even squeeze them. In just a couple of years, […]
The United States Department of Defense just demonstrated one of the scariest weapons ever – a ‘magic bullet’ that can change trajectory in mid flight on command and hit a target no matter what. Shots can be fired from as far as 1.2 miles, and snipers can remain hidden without risk of getting spotted. In fact, […]
Security experts have devised a novel authentication system that exploits quantum effects to make fraud-proof credit cards or IDs. Called Quantum-Secure Authentication (QSA), the technology relies on the quantum properties of single light beams, called photons, including their ability to be in multiple places at once. Quantum physics keys “We experimentally demonstrate quantum-secure authentication (QSA) of […]
Superconductivity or zero electrical resistance at room temperature is any physicist’s dream, but so far the challenges have proven too great. Typically, metals like mercury become superconductive at temperatures close to absolute zero or -273 degrees Celsius. This means that we need to add a lot of energy to refrigerate the material so we might […]
Unfortunately, Derby the husky cross wasn’t born like other dogs. While her back paws are normal and well developed, a deformity caused him to be born with small and very twisted forelegs. He couldn’t walk at all. But Derby caught a break when she was adopted by Tara Anderson, who works for a 3D printing company called […]
Microscopes have gone a long since Zacharias Jansen first invented them in the 1590s. Besides optical telescopes, we now have digital microscopes, atomic force microscopes or, my favorite, electron microscopes. Now, it may be the right time to add a new class to the list: holographic microscopes. While these have been investigated for some time, […]
An expedition that drilled 2,400m beneath the seabed off Japan – the deepest marine drilling ever – found life in cores brought back to the surface. The tiny, single celled organisms survived there without any oxygen or light, relying only on a harsh diet of hydrocarbons to make means. Because of the limited resources available to […]
One of the most interesting projects in science today are the BRAIN Initiative in the US and the Human Brain Project in Europe, which aim to map all the synapse connections in the human brain, or connectome, and ultimately simulate it. It’s an ambitious project with numerous challenges, but the possible benefits are well worth […]
Have you ever wondered how an ink drop blasted by a laser looks like? Physicist Hanneke Gelderblom of the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands did! She and her team have won the American Physical Society’s 2014 Gallery of Fluid Motion competition for this technique which is not only super cool, but may one day lead to better […]
Moore’s law says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years, hence doubling also the computing power. Since it was first predicted in 1965, this trend has hold true allowing computers to evolve at an exponential rate. To support the law, scientists tweak one or all of these three main […]
A very simple, yet effective optical technique was demonstrated that can transform video inputs, such as the motion of a piece of paper, into audio. To achieve this, the researchers involved exploited a simple principle that describes how sound waves causes objects in their path to vibrate. If you reverse engineer the vibrations, you can […]
Brain-computer interfaces have helped prosthetics go a long, long way. ZME Science showed you a couple of such examples, like the case of a mechanical arm remotely controlled by a man using only using thoughts or the mind-blowing high-tech prosthetic by DARPA that empowered a veteran who had lost him limb to perform all sorts of […]
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a material which is light like aluminum, but as strong as titanium alloys. This material has the highgest strength-to-weight ratio known to mankind. The research team combined lithium, magnesium, titanium, aluminum and scandium to make a nanocrystalline high-entropy alloy with a low density. At a first glance, […]
Shells and bullets have evolved significantly in the past couple hundred years since they were first used, but in principle they’ve remained the same – discharge an explosive to propel a projectile. The 21st century might finally make way to a new class of widespread weaponry based on lasers. These are powerful, much more accurate than […]
The more data doctors have of their patients’ health, the better the treatments they can prescribe. Ideally, you’d want patients to be constantly monitored for key life signs like heart rhythm, glucose levels or even brain activity. Typically, this is only possible in a hospital setting, but what if you want to follow how a […]
Last year, President Obama delivered a speech to promote Computer Science Education Week in which he emphasized the important of learning how to code. During this year’s event, Obama put his money where his mouth is and actually sat down to write a simple javascript program. Even though he didn’t actually wrote lines of codes, but […]
3D printing is changing our lives – we’re seeing it already. Basically any household item can be 3D printed, and cheaper; in medicine we have 3D printed bones and even skin, you can get a 3D printed tattoo, 3D printed fossils for education, you can 3D print houses cheaply and quickly and even rocket parts – NASA is actually […]
An IBM team analyzed a sample of discarded batteries and found that they can still be used and can still provide benefits. They developed a device which uses re-usable Lithium Ion cells from discarded laptop battery packs to power low energy DC devices. They found that 70% of used batteries could still store enough power to keep an […]
High speed photography is no longer a new thing… but then again, it depends what you mean by high speed photography; you likely don’t mean one hundred billion frames per second (100,000,000,000 fps) – but that’s exactly what Liang Gao, Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University means. He and his team have developed the world’s fastest […]
A breakthrough in optical communications has been reported by Stanford engineers who used a complex algorithm to design a prism-like device that splits light into different colours (frequencies) and at right angles. This is the absolute first step towards building a circuit, and ultimately a computer, that uses light instead of wires to relay signals. This […]
The elevator was invented over 150 years ago, and now, we’re entering a new era in vertical transportation: the first ropeless elevator has been developed. The Germany company ThyssenKrupp developed this technology, and it looks straight out taken from a Willy Wonka movie! But this technology is not about being cool, it’s about being effective. MULTI elevator […]
Yoga, coffee and even chocolate can do wonders for your mood – it’s already a known fact. But what if technology stepped in – would you take a few electrical shots to substitute your urge for caffeine? If the answer is yes, or if you want to have more control on your mood, then good […]
Charle’s Darwin’s original notes during which he first scribbled down the ideas which led to evolution have been digitized and published online by Cambridge University. Over 12,000 high-res images have been published online – including the ones with the pages where he actually coins the term ‘natural selection’. “One may say there is a force […]
Nature, one of the biggest academic journal groups has announced that they will make all their articles free to view. While the articles will be available for anyone to read, they cannot be copied, printed or downloaded, the journal’s publisher Macmillan announced on 2 December. “Subscribers to 49 journals on nature.com will be able to share a […]
Since ancient times, people living in hot climates learned if they paint their rooftops white, then their quarters would stay cooler during the scorching heat. In an attempt to curve energy consumed on air conditioning, which accounts for 15% of all electricity consumed in the US, scientists have devised a multi-layered surface that acts in […]
When I first heard about 3-D printing, I was completely stoked. The whole concept blew me away and changed forever what I thought of ‘printing’. We now also know about machines that print metals, food and even human organs, why not light too? While not a 3D printer, Rohinni’s Lightpaper technology can be credited as […]
UK researchers highlight once more a depressing topic: income inequality and lack of social mobility. After they tracked families that sent their children to study at Oxford and Cambridge – the two most prestigious and elitist Universities in the world since 1096 – the researchers found that students were more likely to inherit their parent’s […]
Who would’ve thought only a decade ago that quantum computers would become real in the upcoming future? Those of us without such hindsight need to rely on what’s been reported by scientists, and recently all kinds of developments lend us to think that a quantum computing future isn’t that far off. Take the latest qubit […]
Watch out, Spiderman! Stanford engineers recently demonstrated a pair of gecko-inspired hand pads strong enough to pull the weight of an adult man and to allow him to climb a wall. Scaling walls like a gecko At the center of the gecko’s clinging ability are its specialized pads, located on the reptile’s toes, comprised of various satae (bristle- or […]
A 20-year-old algorithm that demonstrated the benefit of using quantum mechanics to solve certain problems has finally been run on a quantum computer – a sweet delicious treat, and a sign that serious progress is being made in the field of quantum computing. The Quantum world is weird A quantum computer is a computation system […]
