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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 […]
In the movie “Enemy of State”, the character played by Will Smith is located by the NSA by an advanced satellite that could track his movements in real time, no matter where he would hide. While it’s not certain if intelligence agencies already have this capability, we’re already seeing an incipient concept as presented by University […]
Over ninety percent of all the world’s ice is in Antarctica, where it can run 4000-5000 meters deep. Yet, as a result of global warming, the ice sheet is melting at a rapid rate making it the most significant contributing factor to world sea level rise. It’s simple to throw in a label like global warming […]
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, is looking to launch a massive fleet of micro-satellites into Earths’ low orbit to provide the world with internet and mobile data, according to a recent rumor reported by the WSJ. These satellites will be at least two times lighter than its current counterpart and when […]
Developing countries are catching up fast and there’s a lot the rich can learn, especially in terms of energy. A study of 55 nations found that developing countries like China, Brazil, South Africa, Uruguay and Kenya are installing renewable energy projects at almost twice the rate of developed nations. In many of these countries renewable energy […]
There’s an immense well of information humanity is currently sitting on and it’s only growing exponentially. To make sense of all the noise, whether we’re talking about apps like speech recognition, cosmic body identification or search engine results, highly complex algorithms that use less processing power by hitting the bull’s eye or as close as […]
3-D printing has taken the world by storm, and even though we’ve already discovered a myriad of potential applications, we’re just beginning to scratch the surface on what the technology can actually do. From cranium replacements to fossils, from artificial ears to artificial skin and from bacteria to livable rooms, 3-D printing has done it all, […]
An UK design firm is proposing a most daring idea: replace the windows in a plane with super-light smartscreen panel made from organic LEDs (OLED). These panels would cover most of the plane’s inner surface and display the view from outside, better and lovelier than any windows could. Of course, you could choose to watch […]
A team at MIT has developed a prediction algorithm that allows them to determine when the price of the infamous volatile cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, will drop or rise. Using this method, the researchers managed to double their initial investment in 50 days, all through an automated process that involved more than 2,800 transactions. Money forecast Since the […]
A team of scientists has managed to develop a tractor beam which can pull and push objects over 20 cm – 100 times more than previous records. There are a myriad of potential applications for this kind of research, including studying atmospheric pollutants or retrieving delicate particles of material for examination. “Recent advances in lightwave technology […]
There are over 4 billion IP addresses registered all over the globe and this number is constantly growing as developing countries get wired and more people use smartphones and tablets. The internet isn’t the same all over the world (yet) and activity heavily fluctuates from day to night. A new study mapped the world’s internet […]
A team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering demonstrated the latest advances in programmable DNA self-assembly by crystallizing 32 structures with precisely prescribed depths and complex 3D features. The DNA crystals could potentially be used as the basis of a programmable material platform that would allow scientists to build extremely precise and complex […]
Houses of the future might be built with bacteria – at least partially. It may sound like science fiction, but a Spanish company located in Madrid is working to make that a concrete reality. It all starts with a common type of soil bacterium being. Put it in some soil, provide it with nutrients, and keep the […]
A highly fascinating and, surprisingly for some, practical new line of research is concerned with programmable materials; composites designed to become highly dynamic in form and function. When subjected to certain environmental ques, like temperature or pressure, these smart materials can morph and adapt to new conditions. MIT, for instance, is working with self-transforming carbon fiber, […]
In Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), the sequel to the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. Though far from Alice’s spectacular feat, scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, […]
Urban noise can be quite a nuisance, but it can also provide a lot of valuable information about the city’s needs. A first of its kind project in the city of Santander will check if this data can actually be used to improve the lives of citizens and develop a better, smarter city. “The EAR-IT project is […]
With a simple phone app you can donate your idle phone time to science; and if researchers decide to use this data in a paper, you’ll also be credited as an author. The app is called Cosmic Rays Found in Smartphones, or CRAYFIS – and all you have to do is download it, it takes care of […]
Researchers from Denmark have synthesized crystalline materials that can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations, releasing them when needed. A single crystal about the size of a sponge can suck all the oxygen from a room. Naturally, there are many potential applications for this type of technology. The most obvious one would be breathing underwater […]
