Technology: Science news of the year, 2008

Science News writers and editors looked back at the past year's stories and selected a handful as the year's most interesting and important in Technology. Follow hotlinks to the full, original stories.

Think before you eat: Electrodes implanted into this monkey's brain enabled the monkey to control a robotic arm with its thoughts, reaching out for pieces of food and putting that food in its mouth.
Think before you eat: Electrodes implanted into this monkey’s brain enabled the monkey to control a robotic arm with its thoughts, reaching out for pieces of food and putting that food in its mouth.

Monkey brain moves arm
Technology could lead to better prostheses

Macaque monkeys with electrodes implanted in their brains learned to control a robotic arm with their thoughts. After practice, the monkeys appeared to treat the robotic arm as their own and could feed themselves with the arm using fluid motions.

“The thing that struck me was how naturally the animals interacted with the device,” comments John Kalaska of the University of Montreal (SN: 6/21/08, p. 9). A computer interpreted the electrical activity of muscle-control neurons in the monkeys’ brains that normally move the monkeys’ arms. Based on these electrical patterns, the computer deciphered the movements that the monkeys intended to make with their own arms, which were restrained, and used that information to operate the robotic arm. Similar experiments wired a paralyzed monkey’s brain to the animal’s forearm muscles, enabling the monkey to make simple forearm movements (SN Online: 10/15/08).

In past research, electrodes implanted into the brains of animals or humans lost contact with the nerve cells after months or weeks because cells in the brain treated the electrodes as foreign objects and attacked them. These obstacles would have to be overcome before thought-controlled robotic limbs would be feasible for people, Kalaska says.


Traces of cocaine delineate a fingerprint left on glass. By bouncing water droplets off a surface, chemists can image fingerprints and sniff out thousands of different chemicals simultaneously.
Traces of cocaine delineate a fingerprint left on glass. By bouncing water droplets off a surface, chemists can image fingerprints and sniff out thousands of different chemicals simultaneously.

High-tech fingerprints  A new chemical technique could detect traces of explosives, illicit drugs (cocaine shown) and other compounds from fingerprints. It could also reveal signs of disease (SN: 8/30/08, p. 9).

Charging up  By using an electric field to make diesel slightly thinner, researchers improve the fuel efficiency of a car by more than 18 percent. Real-world improvements would probably be less, around 5 to 10 percent (SN: 10/25/08, p. 9).

DNA strands link gold nanospheres in ordered arrangements to create a new type of crystal.
DNA strands link gold nanospheres in ordered arrangements to create a new type of crystal.

Nanocrystal self-assembly  Scientists use DNA as a sort of Velcro to create what may be the first nanomaterials that assemble themselves into 3-D structures, which may lead to crystals with new properties (SN: 2/16/08, p. 110).

In nanomagnetic cancer treatment, blue fluid with therapeutic nanomagnets targets tumor cells (right). But the nanomagnets leave healthy cells (left) alone.
In nanomagnetic cancer treatment, blue fluid with therapeutic nanomagnets targets tumor cells (right). But the nanomagnets leave healthy cells (left) alone.

Tackling cancer  New cancer therapies that use tiny magnets (shown in blue fluid) to selectively deliver heat or drugs to malignant cells (shown with tan backdrop) are in development (SN: 8/16/08, p. 5).

How many flips does it take to get these pancakes sorted? A colony of E. coli may be able to sort it out.
How many flips does it take to get these pancakes sorted? A colony of E. coli may be able to sort it out.

I, computer  Scientists engineer bacteria to act as the first living computers. The bacteria use their DNA to perform calculations to solve the “pancake flipping” problem (SN Online: 5/19/08).

Improved efficiency  A team finds a way to make the alloy bismuth antimony telluride a 15 to 30 percent more efficient conductor, which may lead to a new kind of solar panel (SN: 3/29/08, p. 206).

Memristors are electronic components that, with a change in electrical resistance, can store data. This atomic force microscope image shows 17 memristors (appearing in yellow) sandwiched between parallel platinum wires (each about 50 nanometers wide) and a single crosswire.
Memristors are electronic components that, with a change in electrical resistance, can store data. This atomic force microscope image shows 17 memristors (appearing in yellow) sandwiched between parallel platinum wires (each about 50 nanometers wide) and a single crosswire.

Goodbye transistor  A new type of electronic component that changes electrical resistance depending on past experiences, called the memristor (17 shown between platinum wires above), could make computer chips more compact and powerful (SN: 5/24/08, p. 13).

Diamonds in nano  Manipulating the quantum properties of diamond impurities could bring researchers a step closer to quantum computers and finer-scale microscopes (SN: 10/25/08, p. 9).