Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Giving solar cells the rough treatment
A new solar cell design that traps photons in the crevices of a bumpy surface uses low-cost materials and may make these cells more commercially appealing.
- Tech
Tiny device brings out the best in sperm
A new device with potential use in fertility treatments separates robust sperm from stragglers by exploiting a phenomenon that occurs when two microscale fluid flows merge.
- Tech
Columbia Disaster Working Hypothesis: Wing hit by debris
The independent board investigating the breakup of the space shuttle presented its first detailed account of what might have caused the Feb. 1 disaster.
- Tech
A Breath of Fresh Air: Bacteria rid sewage of its stink
Wastewater-treatment plants can use hydrogen sulfide-degrading bacteria instead of chemicals to reduce odors.
- Tech
Tipping tiny scales
A prototype detector based on a tiny silicon cantilever that operates in air has achieved a 1,000-fold sensitivity boost when measuring tiny quantities of chemical agents.
- Computing
Minding Your Business
By means of novel sensors and mathematical models, scientists are teaching the basics of human social interactions to computers, which should ease the ever-expanding collaboration between people and machines.
- Tech
Digital Cells
Researchers are gearing up to create cells with computer programs hardwired into the DNA.
- Tech
Liberty’s smooth move
Sensors clamped to the Liberty Bell's crack show that it could handle the stress of a move.
- Tech
Building a Better Shuttle
Researchers are working on both more heat-tolerant materials and totally new designs for vehicles that might ultimately replace the space shuttle.
- Computing
Pictures Only a Computer Could Love
New, unconventional lenses shape scenes into pictures for computers, not people, so that computer-equipped microscopes, cameras, and other optical devices can see more with less.
- Tech
Refueling Rockets
Hybrid-rocket fuels—part solid, part liquid—have been around for a half-century, and they may just now be taking off.
- Tech
Invention Playhouse
Aimed at children, the “Invention at Play” Web site offers a variety of interactive activities to encourage and exercise creativity. Developed by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, the site accompanies a traveling exhibit that looks at similarities between the way children play and creative processes used by science and technology […]
