Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Facebook ‘likes’ can reveal users’ politics, sexual orientation, IQ
With data from thousands of volunteers, researchers connect social media activity to personal traits.
- Tech
Rats do tasks while connected brain-to-brain
Signals transmitted from one animal to another seem to share information, but usefulness of findings questioned.
- Tech
The 3-D Printing Revolution
Using a technique known as 3-D printing, regular people can now make goods typically produced in huge quantities in factories overseas.
- Tech
Imaging technique offers look inside hearing loss
Two-photon microscopy visualizes hair cells in the inner ear, offering insights into processes leading to deafness.
- Tech
DNA stores poems, a photo and a speech
The molecule swaps its biological role for a computational one, that of long-term data storage.
- Tech
Trick of light makes microwave imaging simple
Metamaterials and math combine to produce a quick, cheap system.
-
- Tech
Antarctic test of novel ice drill poised to begin
Any day now, a team of 40 scientists and support personnel expects to begin using a warm, high pressure jet of water to bore a 30 centimeter hole through 83 meters of ice. Once it breaks through to the sea below, they’ll have a few days to quickly sample life from water before the hole begins freezing up again. It's just a test. But if all goes well, in a few weeks the team will move 700 miles and bore an even deeper hole to sample for freshwater life that may have been living for eons outside even indirect contact with Earth’s atmosphere.
-
- Tech
Printed robot moves with a beat
Tiny device created with a 3-D printer employs heart cells to make it move.
- Tech
Building robots that slither
Howie Choset is a roboticist, but his team’s creations bear little resemblance to C-3PO or R2-D2. Instead, Choset finds inspiration in nature — specifically, snakes.
- Tech
Tiny muscles pull a big punch
Coated carbon nanotubes form the basis of this smart new material.
