Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
A compass that lights the way
Researchers develop a highly sensitive optical instrument for measuring magnetic fields.
- Tech
To tame traffic, go with the flow
Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around.
- Computing
Most influential media Twitter feeds
Computer scientists find surprises when they rank top 100.
- Chemistry
Light-harvesting complexes do it themselves
A new technique could yield solar cells with no repair or assembly required.
- Tech
Tar sands ‘fingerprint’ seen in rivers and snow
A new study refutes a government claim (one echoed by industry) that the gonzo-scale extraction of tar sands in western Canada — and their processing into crude oil — does not substantially pollute the environment.
- Tech
New help for greasy works of art
NMR technique identifies oil stains, guiding art conservation efforts.
- Chemistry
Deep-sea oil plume goes missing
Controversy arises over whether bacteria have completely gobbled oil up.
- Computing
Going viral takes a posse, not an army
Quality of followers, not quantity, determines which tweets will fly
- Humans
Protecting innocent — and not so innocent — bystanders
Technique removes pedestrians from Google Street View images.
- Tech
The people’s pulsar
Thousands of volunteers help discover a neutron star by donating the processing power in their idle home computers.
- Tech
Research trials pose challenge to medical privacy
How — or even whether — to share a medical data collected on research subjects poses a growing dilemma. Certainly, doctors would benefit from knowing if their patients had been receiving medicines, physical therapies or dietary supplements. Or if a patient had a history of drug abuse, mental illness, sexually transmitted diseases or engaging in risky behaviors. But in the wrong hands, such sensitive data could compromise an individual’s ability to keep a job — even retain shared custody rights to children during a contentious divorce.
- Health & Medicine
‘Miracle’ tomato turns sour foods sweet
Pucker no more: That seems to be one objective of research underway at a host of Japanese universities. For the past several years, they’ve been developing bio-production systems to inexpensively churn out loads of miraculin — a natural taste-altering protein that makes sour foods seem oh so sweet. Their newest biotech reactor: grape tomatoes.
