Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Size Matters: Biosensors behave oddly when very small
There might be a limit to how small physicists should build tiny sensors that detect viruses and molecules.
- Tech
Wheel of Life: Bacteria provide horsepower for tiny motor
Crawling bacteria can power a micromotor.
- Tech
The ups and downs of routing fluids on chips
A new way to build microscale pipes in three dimensions boosts the sophistication of chips that manipulate fluids to perform chemical reactions and other tasks.
- Tech
Nanotubes signal when engine oil needs changing
A new, easy-to-fabricate sensor made from carbon nanotubes detects when automobile-engine oil needs replacement.
- Tech
Hydrogen hopes in carbon shells
Lithium atoms added to buckyball surfaces bestow on these molecules a remarkable capacity to store hydrogen.
- Tech
Glare gives silicon goose bumps
New experiments show that fluorescent lights cause undesirable bumpiness on the surface of silicon, identifying what may be a previously unrecognized cause of flaws in microchips that could become increasingly important.
- Tech
Microbial Mug Shots: Telltale patterns finger bad bacteria
A sophisticated pattern-recognition technique that borrows from automated face recognition may permit identification of harmful bacteria faster and more cheaply than conventional methods do.
- Tech
Tapping out a TAI-CHI tune
A new system permits people to make a keyboard and more out of a tabletop or any other hard surface.
- Computing
Hairy Calculations: Picturing tresses in a truer light
Hard-to-simulate blond hair may look more natural in future animations thanks to a new computer model that allows for hairs' transparency and includes the illumination produced by light propagating from hair to hair.
- Tech
Litmus test gets tiny
When zapped by a laser, new, light-sensitive nanobaubles could provide a reading of pH, or how acidic or basic a solution is, even from deep inside living cells.
- Tech
Farm-Fuel Feedback: Soybeans have advantages over corn
A new analysis of two biofuels finds that while both provide more energy than they consume, soybean biodiesel gives more bang for the buck than ethanol made from corn.
- Tech
Smells Like the Real Thing
Chemical sensors that take cues from the mammalian pattern-based approach to identifying odors and flavors create colorful readouts that even the eyes can distinguish.
