Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Thrifty trucks go with the flow
Forcing air through strategically placed slits on a tractor trailer results in a major boost in fuel economy.
- Tech
Matrix Realized
Devices called brain-computer interfaces could give paralyzed patients the ability to flex mechanical limbs, steer a motorized wheelchair, or operate robots through sheer brainpower.
- Tech
Micro Musclebot: Wee walker moves by heart cells’ beats
A new breed of mobile micromachine made of living heart tissue, gold, and silicon takes a step with each rhythmic contraction of its muscle cells.
- Tech
Frankenstein’s Chips
As evidence mounts that drug-safety trials can miss dangerous effects, scientists are building living, miniature models of animals and people to enhance drug and chemical tests.
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- Tech
Magnetic Bit Boost: Quantum rewiring for computer memories
A quantum-mechanical memory component that might replace electronic computer memories has come closer to practicality.
- Tech
Ink-jet dots form transistor spots
A new technique makes ink-jet printing of transistor circuits possible from conductive polymer inks.
- Tech
Lighthearted Transistor: Electronic workhorse moonlights as laser
A versatile new transistor amplifies electricity and emits a laser beam.
- Tech
Smashing the Microscope: Tiny crashes harnessed for nanoconstruction
A new technique supplies loose atoms for nanoscale experiments by using the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to gouge out craters from a surface.
- Tech
Laser Landmark: Silicon device spans technology gap
By coaxing a silicon microstructure into acting as a laser, engineers have achieved a long-sought and important step toward microchips capable of simultaneously manipulating electrons and light.
- Tech
Wee wires that can crawl
Self-propelled strands of a muscle protein coated with gold offer a way to arrange and control the nanoworld.
- Tech
Tracing the origin of Genesis’ crash
The upside-down installation of four switches intended to signal the Genesis spacecraft to open its parachutes is the likely cause of the craft's crash in the Utah desert on Sept. 8.
