Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Leak Locator: Ultrasound for finding holes in spacecraft
Researchers have devised a way to pinpoint leaks in spacecraft by listening to ultrasound waves traveling through the ship's hull.
- Tech
X rays detect fingerprints
Analytical chemists have developed a method that visualizes elusive fingerprints with X rays.
- Tech
Silicon chips land a lasting laser
The first microchip-size silicon lasers promise to boost the maximum speeds of ordinary computers and electronic gadgets.
- Tech
Remembering, on the cheap
A new type of cheap plastic memory bit that stays set even when electrical power is off could facilitate the spread of flexible, radio-equipped tags as price tags, identity labels, and surveillance sensors.
- Tech
Nanotech Facts
The National Nanotechnology Initiative has a Web site devoted to “Nanotech Facts.” It provides an introduction to nanotechnology and a brief description of its many applications and potential societal implications. Go to: http://www.nano.gov/html/facts/home_facts.html
- Tech
Outsmarting the Electronic Gatekeeper: Code breakers beat security scheme of car locks, gas pumps
Because designers flouted a well-known rule for making cryptographic systems impenetrable, automakers and other businesses have embraced a wireless security technology that's vulnerable to attack.
- Tech
Detecting life on Mars
A new device could look for life on Mars by analyzing the geometric traits of amino acids in soil.
- Tech
Congealing useful oddballs
A device for manipulating liquid droplets turns out to have the unexpected ability to fabricate tiny, solid balls with unusual, and potentially useful, patterned structures inside.
- 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.
