Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Novel sensing system catches the dud spud
A new device can detect a single potato that's infected with bacterial soft rot while buried deep in a storage crate with hundreds of healthy tubers.
- Tech
Lighting the Way for Water: New strategy for steering drops with finesse
Using a beam of ultraviolet light, researchers manipulate tiny drops of water on a surface—a demonstration that could lead to ultrafast and highly precise chemical reactions on a chip.
- Tech
Quantum dots light up cancer cells in mice
Brightly fluorescent crystals known as quantum dots have the potential to seek out cancerous cells in the body, a trick that could lead to highly precise cancer screening.
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- Tech
Nanorods go for the gold
Gold blobs grown onto the ends of tiny, rod-shaped crystals provide potential points for electric contact and chemical liaisons that could enable such semiconductor bits to self-organize into complex circuits or structures.
- Tech
Sweet Frequency: Implantable glucose sensor transmits data wirelessly
Modeled after antitheft magnetic strips, a new implantable glucose sensor for diabetes patients could do away with daily pinprick tests.
- Tech
Chair becomes personalized posture coach
Pressure imprints made by a person in a chair provide a new type of computer input useful for tracking posture or, perhaps, other clues to someone's activities and state of mind.
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- Tech
Pile-o’-polymers breaks up on command
Stacks of polymers designed to break apart in acid solution or at a certain voltage may prove useful for releasing drugs, pesticides, or other compounds where and when needed.
- Tech
Pores of glass skin shrink from light
Ultraviolet light can fine-tune the properties of intricately structured, porous films of glass that, among other uses, may make possible the long-sought direct extraction of oxygen and nitrogen gases from air.
- Computing
Calculating Swarms
Ant teamwork suggests models for computing faster and organizing better.
- Tech
Sixth Sense
A budding technology called electric field imaging may soon enable devices such as appliances, toys, and computers to detect the presence of people and respond to their motions.
