Researchers have found a new way to switch magnetism that is at least 1,000 times faster than methods currently used in magnetic memory technologies. The discovery, reported in Nature, potentially opens the door to terahertz (1012hertz) and faster memory speeds. The research team comprised scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, Iowa State […]
Surprisingly accurate estimates of users’ race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality type, substance use, and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes – information that is by default publicly available. The Cambridge University researchers who developed the analytical technique say that such a method could be used to extract sensitive […]
Duke University researchers have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats for the first time, enabling the rodents to communicate directly and solve simple behavioral puzzles while the two animals were thousands of miles apart. The researchers, describing their work inScientific Reports, say it has the potential for linking multiple brains to form what […]
A team of scientists from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois are the first to demonstrate a stretchable lithium-ion battery – a flexible, wirelessly charged device that could power a range of innovative, stretchable electronic appliances. Northwestern’s Yonggang Huang and the University of Illinois’ John A. Rogers detail their invention in the journal Nature […]
An Austrian research team has developed an entirely new way of capturing images based on a flat, flexible, transparent, and potentially disposable polymer sheet. Resembling a flexible plastic film, the imager uses fluorescent particles to capture incoming light and channel a portion of it to an array of sensors around the edge of the sheet. […]
MIT scientists have created genetic circuits in bacterial cells that not only perform logic functions, but also remember the results, which are encoded in the cell’s DNA and passed on for dozens of generations. The circuits, described in aNature Biotechnology paper, could be used as long-term environmental sensors, control mechanisms for biomanufacturing, or to program […]
A USB ultrasound device about the size of a computer mouse that can be manufactured for as little as $50 (UK30) will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and children, say its developers. Co-developer Jeff Neasham, from Newcastle University (UK), said it was his own experience of becoming a father and going […]
Designed for use in the developing world, a low-cost screening device connected to a cell phone could prevent the anemia-related deaths of 600,000 newborns and 100,000 mothers every year. Designed by Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering undergraduates, the HemoGlobe is designed to convert the existing cell phones of health workers into a “prick-free” system for detecting […]
A staggering 320 tons of gold and more than 7,500 tons of silver are used to make computers, cell phones, tablets and other electronic products every year. These figures, according to sustainability experts speaking at an e-waste conference, mean more than $21 billion in value is added each year to the “deposits” available through “urban […]
To run integrated circuits at faster and faster speeds, University of Pittsburgh scientists are proposing a new spin on an old method: a change from the use of silicon electronics back to vacuum technology for electron transport – a shift they believe would overcome a significant stumbling block in the ongoing development of faster and […]
