All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Tech
Getting a charge out of backpacking
A backpack enhanced with springs, gears, and a generator converts the up-and-down motions of the wearer into enough electricity to power portable electronic gadgets.
- Tech
Stepping Lightly: New view of how human gaits conserve energy
Using a simple mathematical model, scientists may have pinpointed the key aspects of human locomotion that make ordinary walking and running the most energy-efficient ways for people to get around on foot.
- Physics
Champion of strength is forged in mighty anvil
A new form of carbon created in an anvil and composed of microscopic needles of diamond has emerged as the strongest known material.
- Tech
Electronics Gets Y’s: Nanotubes branch out as novel transistors
Y-shaped nanotubes might become a common component in ultrasmall electronic circuitry.
- Tech
Body-fluid battery
A battery that's activated by body fluids such as saliva or urine may one day power devices ranging from disposable home health-care testing kits to emergency radio transmitters that turn on with a lick.
- Tech
Wings warp for birdlike agility
An easily maneuverable, bird-size airplane whose wings can change shape in flight may be able to carry out a variety of assignments in tight spots.
- Math
Armor-Plated Puzzle
Behind the beautiful patterns of many viral shells lie principles of pure physics and mathematics that scientists have illuminated in recent theoretical studies.
- Physics
Warm Ice: Frozen water forms at room temperature
Ultrathin films of ice observed at room temperature and ordinary atmospheric pressure should be more widespread than previously thought, according to new experiments indicating that weaker-than-expected electric fields induce such freezing.
- Tech
Roughing up counterfeiters
A new anticounterfeiting scheme generates unique, reproducible identity codes that could be used to authenticate passports, credit cards, and other items on the basis of inherent, microscopic irregularities in the items' surfaces.
- Tech
Electronic Leap: Plastic component may lead to ubiquitous radio tags
Tiny radio circuits cheap enough to be embedded into countless products have moved closer to reality with the development of a fast, plastic semiconductor diode.
- Physics
Materials scientists go flat out
By separating flakes of single-layer crystals from several ordinary materials, physicists have discovered what may be both the world's thinnest materials and a technologically promising new class of substances.
- Tech
Speed Reader: Gene sequencing gets a boost
The first lab-ready technology to challenge the dominant gene-sequencing technique known as the Sanger method taps miniaturization and parallel reading of hundreds of thousands of DNA stretches to boost speed and slash cost.
