Tech
- Tech
Oceans of Electricity
The world's first commercial wave-power plant began pumping current into a Scottish island's electric grid last winter, just ahead of a host of competing schemes for converting ocean-wave motion into electricity.
- Tech
Optical biopsy hunts would-be cancers
A new optical tool allows physicians to scout for precancerous tissue by analyzing the fluorescent responses of cells when light is shone on them.
- Computing
Automatic Professor Machine
Check out an amazing, new information-dispensing device at the Web site of technology critic Langdon Winner of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Winner’s Automatic Professor Machine delivers online doctoral degrees without the student ever having to set foot on a college campus. A spoof of the distance-learning craze, the site features a news report, radio interview […]
- Tech
New nanosize detector picks through DNA
Researchers have made a device that can differentiate nearly identical DNA molecules, which might lead to sequencing at unprecedented speeds.
- Computing
Making the Macintosh
Interested in computer history? Alex S. Pang of the Stanford University Library has assembled fascinating material from a variety of sources, including papers donated to the university from Apple’s corporate library, to portray the invention and emergence of the Macintosh personal computer. The evolving Web site includes sections on counterculture and computing, the early Macintosh, […]
- Tech
Flying Leap
In the history of human flight, first came the daring tinkerers who gave wings to the pent-up human desire to soar. In the wake of their successes came a remarkable proliferation of flying machines, spacecraft, and colorful characters. At this Web site, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics celebrates these achievements with an annotated […]
- Tech
Hop . . . Hop . . . Hopbots!
Two prototype jumping robots that hop, crash-and-land, and then hop again are demonstrating a novel mobility concept that may finally enable small, cheap robots to roam widely over rough terrain.
- Tech
Simple system may curb auto emissions
Researchers have developed a four-component system that acts like an on-vehicle oil refinery and may help significantly reduce the hydrocarbon emissions from internal combustion engines.
- Tech
Technique puts more data into airwaves
A new approach that exploits the orientations of the electric and magnetic fields in radio waves may increase data flows to and from cell phones and other wireless devices by up to a factor of six.
- Tech
Current may flow free and cheap
Wires that carry electricity without resistance at relatively high temperatures--and are inexpensive--moved a large step closer to reality as a 100-fold speed-up in depositing a key material wiped out a major obstacle to making those wires.
- Tech
From silicon seeds, laser might sprout
The achievement of light amplification in a layer of tiny nuggets of silicon called quantum dots raises the possibility that long-desired silicon lasers are on the way.
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