Tech
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Tech
Long-Sought Laser? Standard microchips may gain speedy optical connections
Although not made exclusively of silicon, a new type of laser runs on electricity and could be mass manufactured in the same factories as silicon microchips are.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Start your engines
Mechanical engineers have developed a system that greatly decreases the amount of toxic hydrocarbons a car releases.
By Eric Jaffe -
Tech
A thin laser gets thinner
Researchers have created a microchip laser that fires an extraordinarily thin beam of high-intensity light.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Cyber attack depletes cell phone batteries
In a new type of cyber attack, assailants using computers connected to the Internet can secretly induce distant cell phones to rapidly deplete their batteries.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Size Matters: Biosensors behave oddly when very small
There might be a limit to how small physicists should build tiny sensors that detect viruses and molecules.
By Eric Jaffe -
Tech
Wheel of Life: Bacteria provide horsepower for tiny motor
Crawling bacteria can power a micromotor.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
The ups and downs of routing fluids on chips
A new way to build microscale pipes in three dimensions boosts the sophistication of chips that manipulate fluids to perform chemical reactions and other tasks.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Nanotubes signal when engine oil needs changing
A new, easy-to-fabricate sensor made from carbon nanotubes detects when automobile-engine oil needs replacement.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Hydrogen hopes in carbon shells
Lithium atoms added to buckyball surfaces bestow on these molecules a remarkable capacity to store hydrogen.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Glare gives silicon goose bumps
New experiments show that fluorescent lights cause undesirable bumpiness on the surface of silicon, identifying what may be a previously unrecognized cause of flaws in microchips that could become increasingly important.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Microbial Mug Shots: Telltale patterns finger bad bacteria
A sophisticated pattern-recognition technique that borrows from automated face recognition may permit identification of harmful bacteria faster and more cheaply than conventional methods do.
By Peter Weiss -
Tech
Tapping out a TAI-CHI tune
A new system permits people to make a keyboard and more out of a tabletop or any other hard surface.
By Janet Raloff