Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Pumping Alloy
A new way to power artificial muscles improves the prospects for making lifelike humanoid robots and prosthetic limbs.
- Tech
How Products are Made
What does it take to manufacture an accordion or a zipper? Organized alphabetically by product name, this intriguing Web site provides details on how a wide variety of everyday and basic products are made. Go to: http://www.madehow.com/
- Tech
Quantum-Dot Leap
Multiple electrons from photons in quantum dots could be a boon to solar cells and other technologies.
- Tech
Directing tubular traffic
Researchers have shown that they can steer individual protein tubes along tiny channels of a glass chip.
- Tech
Rounding out an insect-eye view
A new humanmade version of an insect's compound eye could perform like the real thing.
- Tech
Illuminating Changes
Indoor lighting is undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis toward energy-conserving systems that rely on solid-state technologies.
- Tech
Speed Bump: Tip’s tricks sort DNA, write at nanoscale
An atomic-force microscope tip has been transformed into a microinstrument for sorting DNA and depositing nanostructures by means of cleverly applied voltages that propel molecules along the tip's surface.
- Tech
Aircraft Photos
The Dryden Flight Research Center is NASA’s center for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric flight operations. The Center’s Web site has an extensive photo collection, which features images of many of the research and experimental aircraft flown at the test facility, from the 1940s to today. Go to: http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/index.html
- Tech
Long-lasting liposomes
A coat of nanoparticles can prevent a popular lab-made capsule from fusing with its neighbors and losing its structure.
- Tech
Switch-a-Vision: Electric spectacles could aid aging eyes
A new type of eyeglasses that change their focus in response to electric signals may one day replace bifocals and other types of reading glasses.
- Tech
A better test for lung cancer?
A genetic test of cells lining the windpipe can detect lung cancer in smokers.
- Tech
Cool Wire: Nanostructure boosts superconductor
The extraordinary performance of a prototype superconductive wire is encouraging superconductivity specialists, even though the prototype is unlikely to be mass-produced.
