A tiny device called a micro-comb could one day replace existing internet infrastructure to hit crazy new highs in download speeds, providing millions with ample data at the same time, even during the busiest periods. The lightweight technology has recently been put to the test in a field trial that measured data rates of
Here’s something you might not have expected to see Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot doing any time soon: herding sheep on a rugged New Zealand mountainside. The slightly bizarre sequence is part of a promotional video demonstrating Spot’s potential in the agricultural industry; it also includes footage of Spot checking on crops and clambering over
Cell phone towers across New Zealand are being set on fire and authorities believe the attacks are linked to the increasing proliferation of conspiracy theories connecting 5G networks to the coronavirus pandemic. As of May 18, 17 cell towers had been attacked in Auckland, Wellington, and Northland, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in
The chaos and uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic have claimed an unlikely victim: the machine learning systems that are programmed to make sense of our online behavior. The algorithms that recommend products on Amazon, for instance, are struggling to interpret our new lifestyles, MIT Technology Review reports. And while machine learning tools are built
Scientists have developed a new type of self-assembling silver membrane that could be used to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions before they have a chance to spread in the atmosphere. Using a technique the team says has never been attempted before, the researchers seeded their gas separation membrane with only a tiny deposit of
Scientists are very keen to find effective ways of getting hydrogen from water, thus unlocking hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel. A newly developed device manages the feat, using only sunlight as a power source. Using catalytic electrodes and perovskite solar cells fused together in a single unit, the clever contraption can hit sunlight-to-hydrogen
Wireless charging is already a thing (in smartphones, for example), but scientists are working on the next level of this technology that could deliver power over greater distances and to moving objects, such as cars. Imagine cruising down the road while your electric vehicle gets charged, or having a robot that doesn’t lose battery
The US military’s X-37B space plane is heading back into space in mid-May, and while the Air Force doesn’t often say much about the mysterious aircraft, the service’s top civilian outlined what it will be doing this time around. “The Air Force’s Rapid Capability Office has combined forces with the Air Force Reserve Research
A type of rocket engine once thought impossible has just been fired up in the lab. Engineers have built and successfully tested what is known as a rotating detonation engine, which generates thrust via a self-sustaining wave of detonations that travel around a circular channel. As this engine requires far less fuel than the
A prototype jet engine can propel itself without using any fossil fuels, potentially paving the way for carbon-neutral air travel. The device compresses air and ionizes it with microwaves, generating plasma that thrusts it forward, according to research published Tuesday in the journal AIP Advances. That means planes may someday fly using just electricity and
You may not think of plants as needing life-saving medicine, but that’s sometimes the case when bugs and disease strike. Now, scientists have developed a super-accurate, highly delicate way of delivering drugs, and right where plants need them. At the moment, plants can be sprayed with pesticides, which doesn’t really penetrate to the roots,
NASA engineers have designed a mass-producible ventilator tailored to coronavirus patients, and it could get emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration by the weekend. A team of engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, designed and built the ventilator in just 37 days. The device, called VITAL as an acronym
Whether you use Zoom, Skype or Microsoft Teams, the webcam on your home PC or laptop device has probably never been as active as it is during this pandemic. Most of us have a camera built into our phone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop webcam we use for work, study or virtual socialising. Unfortunately,
Today, the world is grappling with more than just the climate crisis, and yet even now, in the face of a global pandemic, scientists are marching on with renewable solutions. Just this month, no less than three records have been broken in solar panel efficiency. The first and the second were achieved by scientists in
Much of the work undertaken by artificial intelligence involves a training process known as machine learning, where AI gets better at a task such as recognising a cat or mapping a route the more it does it. Now that same technique is being use to create new AI systems, without any human intervention. For
As quantum computers continue to grow in size and complexity, engineers are hitting a major obstacle. All of that added machinery means higher temperatures – and if anything can ruin a perfectly good quantum bit, it’s heat. There are a few possible solutions, but any fix needs to be small and compatible with existing
You may have heard of [email protected], the number-crunching app you can run on your computer to help researchers tackle certain medical problems, including the new coronavirus. In the past month, the network of volunteers who’ve installed it has become so vast, the platform is outperforming the most powerful supercomputers in the world. According to
They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange “sediment organism” that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria. This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the absence of oxygen, but with