For years, the car of the future has been stuck going in circles. Although Google's converted self-driving Lexuses have hit the road in a few select areas, the company's…
Google To Unleash Robot Cars On World This Summer
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A Warm-Blooded Fish, Thunderstorms From Space, And Other Amazing Images Of The Week
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For Drone Pilots, A Real-Time Map Of All The Aircraft In The Sky
It is easy to make a simple map of the sky, and incredibly hard to make a detailed one. As more and more drones enter American airspace, several maps have debuted that…
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Energy Consumption Monitoring for Homeowners
One of our side projects has been to develop a building integrated interface that, through physical interaction, can inform a homeowner as to their energy 'budget' and…
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Hacking Phones With The Touch Of A Hand
For many of us, our smartphones are an integral part of our being, containing not just everything we need to communicate but depths of personal information, from our daily…
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How To Be A Brilliant Inventor
As the co-founder of MakerBot Industries, Bre Pettis launched the first affordable 3D printer, bringing the power of rapid prototyping and micro-manufacture into homes and…
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A Battery Made From Rhubarb (Sort Of)
The next step for renewable energy is to figure out how to store all the power we create. Harvard researchers have used a molecule nearly identical to one in rhubarb to make a battery that can store more energy—for less money—than solid-state and traditional flow batteries. “We have something that could change the way we deal with electricity,” says Harvard engineer Michael Aziz. By 2017, they hope to release a commercial version big enough to hold a day’s worth of energy from a typical three-kilowatt home rooftop solar array.
Many existing flow batteries use expensive rare earth metals…
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A Better Way To Turn Trash Into Gas
Landfills are a potent source of methane, and so companies often drill wells to siphon it as fuel. But managing those wells can be tricky. It requires manually adjusting a vacuum to gather gas from each wellhead. If oxygen enters the well, it can damage the methane-forming bacteria, which means the process needs constant monitoring. In 2011, while a Ph.D. student at MIT, Melinda Sims realized there had to be a more efficient method.
With Andy Campanella, Sims formed a company, Loci Controls, that targets the nation’s 645 energy-producing landfills. The company created algorithms that…
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Plastic Waste Could Fuel Your Car One Day
At a factory in Almeria, on the southern coast of Spain, Michael Murray, the CEO of the technology company Cynar, makes an impressive demonstration. A video on Cynar’s website shows him filling a glass bottle with a soup distilled from plastic, then marching outside. In a sport coat and rubber gloves, he pours it into the gas tank of a Toyota Land Cruiser. Then he cranks the ignition and drives off.
This isn’t just a trick; it’s a business plan. Murray intends to convert millions of tons of plastic waste into a synthetic fuel. The factory, which licenses his technology, opened late last…
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Meet Chimp, A Disaster Response Robot With Four-Limb Drive
This month, 25 robots will traverse rubble, saw through walls, and drive a vehicle through a simulated disaster zone in the DARPA Robotics Challenge final showdown. The three-year competition--inspired by the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident--is motivating the development of robotic technologies for use in hazardous environments. (A $2 million prize for the team behind the winning robot doesn’t hurt.) Just as the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge led to self-driving-vehicle technology, this event could lead to dexterous robots for disaster response, advanced manufacturing, and warehouse…
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6 Surprising Facts About Caffeine
You’ve almost certainly taken the world’s most commonly used psychoactive drug. In the U.S. alone, 90 percent of adults consume caffeine daily—often as coffee, but…
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The Lazy Hacker's Guide To Fitness
Working out is tough. Activity trackers like the Nike+ FuelBand are good motivators, but they’re bad at crunching important data. Some can fail to track calories burned by as…
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Artificial Intelligence Pinpoints Pests That Spread Disease
Lyme disease, swine flu, bubonic plague—many of humanity’s greatest scourges jumped from our animal co-habitants to make us sick. During an outbreak, researchers need to…
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This Bacterium Carries Microbial Luggage
Paenibacillus vortex faces many hazards during travel including antibiotics. But they take antibiotic-resistant bacteria as cargo to ensure a safe journey.
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A Printer For Circuit Boards
2015 Invention Award Winner
Category: Electronics
Inventors:
Katarina Ilic, Alroy Almeida, Jesus Zozaya, James Pickard
Company:
Voltera
Invention:…
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How To Make Your Home Smarter, Step 1
Different products can cause chaos when they don’t communicate. So choose a platform that uses a networking hub or an app (or both) to marry disparate devices and give your…
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Five Trillion Pieces Of Plastic Are Floating In An Ocean Near You [Interactive]
In December, a consortium of 12 research institutions published some of the first numbers on global ocean plastic pollution.
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Pens And Paper Are Holding Your Kids Back, Says Microsoft
Modern classrooms aren’t working for kids, according to Lia De Cicco Remu, the director of Partners in Learning at Microsoft Canada. “Our schools are like jails--brick walls, colorless, not very engaging or exciting,” she tells the Georgia Straight, days before a Microsoft educational summit in Vancouver.
This grim declaration is a part of De Cicco Remu’s push for pencil-less classrooms. She believes pencils, paper, and chalkboards are all outdated methods of teaching. If De Cicco Remu has her way, “inking”, or using a stylus and a tablet, will be the new handwriting. Also, kids need to…
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The Air Force's Secret Space Plane Will Launch Tomorrow
Tomorrow, the Air Force is scheduled to send its secret space plane back into orbit for undisclosed purposes. The two X-37Bs--unmanned, shuttle-like craft--have already spent over three and a half years in orbit. The Air Force, despite “air” in their name, have a mission that extends into space, which adds an extra layer of military secrecy to their tests of an actual covert space planet.
It's primary mission remains shrouded in obscurity, but we do know a couple of secondary missions the X-37B will perform on this flight. For the first time, the X-37B will flight test its Hall thruster,…
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Cars Are Becoming Devices with Apple Watch Apps
People want their cars to be devices, and car companies are jumping onto the Apple Watch platform to make those dreams come true.
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