News

Green Heinz ketchup? Fat-free Pringles? Colgate frozen lasagna? You don’t need to be an expert to know these products weren’t successful. Which is why these creations, with dozens of others, feature in the new Museum of Failure , a wacky … Continued

Brain surgery is precision business, and one slip can spell doom for affected patients. Even in one of the most skilled jobs in the world, human error can still be a factor. Researchers from the University of Utah are looking … Continued

Developer PMG is building 3,500 units in Chicago, Brooklyn, and Miami, featuring smaller living spaces and more shared space. If you live in a new apartment building in Chicago, you might be more likely to spend a typical night downstairs … Continued

A Swedish mall, called ReTuna Återbruksgalleria, exclusively sells recycled and upcycled goods. Unlike a traditional mall with a shopping centre, ReTuna also has a traditional municipal recycling centre. Visitors can drop off goods that they no longer need in the recycling centre, and then … Continued

It sounds, admits Chris Finlayson, like a “pretty nutty” idea.  Yet the new law that declares the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third-longest, a legal person, in the sense that it can own property, incur debts and petition the courts, is … Continued

Arachnophobia is a common and powerful fear.  Spiders sit high in the pantheon of species that have an outsized terror-to-danger ratio.  But, unsettling though they may be, the eight legged to excel at keeping six-limbed pests in check.  They prey … Continued

The booming growth of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), like most transformational technologies, is both exciting and scary. It’s exciting to consider all the ways our lives may improve, from managing our calendars to making  medical diagnoses, but it’s … Continued

There’s a lot of carbon in automobile exhaust. Carbon is also used as a pigment in black ink. The guys at Singapore-based Graviky Labs have combined the one with the other, by harvesting carbon from vehicles’ tailpipes to make their … Continued

Google recently announced that its new AI-based translation software, Neural Machine Translation (NMT), has developed an internal language of its own to facilitate its translation of certain languages — and Google can’t explain how it did it. Neural Machine Translation … Continued

Thermoelectric generators convert heat or cold to electricity (and vice-versa). Normally solid-state devices, they can be used in such things as power plants to convert waste heat into additional electrical power, or in small cooling systems that do not need … Continued

For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year – a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States. Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, … Continued

Tesla has announced their solar panels are nearly entirely powering the island of Ta’u in American Samoa. The island used to depend entirely on imported diesel fuel for its electricity, but a new initiative has seen the islanders build a … Continued

With the rise of mobile technologies comes a need for mobile power sources, and it’s hard to think of a more discreet way to do this than weaving them right into our clothes. Such a task requires new advances in … Continued

Sunshine and seawater. That’s all a new, futuristic-looking greenhouse needs to produce 17,000 tonnes of tomatoes per year in the South Australian desert. It’s the first agricultural system of its kind in the world and uses no soil, pesticides, fossil … Continued

We are all farmilar with the tragedy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which was caused by an enormous tsunami that occurred back in 2011. It brought the nuclear power debate back to life. Now, one Japanese engineer wants to harness the power of another potentially … Continued

In northern Queensland, Australia, two giant holes in the earth are about to be put to good use. What were the twin pits of the Kidston gold mine will soon become a place to store a tremendous amount of energy. … Continued

Researchers at MIT have developed an easy-to-use “biological programming language” that allows genetic engineers (or just about anyone) to design biological circuits and “hack” the genomes of living cells. LIFE-SHAPING The evolution of human technology has proceeded in lockstep with … Continued

Scientists say they have invented a super thin fabric that generates electricity from sunlight and movement. It has taken Chinese and US researchers about two years to develop the fabric, which they say is a flexible and foldable power source … Continued

Scientists from the University of Southampton have reengineered the fundamental process of photosynthesis to power useful chemical reactions that could be used to produce biofuels, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. Photosynthesis is the pivotal biological reaction on the planet, providing the … Continued

Fastbrick Robotics, an ASX-listed company based in Perth, has created a robot brick layer, a form of 3D printing which can create the shell of a house without being touched by human hands. The Hadrian 105 robot, named after the … Continued