The sun can be a powerful source of renewable energy, but so can the night sky. Now, a team of scientists have created a device that turns the cold of space into enough electricity to power an LED light. As described in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Joule, the device is based […]
The impact of the beef — and for that matter, poultry, pork, and fish — industries on our planet is widely recognized as one of the main drivers behind climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and antibiotic-resistant illness. From the cutting down of rainforests for cattle-grazing land, to runoff from factory farming of livestock and plants, […]
Introduced at a Business Equipment Manufacturers Association show in New York in October 1965, this programmable desktop calculator provedan immediate success. Also known as the P101 or the Perottina (after the chief engineer who designed it, Pier Giorgio Perotto), it eventually sold more than 40,000 units, primarily in the United States but also in Europe. […]
Circuit breakers have been mechanical switches for 140 years. Now Atom Power is launching the first UL safety-certified digital circuit breaker panel combined with smart software and connectivity that could help monitor and control energy use of buildings remotely. In the dark, dank depths of your home basement hangs a drab gray box that guards […]
Researchers plan to spray sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, an approach that could ultimately be used to quickly lower the planet’s temperature. Zhen Dai holds up a small glass tube coated with a white powder: calcium carbonate, a ubiquitous compound used in everything from paper and cement to toothpaste and cake mixes. Plop a tablet […]
The advancement could help scientists to study early brain development. Research in this area has been slow, partly because it is difficult to obtain fetal-tissue samples for analysis and nearly impossible to examine a fetus in utero. Many researchers are excited about the promise of these ‘organoids’, which, when grown as 3D cultures, can develop […]
Belgian research groups from the UCLouvain and WELBIO, VIB and Ghent University, and the biotechnology company argenx elucidated the three-dimensional structure of an assembly of proteins operating on cells that dampen immune responses. They also discovered how an antibody can block this assembly and the immunosuppression it induces downstream. Such an antibody could serve to […]
Is the world around us real — or are we living in a simulation, like characters trapped inside some space alien’s video game? That sounds like a question you might hear at a midnight screening of ‘The Matrix,’ but lately it’s become the subject of serious academic debate. High-profile proponents of what’s known as the […]
The Large Hadron Collider is at it again, showing us new wonders in the world of particle physics. Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration have observed two new particles that have never been seen before – and seen evidence of a third. The two new particles, predicted by the standard quark […]
Engineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation—no bigger than a Band-Aid—is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone. Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to create images of […]