As water becomes more precious, tech businesses are finding a lucrative new niche in smartening up wastewater treatment with artificial intelligence. Wastewater-treatment plants are studded with electronic sensors and controls; these usually work independently and require monitoring by humans. Now companies are applying AI to integrate and analyze the data from these various nodes to detect leaks, spot unusual pressure...

If your boss offered to implant a chip in your hand to replace that clumsy ID badge dangling around your neck on a cord, would you do it? Employees of the Swedish company Epicenter are offered the option of the implant to replace key fobs and other security devices. The implant, the size of a grain of rice, is slipped...

At the University of Central Florida, researchers have found a way to re-create photosynthesis, the basic process of plant life, in a synthetic material. The group built a photoreactor, a structure in which light causes chemical reactions. Their reactor was a framework of titanium – a common, nontoxic metal – infused with organic molecules that absorb specific colors of light....

In the US alone, more than 20 million people lose part of or all their vision from failure of retinas – the layer of cells at the back of the eyeball that reacts to light and sends messages to the brain that we’re seeing something. Until now, research has created crude versions of artificial retinas using hard materials. But now...