Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE

Salamanders and a few odd fish are the lucky ones: they can regrow parts of damaged organs and even regenerate fins and entire limbs when the originals are cut off. It seems reasonable to think other critters could do the same: we grew our limbs in the first place and the genetic information is probably...

The world’s increasingly electronic and green economy rests on 17 metals known as rare earths, which are becoming increasingly scarce, especially since political turmoil has slowed production out of Myanmar, the world’s third-largest exporter. Since 2020, the price of the lithium carbonate used to make batteries for everything from smartphones to smart cars has shot...

Scientists working to create fusion reactors that would produce limitless clean energy by melting hydrogen atoms together announced what they called a “breakthrough” earlier this month: the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in the U.K. set a new record for the amount of energy produced—59 megajoules, shattering the 1997 record of 21.7. Exactly how...

Running enables the brain to make more neurons in its hippocampus, where learning and memory are rooted, but it took an experiment by scientists at the University of Queensland’s Brain Institute to explain why. The researchers analyzed the blood of mice that used a running wheel on and off over four days and compared the...

If you’re eating mealworms—the larval stage of a common beetle—you want to chow down on first-rate grubs. Ynsect, the French mealworm rancher, is going to make your mealworm wishes come true. The 11-year old company operates two mealworm farms in Europe, producing the critters for pet food, livestock feed, and a tofu-like substance for human...

Two breakthrough trials have opened parallel paths to restoring motion after spinal cords have been partly or completely severed. Using electrical stimulation to reactivate spinal neurons, researchers at Switzerland’s Lausanne University have enabled three patients with partly or completely severed spinal cords to stand, walk, pedal a bike, twist their torsos, and even swim. Other...

No, not that. After two years of COVID, the world likely is wading in close to a trillion used, disposable paper and plastic masks, by some estimates. For those not blowing down the street, drifting into our oceans, or swelling our landfills, Russia’s National University of Science and Technology has found that they can be...

Energy efficiency is the best way to cut fuel use, fuel expense, and carbon waste and VTT, Finland’s high-tech skunkworks, has found a new way to apply that principle. Researchers there have developed thin, flexible, plastic-free heat sheets. The sheets, thinner than a piece of printer paper, can be dropped on a couch seat, on...

Between jobs when the COVID virus struck, a biologist teamed up with his supercomputer-expert buddy to browse through the 16 petabytes of genomic sequence data that had been uploaded to the cloud by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Sixteen petabytes of computer space is a lot—1015 bytes, enough to store a digital file of...

Parallel Systems, a startup founded by a pair of former Space X engineers, is testing an advanced prototype of its logistics innovation: a battery-powered flatcar that can go 500 miles on a charge, guide itself to its appointed destination, and replenish its battery pack in no more than an hour, ready to set off again....