Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE

The dream of harvesting usable energy from nuclear fusion lives on. For decades, scientists have labored to create chambers in which heat hotter than the Sun’s surface, and crushing pressures, would melt hydrogen atoms together, releasing vast quantities of clean energy that could be captured and harnessed to power the world. The test chambers, usually...

A new study is adding evidence to the idea that beaming infrared light into the brain can perk up brain function and perhaps even ease symptoms of dementia. At the U.K.’s Durham University, 14 volunteers ages 45 and older were treated to the beams. Over four weeks, they donned headgear resembling a bicycle helmet studded...

Echoing the Trends Journal’s long-standing warnings about 5G cellular radiation, several international airlines canceled or altered flight plans or swapped aircraft on certain flights last week as Verizon and AT&T were ready to turn on 5G transmitters near major airports. 5G radio waves occupy a portion of the radio spectrum that abuts the portion used...

Deere & Co. has introduced a fully autonomous farm tractor. Weeders, drones, and other automated farm tools have been around for a while (see “Automation on the Farm,” 15 May 2018 and “Robots Take the Farm Field,” 4 May 2021), but a driverless tractor has waited until now. Not a moment too soon: farmers can...

Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute, Germany’s renewable energy skunkworks, have developed an elegantly simple exterior covering for buildings that heat and cool the rooms inside, slashing energy use and boosting efficiency. The cladding is made of up solar panels that can be as large as roughly four feet by 12 inches. Each panel can power...

We’ve said it before: lithium is the currency of the digital economy, the key battery ingredient that brings to life everything from smartphones to electric cars. But the metal has begun this year with a 13-percent price spike and renewed fears of short- and long-term shortages, thanks to kinks ranging from China’s closing of processing...

Building insulation is a persistent problem. For years, building walls were packed with fiberglass batting that shed microfibers that lodged in the lungs and promoted cancer. Fiberglass was abandoned in favor of panels of polystyrene, a denser version of Styrofoam. That minimized health problems for people who install it and live with it, but it...

In 2018, two workers at an Australian landfill were dismayed to see how many still useful lithium-ion batteries were being thrown away in old computers and other devices.  They recently had seen a study finding that only 2 percent of the batteries in Australia are recycled; most of the rest, with life left in them,...