Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE

Researchers at Germany’s Ruhr University Bochum have reached a goal sought for centuries by medical science: how to make legs paralyzed by a massive spinal cord injury walk again. The spine’s nerve fibers, once damaged or cut, are unable to regenerate themselves. As a result, communication is lost between the mind and the body below...

Your microbiome – the ecosystem of bacteria living in your intestines – has been found to regulate mood and behavior disorders by the signals it sends up the vagus nerve that leads from the gut to the brain. Specifically, researchers at Baylor University’s medical school have parsed the microbiome to discover that certain kinds of...

Mighty Buildings, an Oakland, CA company, is building the first U.S. housing development of entirely 3D-printed houses that will form a net-zero energy neighborhood. In its factory, the company begins with a steel frame into which it prints panels of stone-like composite that have high insulation values. Traces for plumbing and electric wiring are created...

For the first time, scientists have sent data instantly between two computer chips that are neither physically nor electronically connected. Showing that’s possible breaks open a path to a quantum Internet and distributed quantum computing, which would combine virtually unimaginable computer power and speed. This teleportation of data between two chips is made possible by...

For all their usefulness, batteries are a toxic mess. Electrolytes, the medium that moves a battery’s electric charge from one pole to the other, are a slough of sometimes-flammable toxins that can include cadmium, ammonium chloride, and sulfuric acid. When batteries are used up and thrown away, those poisons can go into soils and water...

The mRNA vaccine design effective against the COVID virus also shows promise in battling multiple sclerosis (MS), a complicated condition in which the body’s immune system peels away the protein sheath surrounding nerve fibers, causing them to short-circuit. Traditional vaccines carry a fragment of a hostile virus or a weak version of the whole bug,...

In 2018, the U.S. Congress established the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, made up of 15 professionals in technology, security, public policy, and education. The commission has just delivered its final report to Congress and the president. Its finding: “America is not prepared to defend or compete in the AI era,” it said. The...

Every pound of cheese gives its maker nine pounds of leftover whey to get rid of. Some are turned into protein powder, pig feed, or fertilizer; but more than half of the 100 billion pounds made annually in the U.S. alone is dumped as garbage. Now some will make their way into Wheyward Spirit, a...

Six U.S. electric companies – Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Entergy, the Southern Company, the Southwestern Electric Power Company, and the Tennessee Valley Authority – have banded together to create the Electric Highway Coalition (EHC). Together, the utilities will install a seamless network of electric car fast chargers along major highways covering the southeast and south-central...

While much of the rest of the world is focused on making greener fuels for cars, a new venture in Europe has backed up a step and is piloting a process to make green steel for tomorrow’s zero-emission vehicles. Building vehicles use 17 percent of the world’s 1.8-billion-ton steel production each year, according to the...