The first round of genetically modified foods was designed to make life easier for farmers: corn that sported genes to kill bugs or wheat that could survive in dry climates, for example. Now a new generation of genetically altered crops is fashioning products more amenable to consumers’ tastes. The start-up Pairwise has yanked the gene...
Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE
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NEW FUSION ENERGY METHOD REVIVES ADVOCATES’ HOPES
For decades, fusion energy has been physicists’ grail of infinite, clean power. Now a completely new approach by engineers at the University of New South Wales has moved fusion power closer to practicality. Fusion scientists have been trying to capture the same kind of energy released by the sun in the same way as the...
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A WEARABLE MEDICAL LAB
Bioscientists at the University of California at San Diego have fashioned a stretchy polymer patch smaller than a business card that will monitor your blood pressure; read your sweat to measure levels of alcohol, caffeine, and lactose in your body; and track glucose levels in the fluid between your cells. At the center of the...
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CRIMPING GRAPHENE TURNS IT INTO MICROCHIPS
As artificial intelligence and other computer software become more, well, intelligent, computers are going to need a lot more processing power while still being able to fit in your pocket. Hello, graphene. Graphene – the seemingly miraculous sheets of carbon one atom thick – already can be configured for use as water filters, biosensors, and...
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RENEWABLE POWER SOURCES TO EDGE PAST GAS & COAL BY 2026
Electricity generated by wind and sunshine will supply more of the world’s electricity than gas and coal before 2026, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted in its annual report on global energy. By then, the two forms of renewable power will produce a third of the world’s electricity, equivalent to the combined usage of...
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NEW BREATHALYZER DETECTS AN ARRAY OF DISEASES
For a physician to determine whether you have a particular illness, you usually have to deliver a specific sample – blood, urine, feces, or even a piece of flesh. Now NASA’s new, handheld “E-Nose” can detect the presence of various sicknesses when someone breathes on it. The space agency developed the smartphone-like device to check...
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SCIENTISTS FOOL DEEPFAKE DETECTORS
Deepfakes – doctored videos that show persons saying things they never actually said or, often, would say – have become a growing scourge of social media. Computer engineers quickly put together “deepfake detector” software to alert viewers whether a video is phony. Now researchers at the University of California at San Diego have shown how...
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NEW KIND OF ANTIBIOTIC KILLS GERMS & BOOSTS IMMUNITY
The growing army of bacteria able to resist conventional antibiotics is one of the top ten threats to human health, according to the World Health Organization, and, by 2050, will kill ten million people a year and drain $100 million annually from the global economy. But not if researchers at Pennsylvania’s Wistar Institute can help...
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DENMARK PLANS WORLD’S FIRST “ENERGY ISLANDS”
The Danish government has unveiled plans to build an artificial island about 50 miles off the Jutland peninsula in the North Sea that will become an energy hub, directing green energy to millions of onshore consumers. A similar installation is planned for the existing island of Bornholm. In its first phase, the human-made island –...
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“LIVING ROBOTS” MADE FROM FROGS
At the University of Vermont, scientists have tinkered with cells scraped from frogs’ embryos to make something that’s not a traditional robot but a “biological machine” – perhaps even a new life form. The creation has been dubbed a “xenobot” because the cells used to make the living robots were taken from the African clawed...