Fermilab

Scientists are now reporting progress toward an inexpensive point-of-care, paper-based device to fill that void with no electronics required In remote regions of the world where electricity is hard to come by and scientific instruments are even scarcer, conducting medical tests at a doctor’s office or medical lab is rarely an option. Scientists are now

Renovation projects to improve the energy performance of residential buildings involve a lot of messy construction work. Researchers have come up with a new modernization concept that reduces on-site installation times. Prefabricated multifunctional window modules offer a more convenient alternative to the usual renovation methods. Surgeons commonly use minimally invasive techniques when operating in the

Brain-computer interface (BCI) devices have proven to be effective in helping patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) communicate during advanced stages of the disease when complete paralysis takes over the body. Now, a researcher at East Tennessee State University has shown that the device can also be beneficial to patients who have suffered a brainstem

The Mataerial printer squirts quick-drying polymers from a nozzle, like it was frosting a cake, creating a new model for 3-D printing that doesn’t require layers and supports to make a new object. While many creators look at 3-D printing as a technology full of endless potential, designers Petr Novikov and Saša Joki? saw something

One of the most successful plastics is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the material we use to make bottles and fibres for clothing. However, PET is made from petroleum-based building blocks. An alternative to PET can be made from bio-based furan molecules, but to polymerize these furans you need toxic catalysts and high temperatures. Now, polymer chemists

In recent months, government officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries have made repeated calls for law-enforcement agencies to be able to access, upon due authorization, encrypted data to help them solve crimes. Beyond the ethical and political implications of such an approach, though, is a more practical question: If we

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have devised a new method for enriching a group of the world’s most expensive chemical commodities, stable isotopes, which are vital to medical imaging and nuclear power, as reported this week in the journal Nature Physics. For many isotopes, the new method is cheaper than existing methods. For

A survey of teachers from the United States and Canada found that one out of four educators who used live animals as part of their science curriculum released the organisms into the wild after they were done using them in the classroom. Yet only 10 percent of those teachers participated in a planned release program,