Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

A flat optical lens just a billionth of a metre thick will let us see living creatures as small as a single bacterium better than ever before. The new lens, developed by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, promises to revolutionize much of the technology around us. Driven by developments in photonic chips and nano-optics,

Rice University computer scientists are mapping a new solution for interior navigational location detection by linking it to existing sensors in mobile devices. Their results were presented in a paper at last month’s 2017 Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. Six months ago, the same researchers published a paper on

If it were the end of the world as we know it, we’d be fine, according to Michigan Technological University professor Joshua Pearce. “People have been doing catastrophic risk research for a while,” says Pearce. “But most of what’s been done is dark, apocalyptic and dismal. It hasn’t provided any real solutions.” Even when looking

An international research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has revealed a new quantum process in valleytronics that can speed up the development of this fairly new technology. Valleytronics, a portmanteau of “valley” and “electronics,” uses local energy minima — or valleys — in the electronic band structure of semiconductors. Current semiconductor technology

Image by cesarharada.com via Flickr Plastics surround us. A vital manufacturing ingredient for nearly every existing industry, these materials appear in a high percentage of the products we use every day. Although modern life would be hard to imagine without this versatile chemistry, products composed of plastics also have a dark side, due in part

Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at NYU, thinks he’s found a breakthrough idea on creating jobs.   FORTUNE — One common refrain heard at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos: “we need to create more jobs.” That’s hardly a controversial stance — after all no one is really againstcreating

The latest versions of most smartphones contain at least two and sometimes three built-in cameras. Researchers at the University of Illinois would like to sell mobile device manufactures on the idea of adding yet another image sensor as a built-in capability for health diagnostic, environmental monitoring, and general-purpose color sensing applications. Three years ago, the

Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro’s created the Geminoid HI-2–a robotic clone of himself with programming that gives it entirely realistic body language. A robot gave me side-eye for the first time last week. When I attended the Global Future 2045 conference, a get-together for all sorts of cybernetics enthusiasts, life extension researchers, and singularity proponents, I knew inventor Hiroshi