Featured
-
-
News |
Remote-controlled roaches to the rescue?
Researchers create cyborg insects that may one day save earthquake victims
- Larry Greenemeier
-
News |
How to boil water without bubbles
Coating helps hot metal hang onto protective vapour layer that prevents explosive boiling.
- Katharine Sanderson
-
News Feature |
Microwave weapons: Wasted energy
Despite 50 years of research on high-power microwaves, the us military has yet to produce a usable weapon.
- Sharon Weinberger
-
News |
India's nuclear watchdog criticized
Board on 'very tenuous ground' as rule-maker and enforcer, performance audit finds.
- K.S. Jayaraman
-
News |
China aims high from the bottom of the world
Country plans two world-class telescopes for its Antarctic observatory.
- Jane Qiu
-
Letter |
Room-temperature ferroelectricity in supramolecular networks of charge-transfer complexes
Organic ferroelectrics with switchable electrical polarization would be an attractive prospect for applications if their Curie temperature—below which these materials display ferroelectric behaviour—could be raised to room temperature or above; this goal has now been achieved with a family of organic materials characterized by a supramolecular structural motif.
- Alok S. Tayi
- , Alexander K. Shveyd
- & Samuel I. Stupp
-
News |
Four-fingered robot can replace flashlight batteries
Bioengineers get a step closer to producing a robotic hand as dexterous as a human's.
- Larry Greenemeier
-
Comment |
How to build a low-energy future
Advanced construction technologies promise huge energy savings, says Philip Farese. Investment is needed to bring them to market and to encourage their use.
- Philip Farese
-
News |
Microwave laser fulfills 60 years of promise
Physicists build first practical maser.
- Geoff Brumfiel
-
News |
Quantum teleportation achieved over record distances
The secure method of speedy communication of information could lead to space-based transmission.
- John Matson
-
News Feature |
Extreme mechanics: Buckling down
Mechanical instability is usually a problem that engineers try to avoid. But now some are using it to fold, stretch and crumple materials in remarkable ways.
- Kim Krieger
-
News Q&A |
A mindful mentor
Gary Gibbons, the next director of the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, hopes to diversify the biomedical workforce.
- Amy Maxmen
-
News |
Britain’s big bet on graphene
Manchester institute will focus on commercial applications of atom-thick carbon sheets.
- Geoff Brumfiel
-
News |
South Korean reactor to restart despite protests
High electricity demand accelerates plans to reopen reactor after malfunction.
- Soo Bin Park
-
News |
Hairy electronic sensors rival the sensitivity of human skin
Sensors inspired by beetle hairs could bring a more nuanced sense of touch to robots and wearable electronics.
- Katherine Bourzac
-
Q&A |
Turning point: Robert Gregg
Father’s illness spurs engineer to pursue medical advances through robotics and prosthetics.
- Virginia Gewin
-
Books & Arts |
Q&A: The sound catcher
Tom Mitchell uses engineering and computing to enable people to play and sample live music using gestures. With the latest version of his co-creation 'The Gloves' about to debut at TEDGlobal 2012 in Edinburgh, UK, he talks about adaptive musical interaction.
- Jascha Hoffman
-
-
World View |
Researchers can't regulate climate engineering alone
Political interests, not scientists or inventors, will be the biggest influence on technologies to counter climate change, says Jason Blackstock.
- Jason Blackstock
-
News |
Italian scientists win battle to halt controversial research
Minister says 'piezonuclear fission' proposals will be reviewed.
- Emiliano Feresin
-
News |
Fukushima has positive fallout for marine science
Radiation tracks movements of animals, water and atmosphere.
- Alice Lighton
-
News Q&A |
India won't pull back on nuclear ambitions
Atomic-energy boss Ratan Kumar Sinha says country is on track to meet nuclear goals.
- K. S. Jayaraman
-
Research Highlights |
Viruses as power generators
-
News |
Cancelled project spurs debate over geoengineering patents
SPICE research consortium decides not to field-test its technology to reflect the Sun’s rays.
- Daniel Cressey
-
News & Views |
Cracks tamed
Crack propagation in materials is rarely welcome. But carefully engineered cracks produced during the deposition of a film on silicon can be used to efficiently create pre-designed patterns of nanometre-scale channels. See Letter p.221
- Antonio J. Pons
-
Books & Arts |
Fiction: Wondrous machines
A multilayered tale centred on a nineteenth-century automaton grips Minsoo Kang.
- Minsoo Kang
-
Letter |
Layered boron nitride as a release layer for mechanical transfer of GaN-based devices
Introducing an extremely thin layer of boron nitride between a sapphire substrate and the gallium nitride semiconductor grown on it is shown to facilitate the transfer of the resulting nitride structures to more flexible and affordable substrates.
- Yasuyuki Kobayashi
- , Kazuhide Kumakura
- & Toshiki Makimoto
-
Letter |
Wetting of flexible fibre arrays
The parameters critical in determining the behaviour of a fibrous medium wetted with a single liquid drop are identified as fibre flexibility, fibre geometry and drop volume.
- C. Duprat
- , S. Protière
- & H. A. Stone
-
News & Views |
50 & 100 years ago
-
Research Highlights |
Low-power magnetic switch
-
-
-
-
News & Views |
Diamond and silicon converge
Diamond-based quantum computers could potentially operate at room temperature with optical interfacing, but their construction is challenging. Silicon carbide, used widely in electronics, may provide a solution. See Letter p.84
- Andrew Dzurak
-
News & Views |
The gentle cooling touch of light
Laser light has been used to cool a nanomechanical resonator to its lowest energy state. The result opens the door to testing the principles of quantum mechanics and to applications in quantum information processing. See Letter p.89
- Florian Marquardt
-
News |
Injectable implant to help doctors save face
Light-activated polymer may provide non-invasive method of soft-tissue reconstruction.
- George Wigmore
-
Research Highlights |
A jump on wireless power
-
Research Highlights |
See-through solar cells
-
-
Letter |
Convergence of electronic bands for high performance bulk thermoelectrics
- Yanzhong Pei
- , Xiaoya Shi
- & G. Jeffrey Snyder
-
Research Highlights |
A stable, riderless bicycle
-
Research Highlights |
Solar cells take a stretch
-
News & Views |
A light sounding drum
In the effort to demonstrate quantum behaviour in the motion of macroscopic mechanical objects, strong coupling between the objects and an electromagnetic oscillator is advantageous. Such coupling has now been achieved. See Letter p.204
- Miles Blencowe
-
Letter |
Spin–orbit-coupled Bose–Einstein condensates
Spin–orbit coupling describes the interaction between a quantum particle's spin and its momentum, and is important for many areas of physics such as spintronics and topological insulators. However, in systems of ultracold neutral atoms, there is no coupling between the spin and the centre of mass motion of the atom. This study uses lasers to engineer such spin–orbit coupling in a neutral atomic Bose–Einstein condensate, the first time this has been achieved for any bosonic system. This should lead to the realization of topological insulators in fermionic neutral atom systems.
- Y.-J. Lin
- , K. Jiménez-García
- & I. B. Spielman
-
News & Views |
Extreme light-bending power
Metamaterials are best known for their ability to bend light in the opposite direction to that of all materials found in nature. A hidden ability of these man-made materials has now been discovered. See Letter p.369
- Xiang Zhang
-
Books & Arts |
Music: Pioneers of sound
Two books chart the laboratory origins of avant-garde electronic music, finds Marc Weidenbaum.
- Marc Weidenbaum
-
Letter |
Two-dimensional electron gas with universal subbands at the surface of SrTiO3
An exotic two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) forms at oxide interfaces based on SrTiO3, but the precise nature of the 2DEG has remained elusive. In a systematic study using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), new insights into the electronic structure of the 2DEG are obtained. The findings shed light on previous observations in SrTiO3-based heterostructures and suggest that different forms of electron confinement at the surface of SrTiO3 lead to essentially the same 2DEG.
- A. F. Santander-Syro
- , O. Copie
- & M. J. Rozenberg
-
Research Highlights |
Organic electronics: Currency circuitry
-
News |
False dawn for Japan's Venus mission
Akatsuki probe will have to survive for six more years to get a second chance of orbit.
- David Cyranoski