It may sound like science fiction, but it isn’t. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have, for the first time, made “living” skin for robots out of human cells. While this may sound creepy, it is actually a technological advance that will have serious implications for both how robots work and how humans interact with […]
A cancer study sponsored by drug company GlaxoSmithKline has provided researchers with a surprising result: a 100% remission rate for the 12 participants. All of the study’s participants had a very specific type of advanced rectal cancer – mismatch-repair deficient colorectal cancer – that, due to its genetic traits, made it a good candidate for […]
Batteries power our daily lives. From communications and information technology in phones and laptops, to mobility in cars, motorcycles, and scooters, and beyond, most electronic objects have a battery-powered version. While this has many positive impacts, what we do with the batteries in these objects at the end of their lives still needs some work. […]
The news is full of stories about how plastics are further encroaching into even the most remote regions of the Earth, the latest example being the discovery of microplastics in fresh Antarctic snow, probably the result of traveling through the atmosphere. While the news is indeed dire and the need to curb the production and […]
It looks a bit like a beehive, this 3D printed home located in Massa Lombarda, a town in northern Italy near Ravenna. It took a large 3D printer about 200 hours spaced out over a few months to print this 60-square-meter (645-square-foot) house that looks like no other. Certainly it is not the only 3D […]
Ada Lovelace is largely credited with having written the first computer algorithm. She is also recognized as being the first to understand how a mechanical calculator could actually be used for computing, how it “might act upon other things besides number.” Born from the union between poet Lord Byron and mathematician Anne Isabella Milbanke in […]
In 1900, a group of sponge divers found the Antikythera wreck off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the wreckage was the oldest example of an analogue computer – a hand-powered orrery, or mechanical model of our solar system that predicts the positions and motions of the planets and moon, including eclipses. […]
3D printers aren’t just good for printing prototypes or, in extremely large cases, building whole bridges or houses. Because the list of things that can be put into a 3D printer is quite possibly only limited by our imagination, what can be printed with it is equally unlimited. Great advances have been made in 3D […]
Selma Burke (1900-1995) is credited with being the artist behind US President Franklin Roosevelt’s image on the American ten-cent coin. One of the most notable sculptors of the 20th century, she was also a painter and art teacher. Burke first started sculpting small objects and animals with white clay from a riverbed near her home […]
Irène Joliot-Curie was a radiologist, activist and politician as well as the daughter of two of the world’s most famous scientists: Marie and Pierre Curie. Along with her husband, Frédéric, she discovered the first-ever artificially created radioactive atoms, paving the way for innumerable medical advances, especially in the fight against cancer. “Without the love of […]
