Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT)

A group of BYU researchers may have found a way to reverse falling crop yields caused by increasingly salty farmlands throughout the world. Led by Brent Nielsen, professor of microbiology and molecular biology, the BYU scientists have used bacteria found in the roots of salt-tolerant plants to successfully inoculate alfalfa plants against overly salty soil. “We

Leap Motion is on its way. With the clock ticking down to the PC gesture controller’s July 22 launch, Leap has a brand new teaser video that showcases the device’s interaction with Windows. If you’d forgotten how exciting Leap was when we first got the chance to play with it, this might be enough to get your

If only computers themselves were smart enough to fight off malevolent hackers. That is the premise of an ambitious two-year contest with a $2 million first prize, posed to the world’s computer programmers by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known by its acronym, Darpa. It is the blue-sky, big-think organization within the Defense Department that created a

Its figure of merit (a rating for thermoelectric efficiency) is one of the highest ever recorded for a bulk material Thermoelectric materials work by converting differences in temperature into electric voltage. If two parts of such a material experience significantly different temperatures, electrons within it will flow from the warmer part to the cooler, creating

Physicians are using smart phones to diagnose diseases, check blood cell counts and identify pathogens in drinking water. Many people already use their smart­phones as far more than mere telephones—as gadgets for Web surfing, e-mailing or listening to music. Some scientists are now turning them into handheld tools to diagnose cancer or infectious disease, track treatment

BASF and Bayer expect to roll out new processes to use waste CO2 to make plastics, additives, fuels and other materials in an energy-efficient and cost-effective way Reusing the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial plants — rather than releasing its warming potential into the environment — is on the verge of becoming a

Billed by the company as the “most advanced spacecraft per kilogram that exists today Last year, we took an in-depth look at Planetary Resources’ asteroid mining plans. Now the Bellevue, Washington-based company has revealed a full-scale prototype of its Arkyd-100 Low Earth Orbit spacecraft that will search for promising mining candidates. In a video update, Planetary Resources

Building transient electronics is usually about doing something to make them stop working: blast them with light, soak them with acid, dunk them in water. Professor Leon Bellan’s idea is to dissolve them with neglect: Stop applying heat, and they come apart. Using silver nanowires embedded in a polymer that dissolves in water below 32

In an unprecedented study conducted at UCLA and 29 other sites worldwide, Keytruda (pembrolizumab) was found to be effective in the treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer Story Highlights U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the groundbreaking immunotherapy drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) to treat advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) Three-year international

There’s been a lot of talk about the e-G8 Conference this week, which was an attempt to bring together technology and internet leaders with government officials. The idea, apparently, was for government officials to convince the digerati that it was time for government to take a much more active role in regulating the internet. The