McMaster University

By 2017, all of that year’s end-of-life refrigerators, televisions, mobile phones, computers, and other electrical and electronic products could fill a line of 40-ton trucks around three quarters of the equator. This represents a global jump of 33% in just 5 years. The startling forecast is based on data compiled in the new online E-Waste World

“Nature has designed a way to simultaneously turn off harmful inflammation and repair our chromosomes, thereby suppressing aging at the cellular level and in the whole animal.”   Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have, for the first time, identified a single gene that simultaneously controls inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer. “This was certainly an

“Transporting power through power lines to remote, rural areas is very inefficient and can be expensive for farmers and other rural citizens” As energy costs rise, more Americans are turning to bioenergy to provide power to their homes and workplaces. Bioenergy is renewable energy made from organic sources, such as biomass. Technology has advanced enough

A mobile app that allows users to get assigned basic “gigs” or jobs from companies AdMob founder Omar Hamoui has made an investment in Gigwalk, a mobile app that allows users to get assigned basic “gigs” or jobs from companies via their location. The startup has raised a total of $1.7 million from Hamoui, Greylock,

The growth of wind, solar and hydropower offers hope for restraining climate change Within the next three years, renewable power could surpass natural gas as the second most prevalent source of electricity generation globally, behind only coal, according to a new forecast by the International Energy Agency. Hydropower accounts for about four-fifths of renewable generation and will

We’ve seen a number of prototype and concept devices aimed at upgrading or even replacing the low-tech white cane and this latest example from Hebrew University – the Virtual Cane – appears close to becoming a commercial product. Virtual Cane is a handheld device that uses a type of sonar to recognize physical objects up

A robot helping in the household no longer is a dream of the future   At the CeBIT in Hanover, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology will present innovations for our everyday life in the future. At the joint stand G33 in hall 26, a humanoid kitchen robot will

Harvesting solar power in space, for use on Earth, comes a step closer to reality THE idea of collecting solar energy in space and beaming it to Earth has been around for at least 70 years. In “Reason”, a short story by Isaac Asimov that was published in 1941, a space station transmits energy collected

NEW TRANSISTOR ACHIEVES ‘COLOSSAL’ SWITCHABLE RESISTANCE USING QUANTUM MATERIALS AND PHYSICS DEVELOPED IN A FUEL CELL LAB Silicon has few serious competitors as the material of choice in the electronics industry. Yet transistors, the switchable valves that control the flow of electrons in a circuit, cannot simply keep shrinking to meet the needs of powerful,

We have previously reported on the development of prototype adaptive focus glasses at the University of Arizona (UA) that were able to switch focus electronically. Unlike manually adjustable focus glasses, such as TruFocals, that place a flexible liquid lens between two rigid lenses, the lenses of the prototype glasses consisted of a layer of liquid crystals sandwiched