Tufts University

Looking at human beings as ecosystems that contain many collaborating and competing species could change the practice of medicine If the microbiome does turn out to be as important as current research is hinting, then a whole new approach to treatment beckons. WHAT’S a man? Or, indeed, a woman? Biologically, the answer might seem obvious.

Swedish company, Soltech Energy, recently received the gold medal for this year’s hottest new material at the Nordbygg 2010 trade fair in Stockholm, Sweden. The award was fitting because it was for the company’s home heating system that features roof tiles made out of glass. The tiles, which are made from ordinary glass, weigh about the

  Not only do richer people consume more, they also consume differently. We simply can’t solve the fundamental issues of the global economy without rethinking the entire underpinnings of our “take-make-dispose” model of consumption. On average, developed-world citizens consume 1,764 pounds of food and drink annually, 265 pounds of packaging, and 44 pounds of new

The sun is the most abundant power source on Earth, but new designs soon hitting the market could keep its energy flowing even after sunset Researchers are exploring various strategies to put sunshine on tap, converting the sun’s energy into fuels that can be stored, transported and used as needed. Setting excess power aside can

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered a simple new tweak that could double the efficiency of organic electronics. OLED-displays, plastic-based solar cells and bioelectronics are just some of the technologies that could benefit from their new discovery, which deals with “double-doped” polymers. The majority of our everyday electronics are based on inorganic

“We’ve just created a cost-effective, highly stable, and highly efficient solar fuel device.” Using a simple solar cell and a photo anode made of a metal oxide, HZB and  TU Delft scientists have successfully stored nearly 5% of solar energy chemically in the form of hydrogen. This is a major feat as the design of

Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia obtained the first artificial plant tendrils: it is a soft robot able to curl and climb, using the same physical principles of water transport in plants; results are in Nature Communications Researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia obtained the first soft robot mimicking plant tendrils: it is able to curl and

Wireless magnetic fields and actuator “muscles” allow A magnetic folding robot arm can grasp and bend thanks to its pattern of origami-inspired folds and a wireless electromagnetic field. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University The traditional Japanese art of origami transforms a simple sheet of paper into complex, three-dimensional shapes through a very specific pattern

A microchip containing 1,000 independent programmable processors has been designed by a team at the University of California, Davis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The energy-efficient “KiloCore” chip has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors. The KiloCore was presented at the 2016 Symposium on VLSI