MIT Media Lab

Scientists in Singapore develop a quicker, cheaper and potentially more reliable way to improve diagnosis in rural areas A team of scientists in Singapore have created a new way to test for malaria within minutes using magnets. “The new technique uses a significantly smaller blood sample to traditional blood-smear methods, and is more sensitive and

Algorithms enable robot to navigate and view propellers and other complex structures. For years, the U.S. Navy has employed human divers, equipped with sonar cameras, to search for underwater mines attached to ship hulls. The Navy has also trained dolphins and sea lions to search for bombs on and around vessels. While animals can cover

A new melanoma drug that tricks the body into destroying cancer cells is keeping patients alive for years longer than expected, with some researchers calling the breakthrough in immunotherapy a “penicillin moment” in cancer treatments. Kathy Gardiner and her fiancé, Anthony Pukallas, are due to get married in a fortnight. The wedding did not seem

Could yield an entirely new class of devices that use light instead of electricity Stanford researchers in physics and engineering have demonstrated a device that produces a synthetic magnetism to exert virtual force on photons similar to the effect of magnets on electrons. The advance could yield a new class of nanoscale applications that use

The South Korean ministry of education has announced a ground-breaking plan to digitize all textbooks which are in use in Korean schools and thus completely phase out printed materials by 2015. This opens a huge market for manufacturers of tablet PCs, laptops and smartphones as the Korean education ministry has revealed it will spend US$2.4

Wheat provides about a fifth of humanity’s food The re-emergence of a rust disease that can kill wheat is threatening food security. A breakthrough has been announced in the prestigious journal Science. Global collaborators include CSIRO, the US Department of Agriculture and Rothamsted Research. It’s like an ongoing arms race – we’ve got to keep

Tomorrow’s orbit today? This image shows how a large solar sail-equipped satellite could partly offset Earth’s and the Sun’s gravity with the slight but steady pressure of sunlight to hover above the Arctic or Antarctic, enabling continuous coverage of high-latitude regions for climate observation or regional communication services. “Standard space missions employ conventional elliptical ‘Keplerian’