Tokyo Institute of Technology

In 2011, two Dutch hackers in their early 20s made a target list of 100 high-tech companies they would try to hack. Soon, they had found security vulnerabilities in Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter and 95 other companies’ systems. They called their list the Hack 100. When they alerted executives of those companies, about a

Through a few clever molecular hacks, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have converted a natural bacterial immune system into a microscopic data recorder, laying the groundwork for a new class of technologies that use bacterial cells for everything from disease diagnosis to environmental monitoring. The researchers modified an ordinary laboratory strain of the ubiquitous

It was, as Frank Oppenheimer described it, “a playful place.” Frank Oppenheimer, the younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb, reinvented the science museum more than four decades ago. Instead of eye-catching objects like the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian or the steam engine at the Franklin Institute,

Where you are and what you’re doing increasingly play key roles in how you search the Internet. In fact, your search may just conduct itself. This concept, called “contextual search,” is improving so gradually the changes often go unnoticed, and we may soon forget what the world was like without it, according to Brian Proffitt,

Narayana Hrudayalaya, a pioneer in low-cost cardiac care, is building a chain of hospitals that will carry out heart surgeries at the cheapest rates in the world, buttressing India’s reputation as the Meccafor frugal innovation. A series of design and operational advancements, ranging from construction techniques to post-operative care, will mean that an open heart surgery can be performed for as

Multi-junction solar cells are both the most efficient type of solar cell on the market today and the most expensive type of solar cell to produce. In a proof-of-concept paper, researchers from North Carolina State University detail a new approach for creating multi-junction solar cells using off-the-shelf components, resulting in lower cost, high-efficiency solar cells

A new method to produce large, monolayer single-crystal-like graphene films more than a foot long relies on harnessing a “survival of the fittest” competition among crystals. The novel technique, developed by a team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, may open new opportunities for growing the high-quality two-dimensional materials necessary for

What kid doesn’t like kicking around a soccer ball? Imagine if this fun activity could also provide enough energy to power something useful in a modest off-grid African village, like a reliable light to cook by or an emergency mobile phone. The sOccket is a prototype soccer ball that captures kinetic energy when it is

Material design tricks and equations could one day help researchers recreate different sensations of softness for haptic interfaces What factors affect how human touch perceives softness, like the feel of pressing your fingertip against a marshmallow, a piece of clay or a rubber ball? By exploring this question in detail, a team of engineers and