Office of Naval Research (ONR)

Phytoplankton form the base of the marine food chain but are notoriously difficult for scientists to account for — a little like trying to identify and count motes of dust in the air. A truly independent underwater vehicle shows it can do the job. Trygve Olav Fossum watched an orange, torpedo-shaped instrument slide off the

Consumers are one step closer to benefiting from packaging that could give simple text warnings when food is contaminated with deadly pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella, and patients could soon receive real-time diagnoses of infections such as C. difficile right in their doctors’ offices, saving critical time and trips to the lab. Researchers at

A team of scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has successfully developed a new type of microscope. The so-called NeuBtracker is an open source microscope that allows to observe neuronal activities of zebrafish without perturbing their behavior. This is opening up completely new perspectives for science, because now

The outlook for piping music into office space or the shop floor is about to get a lot brighter thanks to the combined efforts of Osram Sylvania and Artisan. The MusicLites system not only illuminates the area below but can also wirelessly receive audio and pump it out of its built-in speaker. Lighting solutions company

DOCTORS are among the most richly rewarded professionals in the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that of the 15 highest-paid professions in the United States, all but two are in medicine or dentistry. Why, then, are we proposing to make medical school free? Huge medical school debts — doctors now graduate owing more

A team of University of Rhode Island engineers led by Professor Mohammad Faghri has created a new paper-based platform for conducting a wide range of complex medical diagnostics. The key development was the invention of fluid actuated valves embedded in the paper that allow for sequential manipulation of sample fluids and multiple reagents in a

A breakthrough in synthetic biology has opened the door to a new way of treating incurable illnesses such as cancer and Ebola, and could shed light on the origins of life or even the possibility of extraterrestrial life on other planets. For the first time, researchers have made synthetic enzymes – the vital ingredients needed