Engineering
“Particle” Robots Work Together to Perform Tasks
Clusters of decentralized units could be used in search and rescue operations or drug delivery
Stories by Tim Hornyak
Neurological Health
Scientists Identify Genes Linked to REM Sleep
Mice that lack these genes do not engage in rapid eye movement sleep
Biotech
Could Future Nerve Implants Detect and Monitor Illness?
Researchers are intent on decoding body-brain nerve signals to diagnose ailments
Natural Disasters
Clearing the Radioactive Rubble Heap That Was Fukushima Daiichi, 7 Years On
The water is tainted, the wreckage is dangerous, and disposing of it will be a prolonged, complex and costly process
Medicine
Waiting to Reprogram Your Cells? Don't Hold Your Breath
In a rethink of personalized medicine, researchers turn to banks of donor-derived stem cells
Health
Turning Back the Cellular Clock: A Farewell to Embryonic Stem Cells?
Shinya Yamanaka discovered how to revert adult cells to an embryonic state. These induced pluripotent stem cells might soon supplant their embryonic cousins in therapeutic promise
Space
Energy—Roping the Sun
Shrugging off massive costs, Japan pursues space-based solar arrays
Tech
RFID Power
Radio-frequency identification tags label all kinds of inventoried goods and speed commuters through toll plazas. Now tiny RFID components are being developed with a rather different aim: thwarting counterfeiters...
Tech
Playing It by Ear
A machine-listening system that understands three speakers at once
The Sciences
Microchips with Heart
No batteries needed: Pumps driven by heart cells
Tech
Thinking of Child's Play
Brain-machine interface turns robots into gamers
Tech
Android Science
Hiroshi Ishiguro makes perhaps the most humanlike robots around--not particularly to serve as societal helpers but to tell us something about ourselves
Tech
The Biggest Dig
Japan builds a ship to drill to the earth's mantle
