Engineering

A tough but flexible bot unfurls like a plant using a pressurized plastic tube to inch through rugged environments.

Models similar to those used to track disease show what happens when too much information hits social media networks

Tactile maps could help blind pedestrians cross increasingly complex intersections

 Studies show that if geoengineering works, it will be imperfect

To save on parchment, monks would overwrite older documents to create new ones—but a new tool can reveal what lies beneath

Security expert offers a scientific perspective on realistic options for the U.S.

Proponents say the systems’ precise techniques may help speed patient recovery

A moving web of sensor-laden vehicles and smart intersections will transform how we get around town

Urban areas can improve the planet as well as people’s lives if we design them to be much more resourceful with energy, water, food and minerals

Quantum bits, aka qubits, can simultaneously encode 0 and 1. But multicolored photons could enable even more states to exist at the same time, ramping up computing power. Christopher Intagliata reports.

When the Oroville Dam spillway cracked and failed after a wet California winter, a team of scientists created a one fiftieth–scale model of the damaged concrete and eroded hillside to help guide the reconstruction.

Science and technology innovation is an engine of our competitiveness, and small business is its driver