Chemistry is cool
Even amateur chemists can come up with some pretty brilliant ideas. Joe and Bob Switzer started developing what would be known as Day-Glo pigments after they graduated from UC Berkeley, […]
Category Archives: Technology
What fireflies can teach us about tech
When it comes to technology, developers steal from nature all the time, whether it’s a self-filling bottle or a robot that acts like a protein. What researchers at Yale are […]
Oily Christmas to all…
You can’t hang ornaments on these trees, but they’re beautiful enough on their own. Artist Sachiko Kodama used science to create slick black conifers made of ferrofluid, liquid laced with ferromagnetic […]
Woman controls robotic arm with her brain
We’re one step closer prosthetics controlled by the human brain. Jan Scheuermann, 53, worked with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and learned to maneuver a robotic arm with her thoughts, […]
Shape-shifting gel could change how doctors administer drugs
Imagine pouring a liquid gel into a wound that solidifies, stays where you pour it, and slowly dispatches drugs to the area. It wasn’t what researchers at Cornell University were going for, but […]
MIT makes a tiny Transformer
No, not a power converter. We’re talking about Optimus Prime and the like. Researchers at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms have created a tiny robot that assembles itself into […]
The robot fake-out
You would expect living creatures to try and pull the wool over one another’s eyes, but robots seem a bit more straightforward. Still, researchers have taught bots to fake out […]
Making music with spider silk
Continuing in the let’s-just-steal-this-from-nature vein, researchers are Boston University, MIT and Tufts University are looking at spider silk. It’s one of the strongest substances on Earth, even stronger than steel, and […]
That’s a good idea… I’m going to steal it
We shouldn’t feel inadequate when evolution does something better than we can. Evolution has had millions of years to fin-tune each species, never stopping to rest or get a cup […]
Even robots like Beethoven
Swarm technology is an interesting venture – it’s based on behavior seen in nature. The way it generally works goes like this: There is one leader, let’s use a bee […]
Scientific Chicago 