Artificial flesh is growing ever closer to the real thing. Scientists in Australia have now created a new jelly-like material which they claim has the strength and durability of actual skin, ligaments, or even bone.   “With the special chemistry we’ve engineered in the hydrogel, it can repair itself after it has been broken like

Cyborg super soldiers enhanced by advancements in bioengineering and other research fields are coming, but the Department of Defence is not prepared for what that will mean for the warfighter, the military as a whole, and civilians.   “In the next 30 years, you’re going to need to have to deal with these legal and

Nearly 3,000 feet (900 metres) below the surface of Monterey Bay, a network of deep sea cables helps scientists to study marine life. Spanning 32 miles (51 kilometres) across the floor of the Pacific Ocean, the cables record sounds like the high-pitched squeal of a dolphin or the deep moans of a humpback whale. They

A long-awaited international deal governing how the world’s technology companies should roll out 5G technology poses serious risks to weather forecast accuracy, according to data from federal agencies and the World Meteorological Organization.   Negotiators from around the world announced a deal Friday at a meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for how to roll out

Artificial intelligence, it seems, can figure out how to do just about anything. It can simulate the Universe, learn to solve a Rubik’s Cube with just one hand, and even find ghosts hidden in our past.   All these kinds of advancements are meant to be for our own good. But what about when they’re

The brain is the ultimate computing machine, so it’s no wonder researchers are keen to try and emulate it. Now, new research has taken an intriguing step in that direction – a device that’s able to ‘forget’ memories, just like our brains do.   It’s called a second-order memristor (a mix of “memory” and “resistor”). The

Tesla finally revealed its outrageous Blade Runner-style pickup truck, the “Cybertruck”, at an event in LA on Thursday evening. But an on-stage demonstration by Tesla CEO Elon Musk seemingly backfired, The Guardian reports: Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen lobed a hefty metal ball at the window — and smashed it.   “Oh my f**king

Having insults hurled our way is never going to do wonders for our self-esteem, but it turns out that disparaging remarks can cut us even when they’re delivered by a robot. You might think that critical comments from robots – droids only saying what they’ve been programmed to say, with no consciousness or feelings of

A new startup backed by Bill Gates says it has managed to harness solar energy to greater effect than ever before, generating enough heat from a field of mirrored panels to drive the production of cement, steel and glass – processes that are usually reliant on fossil fuels.   In keeping with our modern age,

When it comes to cutting water consumption to be kinder to the planet, changing the coating on your loo might not be the first step you think of – but a team of scientists has given this some very serious consideration indeed.   They’ve come up with a new type of coating that means a

It took just 2 1/2 hours for the Titanic to sink after it collided with an iceberg in 1912. Before the disaster, the ship was said to be unsinkable thanks to the design of its below-deck compartments. But the Titanic’s engineers hadn’t anticipated that a disaster would puncture six of those compartments.   More than

Next to the famous Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, is an abandoned coal mine protecting a different kind of resource against the end of the world: all of GitHub’s open source code.   Now, if the world ends, whatever survivors crawl out of the ashes will be able to access and use the software

Artificial intelligence is already making great strides forward, but taking it to the next level might require a more drastic approach. According to two researchers, we could try giving AI a sense of peril and the fragility of its own existence.   For now, the machines we code don’t have a sense of their own

You might take it for granted that you can load up Twitter or browse through Reddit whenever you like, but around half of the 7.7 billion people living on the planet right now aren’t yet able to get online.   And that’s a big problem, according to one researcher. Merten Reglitz, a philosopher and global

What is the deadliest weapon of the 20th century? Perhaps you think first of the atomic bomb, estimated to have killed as many as 200,000 people when the United States dropped two on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.   But another weapon is responsible for far more deaths – numbering up

Cupid was late this year. More than eight months late. Hundreds of people reported on social media that overnight on November 8 they had received texts from partners, employers and even dead family members that were originally meant to arrive in February. Many were sent on Valentine’s Day.   Alana Johnson, a children’s librarian at

There is no doubt that climate change is a very serious (and worsening) problem. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), even if all the industrialized nations of the world became carbon neutral overnight, the problem would continue to get worse.   In short, it’s not enough to stop

Software detected the woman almost six seconds before Uber’s self-driving car struck her, investigators say, in the crash that would lead to her death and prompt the ride-share giant to slam the brakes on its autonomous vehicle testing.   But the SUV didn’t start to stop until about a second before impact. One big reason:

Electron microscopes are great at producing high-resolution images of a material’s atomic structure – if the material is hard, that is. Unfortunately, the devices’ electron beams can destroy softer materials, so scientists typically rely on X-rays, which can’t reach atomic resolution, to image those.   But scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National

When it comes to squeezing maximum amounts of energy out of the daylight hours, plants have a head start thanks to evolution. Now, engineers have designed solar panels that mimic the sunflower’s sun-chasing talent, through clever use of nanotechnology.   By moulding temperature-sensitive materials into thin, supportive structures, scientists have come up with tiny ‘stems’

Smart speakers have become a home addition for many, but the choice requires some vigilance over potential security breaches. Now, researchers have shown that hackers could get these small devices to do their bidding without making a single noise.   Devices running Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Siri were all shown to be vulnerable to

It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to real-life Transformers: robotic blocks that can travel independently, attach themselves to each other in predefined structures, follow paths and light sources, and more.   MIT researchers just released video footage of these new M-Blocks 2.0 cubes in action, and we can’t stop watching. They can shuffle themselves into

California has been caught in the midst of a fiery assault fueled by historically powerful winds, humidity levels stuck in the single digits, and the effects of long-term climate change.   Fierce, fast-moving wildfires exploded up and down the state during October, prompting utilities to shut off power to millions and forcing hundreds of thousands

It’s called ‘range anxiety’, and it’s often pointed to as one of the key reasons why consumer uptake of battery-powered electric vehicles still hasn’t really taken off. In a nutshell, range anxiety is the fear that an electric car’s battery won’t hold enough juice to get you where you need to be going – and

Video games were invented for humans, by humans. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re the best when it comes to playing them. In a new achievement that signifies just how far artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed, scientists have developed a learning algorithm that rose to the very top echelon of the esports powerhouse StarCraft II,

A team of scientists from the universities of Alberta and Toronto have laid out the blueprints for a “quantum battery” that never loses its charge. To be clear, this battery doesn’t exist yet — but if they figure out how to build it, it could be a revolutionary breakthrough in energy storage.   “The batteries

Hydrogen peroxide, water’s short-tempered sibling, has helped humans to fight infection since we discovered its antiseptic properties nearly two centuries ago. Unfortunately, it’s pretty unstable, making it tricky to transport where needed.   Now, researchers have found a rather simple way to generate the chemical out of water, air, and electricity, and it could be

A powerhouse team led by researchers from Google, NASA, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is officially claiming to have achieved the technological milestone of quantum supremacy.   In a new paper released this week, the scientists explain how they developed a quantum processor that could perform a complex computational task in a little over

We’ve made plenty of progress with sustainable energy in recent years, but there’s still a lot of work left to do. Now, there’s encouraging news on the development of an ‘artificial leaf’ that could lead to the production of truly ‘clean’ synthetic fuel.   In this case, the key step towards that achievement is the

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence development company co-founded by Elon Musk, just built an AI-powered robot hand that can solve a Rubik’s cube by itself. After years of practicing in simulations, the robot hand is finally nimble enough to solve the puzzle about 60 percent of the time, though that number drops to 20 percent when

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian

When the end of the world comes, how will you tweet? Thankfully for those of us who didn’t have a plan ready, Motherboard reports that software developer Virgil Dupras has built an operating system — Collapse OS — that can be run on parts salvaged from a post-apocalyptic hellscape.   The idea is to find

Those Knightscope security robots may not be so great at their jobs. When a woman in a park near Los Angeles saw people fighting and tried to summon help via a police robot patrolling nearby, the robot merely told her to “step out of the way” and continued along its pre-determined route, according to NBC

A new gel-like fluid that sticks to vegetation for months on end could be an ingenious new way to stop mother nature from burning. Devised by an engineer and a former fire-prevention forester, this sprayable retardant could one day be used to drastically reduce the number of forest fires experienced each year.   By coating

The bigger they come, the harder they fall, the old saying goes – or in this case, the more popular the game, the more user data is at risk, should hackers get access to it. That’s reportedly what’s happened with smash mobile hit Words With Friends. A hacker by the name of Gnosticplayers claims to

Tesla’s “Smart Summon” feature, which lets cars navigate themselves in parking lots, isn’t even out of beta yet. But Tesla owners are already using it in some mind-bogglingly stupid ways, Electrek reports.   In a video uploaded to YouTube account “Dirty Tesla”, a Model 3 owner tries to walk in front of his vehicle while

Autonomous driving will bring us a number of freedoms. Passengers will be able to watch movies, read newspapers – if they still exist – or play video games while the AI drives.   But BMW thinks being chauffeured by a self-driving car can get a whole lot more exciting than that. The German carmaker released

There is such a thing as not enough chaos. In a new study, scientists have discovered that complex calculations performed by computers can be off by as much as 15 percent, due to a “pathological” inability to grasp the true mathematical complexity of chaotic dynamical systems.   “Our work shows that the behaviour of the

We’ve watched the Spot robot quadruped grow up and evolve, from its earliest days as a larger, more cumbersome beast to a carefully refined machine capable of pulling trucks. Now maker Boston Dynamics is putting the robo-dog on sale.   The idea is not to provide a friendly pet that curls up in front of

We just entered a fundamental new epoch in computing. Maybe. Google scientists said we did. Then their declaration mysteriously vanished. Last week, a scientific paper by Google and affiliated researchers was uploaded on a NASA website. Its contents – if legitimate – are not insignificant. In the paper, the scientists claim that quantum processors have

Quantum computers exist today, although they’re limited, cut-down versions of what we hope fully blown quantum computers are going to be able to do in the future. But now, researchers have developed hardware for a ‘probabilistic computer’ – a device that might be able to bridge the gap between genuine quantum computers and the standard

Here’s your dismal fact of the day: if the world’s cement industry was a country, it would sit just behind China and the US as the third leading producer of carbon pollution. It doesn’t need to be that way, though.   We just might be able to change that ugly statistic by producing the ingredients

Wi-Fi just turned 6. Not in terms of years old (Wi-Fi is a lot older than that), but in terms of its version number: Wi-Fi 6 officially launched this week. What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re anything like me – meaning you spend a lot of time indoors using the internet –

Two years ago, one freezing December night on a California rooftop, a tiny light shone weakly with a little help from the freezing night air. It wasn’t a very bright glow. But it was enough to demonstrate the possibility of generating renewable power after the Sun goes down.   Working with Stanford University engineers Wei Li

Scientists have invented a new method for turning carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel that can efficiently store energy in fuel cells.  The fuel could one day be the future of green transport, cramming more energy into the tank than the same volume of hydrogen while also serving as a building block for a whole

China’s iPhone users have found a new craze – a new app called Zao which lets people convincingly and hilariously transpose their faces onto actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones, and many others.   Zao topped the Chinese iOS download chart over the weekend after first launching on the App Store

Silicon has had a very good run as the material upon which all of our electronics are based, but it’s starting to reach its limits. Now there’s a new contender for running our computers and smartphones: carbon nanotubes.   Scientists just made the largest working computer chip to date out of this hugely promising material.

Sounds like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was just kicked out of mom’s basement. In an inexplicable tweet, DARPA asked for help finding “commercially managed underground urban tunnels and facilities able to host research and experimentation.”   And nobody knows why. The ideal space would be a human-made underground environment spanning several city blocks