Rice University is testing a highly efficient wireless communications system.
Even as the world’s carriers build out the latest wireless infrastructure, known as 4G LTE, a new apparatus bristling with 96 antennas taking shape at a Rice University lab in Texas could help define the next generation of wireless technology.
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Startup Global Bioenergies uses genetic engineering to avoid one of the costliest steps in biofuel production.
Audi is investing in a startup, Paris-based Global Bioenergies, that says it can make cheap gasoline from sugar and other renewable sources. The strategic partnership includes stock options and an unspecified amount of funding.
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The charming automated assistant in Spike Jonze’s new movie isn’t realistic. But if they were designed thoughtfully, computerized interlocutors could make us better people.
In the movie Her, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture this year, a middle-aged writer named Theodore Twombly installs and rapidly falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system who christens herself Samantha.
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Aquion has started production of a low-cost sodium-ion battery aimed at making renewable energy viable.
A former Sony TV factory near Pittsburgh is coming to life again after lying idle for four years. Whirring robotic arms have started to assemble a new kind of battery that could make the grid more efficient and let villages run on solar power around the clock.
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What’s the point of all that data, anyway? It’s to make decisions.
Back in 1956, an engineer and a mathematician, William Fair and Earl Isaac, pooled $800 to start a company. Their idea: a score to handicap whether a borrower would repay a loan.
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Efforts are underway to make your smart toilet—and other connected devices—less vulnerable to hackers.
In late December, a researcher at enterprise security company Proofpoint noticed something strange: a security gateway was logging hundreds of thousands of malicious e-mails that were clearly being sent out by over 100,000 Linux-running devices, but they weren’t PCs. Rather, they were Internet-connected consumer gadgets including routers, TVs, multimedia centers, and even a fridge.
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In much of the world, the concept of “net neutrality” generates less public debate, given there’s no affordable Net in the first place.
Net neutrality—the idea that all Internet traffic should generally be treated equally—suffered a setback last week when a federal court struck down the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s latest regulatory effort (see “Net Neutrality Quashed: New Pricing Schemes, Throttling, and Business Models to Follow”).
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The company behind the Bittorrent protocol is working on software that can replicate most features of file-synching services without handing your data to cloud servers.
The debate over how much we should trust cloud companies with our data (see “NSA Spying Is Making Us Less Safe”) was reawakened last year after revelations that the National Security Agency routinely harvests data from Internet companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook.
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By delivering gene therapies to patients before they go blind, doctors may be able to prevent the loss of many important light-detecting cells.
A new kind of gene therapy has reversed some vision loss in people born with a degenerative eye disease for which there is no existing treatment.
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A startup called Siluria thinks it’s solved a mystery that has stymied huge oil companies for decades.
At a pilot plant in Menlo Park, California, a technician pours white pellets into a steel tube and then taps it with a wrench to make sure they settle together. He closes the tube, and oxygen and methane—the main ingredient of natural gas—flow in. Seconds later, water and ethylene, the world’s largest commodity chemical, flow out. Another simple step converts the ethylene into gasoline.
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