Articles by Technology Review from May 2013

Teslas supercharger network will be equipped with solar panels and batteries to ride-out power outages.Among the details CEO Elon Musk gave today about Tesla Motorss new upgraded fast-charging network...

The A4 digital scanner gathering dust under your desk could find new life as a gigapixel holographic microscope, say Japanese engineers who have constructed one at minimal cost...

Wind and solar get all the attention, but a key path to lowering emissions involves finding a less expensive way to do carbon capture.Last week, the new U.S. secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, pledged...

A French company is preparing to test a complex artificial heart that combines biology with machinery.A new kind of artificial heart that combines synthetic and biological materials as well as sensors...

Researchers have created a model to quickly predict how many times a tweet will be retweeted. Neat.For many people that use Twittermyself includedits impossible to tell which carefully crafted tweets ...

The latest version of venture capitalist Mary Meekers Internet Trends report arrived this morning, and some of the most interesting of her 117 slides are about the scale and growth of Internet use and...

A pair of clocks that lose only one tick in 10^18 tocks have been unveiled by an international team of physicists...

Rural areas could benefit greatly from a rugged outdoor base station.Worldwide, at least a billion people dont have access to cellular communications because they lack electricity to run traditional...

Data scientist Rayid Ghani helped persuade voters to relect President Obama. Now hes using big data to create a groundswell of social good.As chief scientist for President Obamas relection effort, Ray...

A computer two millimeters square is the start of an effort to make chips that can put computer power just about anywhere for the vaunted Internet of Things....

Data scientist Rayid Ghani helped persuade voters to relect President Obama. Now hes using big data to create a groundswell of social good.As chief scientist for President Obamas relection effort, Ray...

The software that obliterated human champions on Jeopardy will now be talking to customers of banks and other companies through websites and mobile apps.Watson, the IBM computer system that attracted ...

Atomic force measurements show that the bond between two gold atoms is highly directional and molecular-like, a finding with significant implications for the design and construction of atomic-scale de...

New pricing schemes, content deals, and technologies are challenging net neutrality.This fall, Verizon will try to persuade a federal judge to throw out U.S. Federal Communications Commission regulati...

Companies are analyzing more data to guide how they hire, recruit, and promote their employees.Xerox is screening tens of thousands of applicants for low-wage jobs in its call centers using software...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverComputational Diagnosis of Canine Lymphoma...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverComputational Diagnosis of Canine Lymphoma...

A new type of fuel cell could make CO2 storage cheaper, but it could also prove to be a good way to pump more oil out of the ground.The electrochemical reactions that occur inside fuel cells to genera...

A new type of fuel cell could make CO2 storage cheaper, but it could also prove to be a good way to pump more oil out of the ground.The electrochemical reactions that occur inside fuel cells to genera...

If you Tweet about a TV show or its ads, dont be surprised if the advertisers Sponsored Tweet you backPeople love to Tweet about television shows they are watching; this much, we know. But now the ana...

If you tweet about a TV show or its ads, dont be surprised if the advertisers sponsored tweet you back.People love to tweet about television shows they are watching; this much, we know. But now the an...

A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.Inside Googles Secret LabA bit light on detail and insight, but they got more out of Google ...

Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review....

In your DNA are clues to your health, your ancestry, and maybe even your purchasing preferences.Companies market to you according to your shopping habits, your age, your salary, and your social-media ...

Most teenagers deliberately hide what they are really talking about on Facebook - a practice that could make it harder to pitch ads at them....

Formlabs is bringing down the costs of a better 3-D printing technique, but must survive a patent lawsuit.Desktop 3-D printers are about to become available with higher-definition capabilities, with a...

Formlabs is bringing down the costs of a better 3-D printing technique, but must survive a patent lawsuit.Desktop 3-D printers are about to become available with higher-definition capabilities, with a...

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A hydrocarbon-sorting material could replace energy-intensive oil refining steps.A new material that sorts hydrocarbon molecules by shape could lower the cost of gasoline and also make the fuel safer ...

Spacecraft could determine their position anywhere in the Solar System to within 5 kilometres using signals from x-ray pulsars, say astronomers...

Tesla Motorss loan repayment is a bright spot for the DOE loan program.Tesla CEO Elon Musk hinted it would happen, and now its happened. Tesla, the electric car maker, has paid off the DOE loan that a...

The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills ...

The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills ...

The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills ...

A job invented in Silicon Valley is going mainstream as more industries try to gain an edge from big data.The job description data scientist didnt exist five years ago. No one advertised for an expert...

Samsungs technology for ultrafast data speeds currently requires a truckload of equipment.The worlds biggest cell-phone maker, Samsung, caused a stir last week by announcing an ultrafast wireless tech...

An Australian team unveils the fundamental building block of a scalable quantum computer that could be embedded in todays silicon chipsBack in the late 90s, a physicist in Australia put forward a desi...

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In Washington, CEO Tim Cook defended Apples R&D cost sharing arrangements.Apple CEO Tim Cook came under fire in Washington today at a U.S. Senate hearing focused onthe elaborate strategies Apple u...

Upgraded robot vision will be just one of the uses for the new version of Microsofts gesture control camera.Microsoft announced a new version of its Xbox games console today, the Xbox One, and with it...

Pinpoint predictions are a long way off, but taking into account daily odds might help make the public more alert.The devastation in Moore, Oklahoma, shows the limits of sensing, modeling and warning ...

Can cultural factors be more important than censorship in shaping Chinese surfing habits? Two researchers argue that a new study of the way global websites cluster together supports this idea...

Can cultural factors be more important than censorship in shaping Chinese surfing habits? Two researchers argue that a new study of the way global websites cluster together supports this idea...

A techies San Francisco home has its own Twitter feed. Will yours be next?At first glance, youd never guess theres anything unusual about Tom Coatess San Francisco home. Nestled at the end of a narrow...

Jolla Mobile, formed by Nokia refugees, launches a phone with interchangable back-panels and the Sailfish OSAlmost one year after Nokias bloodletting, in which it cut 10,000 jobs and closed research a...

Hardware that tracks your head, eyes and hands will make the follow up to Second Life very different to the pioneering virtual world.The founder of once-popular virtual world Second Life, Philip Rosed...

Hardware that tracks your head, eyes and hands will make the follow up to Second Life very different to the pioneering virtual world.The founder of the once-popular virtual world Second Life, Philip R...

A $300 million project seems to have failed to produce a cheap way to make fuel from algae.In 2009, ExxonMobil announced that it would pay Craig Venters Synthetic Genomicsup to $300 million to develop...

The ability to copy electronic code makes one-time pads vulnerable to hackers. Now engineers have found a way round this to create a system of cryptography that is invulnerable to electronic attack...

The ability to copy electronic code makes one-time pads vulnerable to hackers. Now engineers have found a way round this to create a system of cryptography that is invulnerable to electronic attackOne...

A 19th-century idea might lead to cleaner cars, larger-scale renewable energy.Some engineers are dusting off an old idea for storing energyusing electricity to liquefy air by cooling it down to nearly...

The worlds largest chip maker wants to see a new kind of economy bloom around personal data.Intel is a $53-billion-a-year company that enjoys a near monopoly on the computer chips that go into PCs. Bu...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverPerformance of a Remotely Located Muon Radiography System to Identify the Inner Structure of a Nuclear Plant...

What was it like to use a wearable computer back in 1999?...

The following View from the Marketplace was provided by SAP, the sponsor of our Big Data Gets Personal Business Report....

Glass apps will require people to create new content filters. Maybe thats just a losing battle.Would you want your daily horoscope beamed to your right eye? Thats the vision of the future I saw when I...

Otherfabs Kickstarter project offers an easy way to make custom circuit boards at home....

Otherfabs Kickstarter project offers an easy way to make custom circuit boards at home....

Building solar and wind projects in the wrong place is wasting billions of dollars in Europe.Siemens says it would make sense to build solar power plants in sunny countries in Europe rather than in cl...

Building solar and wind projects in the wrong place is wasting billions of dollars in Europe.Siemens says it would make sense to build solar power plants in sunny countries in Europe rather than in cl...

The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers.Long-term cancer survivors who use a brain-training program for 12 weeks are m...

Heres the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble.At the Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, nurses can see into the lives of some diabetes...

The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers.Long-term cancer survivors who use a brain-training program for 12 weeks are m...

Prototype spots swelling and bleeding in a pilot studybut the novel technique employed is relatively unproven.A helmet that sends a magnetic field through the wearers head might someday offer a quick ...

Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review....

Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review....

Darkened varnish obscures Goyas signature in a 1771 masterpiece, according to a new analysis using terahertz waves...

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab will use the most advanced commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave Two.Quantum computing took a giant leap forward on the world stage today as NASA ...

A so-called metal-organic framework could offer a better way to get at the vast uranium resource dissolved in the ocean.A new material could potentially be used to extract uranium from seawater more e...

With dozens of new features, Googles social network is becoming more like a photo service and a news site.Despite the 190 million people that Google says use its social network every month, Google Plu...

Scientists produced embryonic stem cells from the DNA of one person combined with a human donor egg.Scientists from Oregon Health and Science University reported on Wednesday in the scientific journal...

Google will help people who build Android apps follow their users around without draining too much battery life.Google is giving mobile app creators more ways to tap into peoples activities and locati...

Aereo CEO says hes boosted by winning a round in courtand that lines are very, very long for his Internet TV offering, despite ABCs new competing streaming service.The legal battles are not over for I...

The worlds first quantum memory that stores the shape and structure of single photons has been built in a Chinese lab...

Breaking its own restrictions, Google will show developers how to build any kind of app for Google Glass.Google has set plenty of restrictions on the functionality of apps for Glass, the head-mounted ...

A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and wallseven the coffee potare all determined by data.Can we use data about people to alter physical rea...

An International Energy Agency report says investments in oil technology will lead to a worldwide supply boom.High oil prices were supposed to make biofuels and other oil alternatives more competitive...

An International Energy Agency report says investments in oil technology will lead to a worldwide supply boom.High oil prices were supposed to make biofuels and other oil alternatives more competitive...

Making it easier for people to rent their own cars could lead to growth in car sharing.With peer-to-peer car sharing, it is getting easier and easier to get away without owning a car in a city.But one...

Advanced genetic engineering is already changing vaccine development and could make inroads into other branches of medicine.Synthetic biology is breathing new life into the old-fashioned world of vacc...

How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment?In the book Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MITs Sloan School of Management present a chart showing U.S. produ...

Thinking about cancer as an ecosystem is giving biologists access to a new armoury of mathematical tools for tackling it, such as evolutionary game theory...

New prediction models can allow utilities to rely more heavily on wind and save millions.The utility with the most wind power capacity in the United States, Xcel Energy, is relying more on this power ...

A year after launch, a startup program is helping U.S. companies reach Chinaand vice versa.When Jon Bonanno, chief commercial officer of the clean-tech startup Empower Micro Systems, got up to face a ...

Composite and 3-D-printed components will mean jet engines that use 15 percent less fuel.A new generation of engines being developed by the worlds largest jet engine maker, CFM (a partnership between ...

Analysing the footage from camera pills is a time-consuming task for medical professionals. Now computer scientists are attempting to automate the process...

Researchers use phone records to build a mobility model of the Los Angeles and New York City regions with new privacy guarantees.Researchers at AT&T, Rutgers University, Princeton, and Loyola Univ...

Micro-display LED tech could light up the next generation of face-wearable gadgets.A tiny head-mounted display, like the one in Google Glass, will only be useful if you can see on-screen alerts and in...

Apps that proactively help people with their lives represent a significant departure from earlier approaches to software.A new type of mobile app is departing from a long-standing practice in computin...

Researchers use phone records to build a mobility model of the Los Angeles and New York City regions with new privacy guarantees.Researchers at AT&T, Rutgers University, Princeton, and Loyola Univ...

The same researchers who mapped racist Tweets about President Obama have made a Tweet-based map of hate in the United States. But theres reason to be a little skeptical.Researchers have created a hate...

The same researchers previously mapped racist Tweets about President Obama. In both cases theres reason to be a little skeptical....

The same researchers previously mapped racist Tweets about President Obama. In both cases theres reason to be a little skeptical....

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverThe MASTER-II Network of Robotic Optical Telescopes. First Results...

Weve hit 400 ppm of carbon dioxide, but we wont know what that means for decades.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography say that the carbon dioxide...

Researchers attach viral hitmen to surfaces to demonstrate a new possibility in antibacterial defense for catheters and other medical devices.Medical implants like catheters and pacemakers can be a ho...

In new study, Facebooks science team says the company killed automatic sharing on Offers because the science said active sharing works better...

A clip-on camera that snaps a picture every 30 seconds....

A startup believes people will want a photographic record of their lives, taken at 30-second intervals.We want to provide people with a perfect photographic memory, says Martin Kllstrm, CEO of Memoto...

A month after the release of Home, Facebook is working to answer criticisms with improvements.Facebook Homean app for Android smartphones that provides users with a constant stream of images, messages...

A month after the release of Home, Facebook is working to answer criticisms with improvements.Facebook Homean app for Android smartphones that provides users with a constant stream of images, messages...

An examination of simple cell-phone records reveals maps of poverty levels, ethnic divides, and the movements of sports fans.Around the world, some mobile carriers have been releasing anonymized recor...

Enhancing the flow of information through the brain could be crucial to making neuroprosthetics practical.The abilities to learn, remember, evaluate, and decide are central to who we are and how we li...

Biologists have used squeezed light to create the first images of a living cell that beat the diffraction limit...

A man had data mined himself so he can fund an app that helps others sell their own personal data.Software developer Federico Zannier has data-mined himself, and now hes raising money on Kickstarter t...

Alberta will serve as a test bed for large-scale carbon capture and sequestration.Canada is betting that carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is fairly well understood but unproven at t...

Artificial retinas give the blind only the barest sense of whats visible, but researchers are working hard to improve that.Elias Konstantopoulos gets spotty glimpses of the world each day for about fo...

To stay profitable, Tesla needs to keep cutting costs and selling more cars.As expected, Tesla Motors, the maker of the luxury Model S electric sedan, announced today that it was profitable for the fi...

A mixed-antibody treatment does not protect patients from cognitive decline.More bad news from drugmakers trying to develop treatments for Alzheimers disease: Yesterday, Baxter announced that its mixe...

A biopharmaceutical company will know this year whether an antibody produced using a unique technique can prevent chronic migraines.For many who suffer from chronic migraines, nothing can reliably pre...

You cant wear Google Glassyetbut you can get a glimpse of what it will look like.If, like most of us peons, you havent gotten a chance to try out Google Glass, theres now a way to get a sense of what ...

Tests suggest that a CIA-backed quantum computing technology can be very powerful for some kinds of problems.When I visited D-Waves last year I saw some spectacular hardware and heard of significant b...

Ever wondered what fuel fires potatoes out of a cannon the fastest? The US Air Force now has the answer...

The creator of the Wolfram Alpha search engine explains why he thinks your life should be measured, analyzed, and improved.Dont be surprised if Stephen Wolfram, the renowned complexity theorist, softw...

Dummy water-plant control systems rapidly attracted attention from hackers who tinkered with their settingssuggesting it happens to real industrial systems, too.Just 18 hours after security researcher...

A Department of Defense report says that Chinas military is infiltrating, and could attack, U.S. government computer networks.For years now security companies have described that attacks originating i...

Computer simulations show that high blood pressure can be entirely explained by arterial stiffening as we age, say researchers...

As digital data expands, anonymity may become a mathematical impossibility.In 1995, the European Union introduced privacy legislation that defined personal data as any information that could identify ...

Advances like GEs new hybrid wind turbines could make renewable energy more practical.GE recently sold the first of a new line of hybrid wind turbines that comes with a battery attached. The turbines ...

Teslas innovations could make EVs more competitive.The U.S. Department of Energy has been criticized for loaning money to Tesla Motors because the company makes cars that only rich people can afford. ...

How to monitor an incredibly complicated, increasingly automated system that thrives on secrecy.Today marks the three-year anniversary of the 2010 Flash Crash, when the U.S. stock market lost 1,000 po...

How to monitor an incredibly complicated, increasingly automated system that thrives on secrecy.Today marks the three-year anniversary of the 2010 Flash Crash, when the U.S. stock market lost 1,000 po...

A clever new approach could help monitor an incredibly complicated, increasingly automated system that thrives on secrecy.Today marks the three-year anniversary of the 2010 Flash Crash, when the U.S. ...

GridCom Technologies says quantum cryptography can work to make the electricity grid control systems secure.The notion of harnessing the physics of quantum mechanics for a massive leap in computing po...

A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years, say researchers...

Putting broadcast signals within LTE mobile network technology could open up bandwidth and disrupt business models.If you want to watch video on your phone or tablet, youll find that many networks can...

The creators of Ushahidi, a crisis mapping platform, have developed hardware that keeps wireless communication going in the midst of chaos.The people behind Ushahidi, a software platform for communica...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverThe Extragalactic Background Light (EBL): A Probe of Fundamental Physics and a Record of Structure Formation in the Universe...

With 3-D printing poised to go mainstream, will we soon all be able to print a gun?I dont particularly care for guns. The first and last one I fired was a .22 rifle when I was 12 years old, at Camp Fr...

Sensors in cars today could do more to reduce traffic accidents, and costs are coming down.Driverless cars havent hit the roads yet, but computers are already helping to slow down or stop a car in sit...

NIMH director says the DSM lacks biological validity in its diagnoses: Patients with mental disorders deserve better.Just weeks before the American Psychiatric Association is expected to publish its n...

Facebooks CEO has signalled interest in Googles wearable computer, and the social networks app would likely be as popular as it is on other devices.There are lots of unknowns about Google Glass, the c...

Facebooks CEO has signalled interest in Googles wearable computer, and the social networks app would likely be as popular as it is on other devices.There are lots of unknowns about Google Glass, the c...

Platforms that combine networking with user interfaces will help companies test post-PC ideas.Why should only computers, smartphones, and tablets be able to send a tweet? In the hopes of challenging t...

The U.S. Geological Survey doubles its estimate for the size of a huge U.S. oil and gas resource.The U.S. Geological Survey keeps increasing its estimate for the amount of oil under North Dakota. In 2...

Disruptive technological changes are at work but utilities are hamstrung by outdates business models and regulations.A homeowner who puts solar panels on his roof immediately slashes his monthly elect...

The next frontier for big data is the individual.Would you trade your personal data for a peek into the future? Andreas Weigend did....

Intels new chief executive must reverse the last decade of declining market share.Intels new CEO Brian M. Krzanich, elected by the board today to replace retiring chief executive Paul Otellini, is a l...

Mobile network speeds in urban areas could dramatically increase if consumers connected small, public base stations to their home broadband.Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and some U.S. wireless carriers ar...

Nobody knows what exploded over Siberia in 1908 but the discovery of the first fragments could finally solve the mystery...

Smart grid technology has been implemented in many places, but Floridas new deployment is the first full-scale system.The first comprehensive and large scale smart grid is now operating. The $800 mill...

Will Google Glass revive a controversial cinematographic technique?The other day I wrote about how I was skeptical about advertisements ever finding a home on Google Glass, largely for reasons of scre...

Coda Automotives uninspired EV failed to rouse customer interest.The U.S. Department of Energy is being criticized for lending large sums of money to companies that went on to fail, like Solyndra, or ...

The planets rising atmospheric CO2 levels may hit a symbolic milestone this month.This May, the folks behind a Twitter account started four months ago are preparing to tweet an event that the planet h...

Genomics signatures in uterine cancers could offer clues to prognosis.The first comprehensive genomic analysis of endometrial tumors divides the cancer into four subtypes and suggests potential change...

Genomics signatures in uterine cancers could offer clues to prognosis.The first comprehensive genomic analysis of endometrial tumors divides the cancer into four subtypes and suggests potential change...

Privacy experts have identified participants in the Personal Genome Project using De-Identified Data...

Privacy experts have identified participants in the Personal Genome Project using de-identified data....

Twitter #music, EQuala, and Piki help you share and discover new music with friends, but theyre not all winners.Ive been stuck in a music rut for a long time, listening to the same bands and songs ove...

At conference starting Wednesday, huge trove of research papers point to enormous possibilities but privacy issues remainCell phones generate tremendous amounts of data that can be particularly usefu...

At conference starting Wednesday, huge trove of research papers point to enormous possibilities, but privacy issues remain.Cell phones generate tremendous amounts of human mobility and other data that...

A plastic smartphone screen cover patterned with tiny lenses could help mobile 3-D take off.Last week, a company in Singapore began shipping $35 plastic screen protectors for the iPhone 5. These are ...

A plastic smartphone screen cover patterned with tiny lenses could help mobile 3-D take off.Last week, a company in Singapore began shipping $35 plastic screen protectors for the iPhone 5. These are ...

Are dashboards really the best way to deliver analytics to people who want to just blog?I cant make sense of website analytics at all. When I go to my personal blog, I want to just blog, not pore over...

A startup that converts conversations to text so it can offer instant information gets financing from Telefnica, Samsung, and Intel.Would you give your wireless carrier permission to listen in on your...

Painful finger-prick blood tests for diabetics could become a thing of the past, say physicists who have built a sensor that measures glucose in saliva...

The largest-ever release of mobile-phone data yields a model for fixing bus routes.Researchers at IBM, using movement data collected from millions of cell-phone users in Ivory Coast in West Africa, ha...

Bringing ordinary consumers into the pro-environmental fold is Nests great achievement.Nest, the only company that has ever gotten journalists to use the words sexy and thermostat in the same sentence...

Bringing ordinary consumers into the pro-environmental fold is Nests great achievement.Nest, the only company that has ever gotten journalists to use the words sexy and thermostat in the same sentence...

As consumer tech companies bring neural interfaces ever closer to the mainstream, human-friendly legalese could become a crucial part of the user experience.The New York Times recently claimed that br...

Googles smart personal assistant hits iOS, but will users care?Google Now, which offers users automatically updated, personalized information via a series of on-screen cards, just made the jump from A...