Articles by Technology Review from April 2013

Doctors argue that some drug companies are charging too much for their cancer drugs, to the detriment of patients.A group of more than 100 cancer experts have called out drug companies for the high pr...

Berkeley Labs spin-off Points Source Power develops fuel-cell charger for Kenya powered by cookstove fires.In trying to create a power source for off-grid villagers in Kenya, entrepreneur and scientis...

A materials scientist has created the worlds toughest fibre using a mechanism based on a slip knot...

A materials scientist has created the worlds toughest fiber using a mechanism based on a slip knot....

A novel chemical pathway could address the high cost of transporting cellulosic materials to make diesel fuel.Within a year, a pilot plant in Indiana will start converting the stalks and leaves of cor...

What gets removed from Chinas social networks shows how censorship strategies are advancing, and can even hint at the governments plans.In February last year, political scandal rocked China when the f...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverThe Potential For Photosynthesis In Hydrothermal Vents: A New Avenue For Life In The Universe?...

Zoomboarda miniscule keyboard that zooms when you tap itcould make it easier to type on smart watches.It seems like everyone is building a smart watch lately. Pebble ran a wildly successful Kickstarte...

A Boston-based company shows how it converts delivery trucks and other commercial fleet vehicles into hybrids....

I hate feeling tethered to the internet. So why do I love FreedomPop?Rarely do I, even in casual conversation, refer to something as the best thing ever. And yet Im fairly certain Ive used that epithe...

A response to Jason Pontins essay on free speech.Jason Pontin has written a perceptive analysis of a timeless question: what changes in law need to be adopted in order to account for technological adv...

An experimental new touch screen, the Obake, has a stretchable surface that to reacts user interaction in new ways.An inexpensive new prototype device called the Obake adds a new dimension to touch sc...

Its pretty, yes. But more importantly, it doesnt force you to interact with it.I cant believe Im about to say this, but Yahoos new weather app for iOS is great. Is it innovative? No. Well, actually it...

Creating your own gestural patterns could make these interactions easier to remember, researchers say....

Niche provider SoloPower, which received state aid, is seeking an investor to keep operating.Need a reminder of how brutal the solar provider industry is? Consider the recent history of SoloPower....

Combining aspects of high-energy lithium-sulfur batteries with flow battery technology can lower costs.Theres a promising new entry in the race to build cheap batteries for storing energy from solar p...

One asks us to change our behavior; the other changes its behavior to fit us.Considering how much typing on a glass touchscreen blows in comparison to using hard keys, its easy to imagine how Blackber...

One asks us to change our behavior; the other changes its behavior to fit us.Considering how much typing on a glass touch screen blows in comparison to using hard keys, its easy to imagine how BlackBe...

Everyone who uses e-mail sometimes wonders how well the transmitted information is protected from prying eyes. Indeed, a message to be transferred travels a long way between different computers and mo...

The threat of superfast Google Fiber is causing other Internet providers to crank up their own offerings.As Google plans to expand its ultrafast Internet service from a fledging effort in Kansas City ...

A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.You probably havent heard of HD Moore, but up...

The shortage of workers in the IT industry may be overblown, a new study claims.Internet and software executives are heavily lobbying for immigration reform legislation that would increase the pool of...

The H7N9 virus is deadly to humans but does not present symptoms in birds, which makes it more difficult to control.A 53-year-old Taiwanese man has contracted the H7N9 influenza virus, most likely whi...

A paper found that trading based on search query volumes for the term debt could yield large profit.This weeks fleeting stock market crash prompted by a false report from the Associated Presss hacked ...

New research shows how arrays of tiny electronic devices can achieve human-skin-like sensitivity to mechanical force.Arrays of transistors made of nanowires could form the basis of a new class of dev...

Magnetic fields decay rapidly and so have never been transmitted over long distances. Until now...

Converting methane to an alternative fuel using energy from the sun could reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.Burning natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal, but it still prod...

Keyboard app Swype could soon get hyper-local dialects that automatically change depending on which city you are in.How would you like it if you could turn on your smartphone in San Francisco and get ...

Data donated by Facebook users to Stephen Wolfram yields interesting patterns that may reveal how people change over time....

Electromagnetic interference can turn a plain LCD into a touch screen on the cheap.Electromagnetic interference can screw up cell phone and radio reception. But it may also be the key to cheaply trans...

The failing maker of luxury hybrids is in the spotlight in DC, but technologically speaking, who cares if Fisker fails?Congress is trying answer some important questions today about whether the govern...

A lack of accessible design tools is holding back 3-D printing.The largest companies in 3-D printing are racing to simplify design software so that it can become as easy to make an object as it is to ...

What the blog networks monetization plans say about the future of publishing.Tumblr, sometimes unfairly shorthanded as the hipster blogging service, is now the ninth most visited site in the U.S. Its ...

A lab at Harvard is developing materials with potentially revolutionary optical characteristics.The antenna, a century-old technology, is everywhere. Listening to the radio? Making a call on your cel...

Stock plunge another reminder of social medias power and the need for fact-checkingYesterday saw the most extreme example possible of why rapid crowdsourced corrections of Tweets and other social med...

Stock plunge another reminder of social medias power and the need for fact-checkingYesterday saw the most extreme example possible of why rapid crowdsourced corrections of Tweets and other social med...

Have you heard that Google Glass will let you snap photos by winking? Why thats still going to feel weird.The first real-world demo of Google Glasss user interface made me laugh out loud. Forget the t...

Some clever biochemistry has led to the worlds first enzyme-based memory capable of learning, say biochemists...

The impending Supreme Court ruling on gene patents is creating uncertainty in the fledging genetic diagnostics sector.At this weeks Biotechnology Industry Organization show in Chicago, a panel of law ...

Apple plans to keep inventing new product categories without much of a boost from its cash reserves.As its gross margins shrink and the company casts about for its next hit product categories, Apple i...

New platforms for fact-checking and reputation scoring aim to better channel social medias power in the wake of a disaster.The online crowds werent always wise following the Boston Marathon bombings. ...

A former Yahoo search engineer raises funds to bring sophisticated data mining and modeling to the business world.A startup called Infer, led by a former Yahoo search engineer, plans to help salespeop...

The search giant has signed up to a consortium that wants hardware to have a role in authenticating people....

If Arduino is too underpowered and Raspberry Pi doesnt have enough hardware inputs for you, BeagleBones $45 microcontroller board will let you have your cake and eat it too....

A cheap way to alter ammonium nitrate fertilizer renders it unusable in IEDs.Mixing iron sulfate, a waste product from steel foundries, with ammonium nitrate fertilizer leads to changes in its chemica...

Social networks can be used to track random individuals in just 12 hours, provided the right incentives are on offer, say computer scientists...

How do you make an electronic brain prosthesis that could restore a persons ability to form long-term memories? Recent experiments by Theodore Berger and his colleagues, including Sam Deadwyler at Wak...

MIT Technology Review identifies the 10 most important technology milestones of the past year.Our definition of a breakthrough is simple: an advance that gives people powerful new ways to use technolo...

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In 1968, an instructor of political science had reason to hope that computers would make government wiser.Computer-based analysis as it is refined over the remaining decades of this century will make ...

Rethink Robotics new creation is easy to interact with, but the innovations behind the robot show just how hard it is to get along with people....

A high-power circuit breaker could finally make DC power grids practical.High-voltage DC power lines can efficiently transport electricity over thousands of kilometers and for long distances underwate...

Messages that quickly self-destruct could enhance the privacy of online communication and make people feel freer to be spontaneous.One essential aspect of privacy is the ability to control how much we...

Every year, MIT Technology Reviewpicks the 10 technologies we think most likely to change the world....

Collecting and analyzing information from simple cell phones can provide surprising insights into how people move about and behaveand even help us understand the spread of diseases.At a computer in he...

GE, the worlds largest manufacturer, is on the verge of using 3-D printing to make jet parts.General Electric is making a radical departure from the way it has traditionally manufactured things. Its a...

The rhetoric about cyberwar is getting out of control.For something that was supposed to ignore borders and bring the world closer, the Internet is fostering an awful lot of nationalism right now. Wer...

Making human-friendly robots is a pressing challenge and a big opportunity.As a research scientist I hear this question all the time: when are your robots going to replace me? But that is certainly no...

Mobile phones are great sources of databut we must be careful about privacy.Anyone who has worked with mobile-phone data knows how incredibly useful such information can be, even when its anonymous. I...

With massive amounts of computational power, machines can now recognize objects and translate speech in real time. Artificial intelligence is finally getting smart.When Ray Kurzweil met with Google CE...

Reading the DNA of fetuses is the next frontier of the genome revolution. Do you really want to know the genetic destiny of your unborn child?Earlier this year Illumina, the maker of the worlds most w...

A maverick neuroscientist believes he has deciphered the code by which the brain forms long-term memories.Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at the University of Southern Califo...

Doubling the efficiency of solar devices would completely change the economics of renewable energy. Here is a design that just might make it possible.Harry Atwater thinks his lab can make an affordabl...

Nigerias finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, MCP 78, PhD 81, isnt afraid to clean house.As she rings in the new year with her family in suburban Maryland, Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealas cell phone doesnt st...

By asking that simple question for more than five decades, Institute Professor Millie Dresselhaus has pioneered nanoscience, launched a new field of energy research, and helped women find their place ...

The designers of the Pebble watch realized that a mobile phone is more useful if you dont have to take it out of your pocket.Eric Migicovsky didnt really want a wearable computer. When he first concei...

Thirty-four million people in the world are infected with HIV. Only eight million have access to life-saving drugs, and theres no effective vaccine. Researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, ...

Linguists think human language melds birdsong, animal communication"The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language," Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (...

Goldwasser and Micali revolutionized cryptographyOn June 15, EECS professor Shafi Goldwasser and engineering professor Silvio Micali will receive the A.M. Turing Awardfor their pioneering work in cry...

New ceramics can take a beating and still shed waterDurable surfaces that can shed water could be useful in a variety of areas, including energy, water, transportation, construction, and medicine. The...

Director of MIT Energy Initiative would replace Steven Chu in cabinet postIn March, President Obama nominated MITs Ernest J. Moniz, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering System...

New technique for solving graph Laplacians makes it easier to tackle a wide array of practical problemsIn computer science, a huge range of problems can be represented as "graphs"mathematical abstrac...

Some cancer cell mutations can slow or halt tumor growthA typical cancer cell has hundreds of mutated genes, but only a handful, known as drivers, are responsible for cancerous traits such as uncontr...

A new book explores a single line of code for the Commodore 64When Nick Montfort, associate professor of digital media at MIT, brought his trusty Commodore 64 on a recent trip to the West Coast, he g...

The professor who tapped into a doomsday scenario to teach advanced space systems engineeringPaul Sandorff 39 did not look like a harbinger of doom. A wiry Lockheed Martin employee with short-cropped ...

Does Upstart turn investing into a popularity contest?In my years reporting on startups, Ive often encountered stories of venture capitalists whove invested in a person, rather than a persons idea. Hu...

Nest adds energy services with utilities to shift heavy air conditioning loads and tune home efficiency.Demand response is not something most people outside the utility industry know about, never mind...

To make real progress in cleaning the air, we need better technology.As people around the world celebrate Earth Day and call attention to the need to take care of natural resources, its not a bad time...

The first flood of photos taken using Googles wearable computer are underwhelming.If you want to know what people with early access to Googles wearable computer Glass are doing, take a look at the pub...

If a web page lacks a timestamp, how do you know when it was created? A new web application could helpEver needed to know the age of a webpage only to discover that it lacks a timestamp saying when it...

If a Web page lacks a time stamp, how do you know when it was created? A new Web application could help.Ever needed to know the age of a Web page only to discover that it lacks a time stamp saying whe...

Everyone who uses e-mail sometimes wonders how well the transmitted information is protected from prying eyes. Indeed, a message to be transferred travels a long way between different computers and mo...

IBM Researchers build solar concentrator that generates electricity and enough heat for desalination or cooling.Cooling a supercomputer can provide clues on how to make solar powercheap,says IBM....

A startup called Catabasis is developing drugs that hit diseases at multiple targets.Sometimes a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The startup Catabasis Pharmaceuticals is hoping that will h...

Despite the need to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, the burning of coal has only been accelerating....

A prototype system can heat and cool without draining battery power.Buyers considering an electric car must bear in mind that using battery-powered heating and air conditioning can decrease the cars r...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverTrackingof Fingertips and Centres of Palm using KINECT...

An ad delivered straight to the eyeball feels like a violation.Some curious information came to light this week about Google Glass. For a company that owes its solvency to advertising95% of its revenu...

Police can obtain huge quantities of social network data, but must sort out the junk to glean useful information.Within hours of obtaining identifications of the Boston marathon bombing suspects, poli...

The Department of Energy and the Alaskan Government are speeding up development of oil sands and methane hydrates.Many environmentalists are protesting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline because it wou...

Google tries to use its buying clout to prod utilities to offer renewable energy option.Google has spent more than $1 billion in solar and wind energy projects but it ultimately has no control over th...

An easy-to-use EEG cap could expand the number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.One day, we may be able to check e-mail or call a friend without ever touching a screen or even speaking to ...

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Improved battery life and durability could be big selling points for new phones from Motorola.In his January earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page complained that our phones died too quickly and broke ...

The library is the start of a grand effort to digitize Americas cultural heritage.The Digital Public Library of America, an ambitious, legally fraught effort to make the Americas entire literary herit...

Stanford researchers conceive of panel that ejects building heat into space.Stanford researchers are developing rooftop panels that cool buildings by sending heat back into space, a technique that cou...

The FBI could use software to help identify suspects, and more advanced techniques are around the corner.The FBI appealed to the public Thursday for help identifying two men shown in pixilated photos...

The FBI could use software to help identify suspects, and more advanced techniques are around the corner.The FBI appealed to the public Thursday for help identifying two men shown in pixilated photos ...

Your genome may not change, but your microbiome will.Sequencing startup uBiome marked its next phase today with the launch of its new sales site where customers can order a swab kit for checking on th...

In 1999, Steve jobs toyed with the idea of launching a free, ad-supported version of the Mac operating system, and in 2008 he filed a patent on a version of the idea. Microsoft considered making an ad...

Physicists have finally solved the problem of how pearls...

Slumping PC sales and a changing server market are maiming Intel. But its plan to sell services for the homes biggest screen is a long shot.When Intel lifted the veil from its stealthy media division ...

Many web services offer an accidental megaphone. They need to protect us from ourselves.I havent used Facebooks Groups feature, but today brings news that the company is boosting its visibility by add...

An International Energy Agency report calls for more research, carbon price, to help renewables compete.Despite remarkable growth, solar and wind power arent making a dent in carbon emissions, says a...

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandbergs push to put more women in leadership roles has spawned a new social software tool.To the extent that a company has a personality, much of Facebooks can be traced back to ...

An enhanced geothermal project fractures hot rocks at unproductive wells, an approach with low financial risk.Growth in conventional geothermal power last year was a tepid five percent. A recently-dem...

The way we view online recipes reveals how our eating habits change over time, say computational sociologists...

Interactions between hundreds of wind turbines make power output difficult to predict.With wind power getting cheaper, wind farm developers are drawing up plans for farms an order of magnitude bigge...

Ads that follow you from one website to another are increasingly common, but in the rush for more tailored advertising, age-old wisdom may be lost.All over the Web, ads are getting more personal. They...

Ads that follow you from one website to another are increasingly common, but in the rush for more tailored advertising, age-old wisdom may be lost.All over the Web, ads are getting more personal. They...

A new class of smarter robots is being readied for the workplace.A new class of industrial robot is appearing. These robots are smart, affordable, and safe enough to work alongside humans, and they ca...

Social ties between humans are stronger than those between fruit flies or ants but weaker than those between bees, according to a cheerful new ranking based on how quickly creatures die when they beco...

Storing video and other files more intelligently reduces the demand on servers in a data center.New research suggests that data centers could significantly cut their electricity usage simply by storin...

Completely autonomous vehicles will remain a fantasy for years. Until theyre here, we need technology that enhances human drivers abilities rather than making those abilities increasingly obsolete....

Looking for you leap: a strategy that it might not hurt more publishers to adopt.Simon & Schuster will become the last of the Big Six publishers to make its e-books available to libraries, reports...

Digital convergence is rapidly coming to lighting as component makers pave the way for customizable, networked lamps.Now that we have smart phones, smart TVs, and smart thermostats, perhaps its not su...

As life has evolved, its complexity has increased exponentially, just like Moores law. Now geneticists have extrapolated this trend backwards and found that by this measure, life is older than the Ear...

Currencies designed to fix perceived flaws in Bitcoin could lead to competition that makes the idea of digital cryptocurrency stick.In recent weeks, the digital currency Bitcoin has soared and then di...

The trickiest thing about the brain mapping project might be that we dont even know what were trying to learn....

CrashAlert, created by University of Manitoba researchers, could make it easier to walk and text without smacking into things.The last time you saw someone walk into a lamppost while focusing intently...

Biomimetic nanoparticles could be an effective treatment against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.A nanoparticle wrapped in a red blood cell membrane can remove toxins from the body and could be used to ...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverHow Does Group Interaction And Its Severance Affect Life?...

When we read on dead trees, do we retain more?I dont have the best of memories, but ever since I was young, I prided myself on a particular talent with respect to reading. Occasionally Id be near the ...

It sounds cool, but only a select few such as Ryan Seacrest get to play with Twitters music app for now.Its not yet available to everyone, but Twitters giving a few hints about its forthcoming music a...

Despite breakthroughs in technology and medicine, theres still a lot of work ahead for understanding and using the human genome.This Sunday, the National Institutes of Health will celebrate the 10th a...

Using a wind energy and expensive lithium-ion batteries, AES Energy Storage is making money by stabilizing the grid.The conventional wisdom is that batteries, particularly lithium-ion batteries, are w...

Those advocating limits on greenhouse gases cant count on the weather to make their argument.Last summer, in response to an intense and prolonged drought in the U.S.the worst, indeed, since 1895we ran...

The company known for check-ins is already a fundamental part of the app economy. Now it just has to make money.Foursquare built its brand as a social app for people to check in at locations, compete ...

First Solars strong finances are helping fund innovation and drive down the cost of solar power.Innovation in solar cell technology has slowed as startups struggle to get a foothold in a tough market ...

Does it make sense to spend so much on already commercialized technology?According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, President Obamas budget has nearly $13 billion set aside for...

Data that shows where people live, work, and play is being sold to businesses and city planners, as mobile operators seek new sources of revenue.Wireless operators have access to an unprecedented volu...

Some of Silicon Valleys best-known venture funds have backed OpenCoin, a startup with a new digital currency called Ripple.The value of a Bitcoin has grown in the four years since the digital currency...

On a desert journey, coffee-scented oases of WiFi.As loyal readers already know, a few months ago I embarked upon an experiment: I junked my iPhone. Surprising even myself, at the end of the appointed...

Mice tap into their own neural reward circuits with the help of a new optogenetics device.A microscopic light-emitting diode device that controls the activity of neurons has given researchers wireless...

Nobody has been able to trap electromagnetic waves inside a metamaterial and then release them again. Until now...

Experts gathered this week at Stanfords Law School to discuss the robot revolution....

Philips seeks to replace florescent tube light with an LED using technology planned for other types of bulbs.Philips has cut the amount of power of its overhead LED tube light in half, a sign of conti...

The effects of global warming will persist for hundreds of years. What are our responsibilities and duties today to help safeguard the distant future? That is the question ethicists are now asking.One...

The HTC First, which features Facebooks new Home interface, will appeal only to the most devoted of Facebook users....

Join the app economy or invent new energy technology? Two startup events reflect evolving ideas on energy entrepreneurship.Entrepreneurship in energy and the environment has been going on for years bu...

Thanks to extensive genetic engineering, drugmakers can now brew large vats of the malaria drug artemisinin, stabilizing the world supply.For the first time, researchers have successfully engineered a...

To study the microscopic structures of the brain researchers have typically had to dissect the organ into amazingly thin slices that can then be viewed on a microscope. Without doing this, any structu...

A $20 annual subscription to see Facebook ad-free would preserve the companys profitsFacebooks home page proclaims that the social network is free and always will be. But what if you could also choose...

Happiness levels caputred by Tweets rise logarithmically with distance from our average location, say computer scientists studying Twitter sentiment...

Sol Voltaics plans to make a nanowire-laden ink to boost solar panel efficiency using a rapid manufacturing process.Ink filled with microscopic semiconductors called nanowires could make solar power c...

New optical technology paves the way for more efficient ocean-spanning transmissions.Researchers at AT&T have devised a way to increase the distance that large amounts of data can travel through a...

A popular app gets yanked from Apples App Store, illustrating the danger of betting it all on one mobile OS.AppGratis, an iOS app that offers users a free app each day that theyd normally have to pay ...

A popular app gets yanked from Apples App Store, illustrating the danger of betting it all on one mobile OS.AppGratis, an iOS app that offers users a free app each day that theyd normally have to pay ...

Google fiber promises competition for AT&T and Time Warner Cable in AustinNew glimmers of competition are coming to the Internet fiber-to-the-home business in the United States: Google is branchin...

Extraordinary tubes of ice that grow down into the ocean from ice sheets could be as significant for the origin of life as hydrothermal vents, say chemists...

While raising privacy concerns, Tasers cop-cam should help enforce ethical police work.The Verge has a great report about an emerging trend in policingcameras that cops wear on the their bodies while ...

The new Facebook-centric Android app for smartphones builds on other efforts to court mobile users internationally.Facebook Home, a new collection of apps that makes the social network dominate Androi...

Transparent, shape-changing plastics could make touch screens and keyboards that stimulate users sense of touch.A very thin keyboard that uses shape-changing polymers to replicate the feel and sound o...

While raising privacy concerns, Tasers cop-cam should help enforce ethical police work.The Verge has a great report about an emerging trend in policingcameras that cops wear on the their bodies while ...

The risks associated with major IT projects are being vastly underestimated, according to the largest study of global IT projects ever undertaken...

A Caltech researcher thinks arrays of tiny wind turbines could produce cheaper power than big ones.The remote Alaskan village of Igiugighome to about 50 peoplewill be the first to demonstrate a new ap...

Obama calls for $100 million to develop new technologies to understand the brain.Last week, President Obama officially announced $100 million in funding for arguably the most ambitious neuroscience in...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint serverFelinic Principle And Measurement Of The Hubble Parameter...

A World Resources Institute report recommends regulations to stop leaks, as we wait for data.No one really knows how much better natural gas is compared to coal, greenhouse-gas wise. Thats because no ...

The finanical impact of dementia may double by 2040.Dementias financial impact on the U.S. economy in 2010 was around $109 billion, reported researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wedne...

A new study shows that dementia will have a crippling impact on the U.S. economy.Dementias financial impact on the U.S. economy in 2010 was around $109 billion, reported researchers in the New England...

Adafruits educational series is a brilliant, necessary corrective to our magic box tech culture.This week, Adafruit Industries launches an educational series aimed at kids, report Hackaday and others....

Demand response technologyessentially dialing back power at key timesis quietly becoming a key tool for the electricity grid of the future.The off switch is a fast-growing source of power in some part...

Brazil nuts would rise to the top of a container of mixed nuts on Mars and the Moon, but more slowly than on Earth, say physicists...

The appeal of Facebooks new phone software may limited to hardcore users.On Thursday morning, Mark Zuckerberg stood smiling in front of a crowd of journalists and employees at Facebooks headquarters ...

Companies that once made specialized hardware may soon be relegated to software and services.A company called Purple Communications this week unveiled a product called SmartVP. Its a videophone with a...

A trained computer model can predict dream imagery by decoding MRI scans.MRI scans of a sleeping persons brain can help predict whats seen in the land of Nod....

Were at Facebook HQ. Refresh for the latest news from todays announcement.1:38 p.m.:Ok, now Cory Ondrejka, VP of engineering, is taking the stage. He says the super-app will be available in the Google...

A modified version of Android puts social networking, and Facebook, at the heart of a device.2;07 p.m.: Now the wall to my is slowly rolling away to reveal a demo lounge. Im going to try it out. See y...

Teslas innovations in batteries give it an edge that Fisker, focused on design, lacks.Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, two startups founded to make battery-powered cars, are both in the news, but f...

Smartphone apps that send disappearing messages are gaining in popularity.Youve heard it an eye-rolling number of times: anything you post online, or any message you sendbe it a seemingly benign text ...

Bruce Schneier says we as a society are heading down a dangerous pathWhenever I start pursuing a story about a technology that purports to make the Internet more secure, or about a privacy-protecting ...

Facebook will announce its New Home on Android tomorrow, and well be updating live from Menlo Park.Facebook is slated to make an Android-related announcement tomorrow at its Menlo Park, California hea...

A microfluidic device that captures circulating tumor cells could give doctors a noninvasive way to diagnose and track cancers.Doctors typically diagnose cancer via a biopsy, which can be invasive and...

Aquion Energy lands $35 million to commercialize its novel grid-storage battery, bringing in Bill Gates as investor.When it comes to disruptive battery startups, one of the best endorsements you can g...

A contest to improve flight arrival estimates is the first step in a plan to automate in-flight decisions.A team from Singapore is taking home a $100,000 prize for developing an algorithm that could h...

Ever struggled with the problem of converting redshift into parsecs, your worries are over thanks to a new cosmological distance chart based on the very latest data...

A contest to improve flight arrival estimates is the first step in a plan to automate in-flight decisions.A team from Singapore is taking home a $100,000 prize for developing an algorithm that could h...

Its looking grim.I can be something of a Luddite, for a technology blogger. I recently jilted my iPhone. It took me ages to buy a Kindle, and I was a holdout on the iPad until I received a hand-me-dow...

A proposal to map the activity of entire brain regions at a neuron-by-neuron level got its official nod from the White House on Tuesday when President Obama announced his budget will request $100 mill...

A plan to map the activity of entire brain regions down to the level of indvidual neurons got its official nod from the White House on Tuesday when President Obama announced his budget will request $1...

A new survey reveals why citizen scientists take part in crowdsourced science projects...

Energ2s nanostructured carbon anodes can boost lithium-ion battery capacity by 30 percent.A Seattle-based startup, EnerG2, has developed a carbon anode that significantly improves the storage capacity...

New partnerships could help bring a novel class of biopharmaceutical to patients.Messenger RNAsmolecules that carry information between the genome and the protein-building machinery of cellscould beco...

Diff Displays reduces distraction by visually highlighting whats changed on your screen since you last looked.Most computer interfaces are designed to capture your attentionwhether you like it or not....

With no one buying new equipment, solar companies are looking to make the best of existing technology.Suntech Power, the large Chinese solar panel maker that filed for bankruptcy last month, isnt the ...

A federal appeals court rules for Aereo, the service that could encourage more people to cut the cord on their TV packages.Two controversial startups Ive covered, Aereo and ReDigi, had cleverly design...

By analyzing a surprisingly simple set of facial tics, a depth camera can see right into your soul....

Tesla says stronger sales will increase profits for the quarter, while it cuts the lowest-range Model S electric sedan.Tesla Motors had an Easter present for its investors: due to better-than-expected...

Nuance hopes its voice-recognition tech can produce mobile ads that you actually want to have a conversation with.In online advertising lingo, the acronym CPC refers to cost per clickthe amount an ad...

When the symptoms of altitude sickness are treated as a network, two distinct clinical syndromes emerge, say physicians...

The leading smartphone manufacturer hopes to one-up Apple and nudge out struggling Blackberry.Sanjay Bhatia comes into his office each morning and plugs his tablet into a docking station. On his desk ...

Underground rocks that react with carbon dioxide to form minerals could offer a safe way to keep the greenhouse gas from reaching the atmosphere....