Articles by Technology Review from December 2015

Better concussion diagnostics will give scientists and physicians a more detailed understanding of brain injury.Does playing football cause permanent brain damage? If it wasnt already, that question i...

It was the year that self-driving cars became a commercial reality; robots gained all sorts of new abilities; and some people worried about the existential threat posed by super-intelligent future AI....

During 2015, the combination of potent biotechnologies solved problems and created new ones.Biologists often emphasize how little anyone really knows about the brain, the genome, and the mechanisms be...

In February we chose our 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2015heres how they have advanced since.Each year MIT Technology Review selects 10 emerging technologies that we believe will remake the world. ...

This year Google and Facebooks efforts to get more of the worlds population online got much more seriousbut also hit some setbacks.Some 3.2 billion people in the world are now online, the United Natio...

Its too late to stop climate change from happening. But we can begin to limit the damage and slow it down....

Researchers have begun to understand the economic and social damage caused by climate change.No one knows how climate change will transform our lives. Not only is it uncertain how much elevated levels...

Its too late to stop climate change from happening. But we can begin to limit the damage and slow it down....

On an Instagram account called everydayclimatechange, the photographer James Whitlow Delano curates pictures that document causes and effects of global warming and responses to it....

An inventor of a storage technology tries to outlast a brutal stretch for new energy companies.Danielle Fong has a clever way to widen the use of renewable power: take the electricity produced by, say...

A nanomaterials chemist has figured out a good way to mimic leaves and turn water and carbon dioxide into things we need.On a sunny day on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, the pea...

A lot happened in virtual reality this year; here are the key things to remember.Though virtual reality is still far from mainstream, 2015 was a big year for the industry as new headsets were introduc...

Physicist John Martinis could deliver one of the holy grails of computing to Googlea machine that dramatically speeds up todays applications and makes new ones possible....

One cognitive scientist thinks the leading approach to machine learning can be improved by ideas gleaned from studying children.Like any proud father, Gary Marcus is only too happy to talk about the l...

One cognitive scientist thinks the leading approach to machine learning can be improved by ideas gleaned from studying children....

One cognitive scientist thinks the leading approach to machine learning can be improved by ideas gleaned from studying children....

Diana Bianchi championed tests that find Down syndrome early in pregnancy. Now can she find a way to treat it?Jerome Lejeune is the Frenchman who discovered the chromosomal error responsible for causi...

A new form of weekend entertainment combines virtual reality with a clever stage set. For now, youll have to visit suburban Utah to check it out.Im standing on a dark platform at the edge of a maze of...

A new form of weekend entertainment combines virtual reality with a clever stage set. For now, youll have to visit suburban Utah to check it out.Im standing on a dark platform at the edge of a maze of...

Sports leagues should do more to protect children from the long-term problems that stem from hits to the head.In the new movie Concussion, Will Smith plays a neuropathologist who performed a game-chan...

Millions of people are refusing to let intrusive, distracting, or irrelevant ads load on our devices. Consumers should seize the opportunity to demand a more mutually beneficial relationship with onli...

Government agencies and oppressive regimes are snapping up software that makes it easy to hack your phone or computer. These new powers could make us all less safe.It looked very suspicious, M says of...

Chinas leading search company is developing a self-driving car with BMW.Driving around Beijing often feels unnervingly like a contact sport, with vehicles recklessly plunging through thick traffic, sn...

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Heres a smart way for us to limit carbon emissions and keep global warming below 2 C.International climate-change negotiators are focused on keeping global warming at or below 2 C above historical lev...

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The nuclear industrys efforts to keep aging plants operating highlight questions about nuclear powers future in the U.S.As the ongoing climate summit in Paris has moved from rosy exhortations by world...

China needs advanced robotics to help balance its economic, social, and technological ambitions with continued growth.China is laying the groundwork for a robot revolution by planning to automate the ...

Researchers have developed a new kind of wound dressing that could serve as an early-detection system for infections.Bacterial infection is a fairly common and potentially dangerous complication of wo...

Can magnetic stimulation of the brain shake addicts out of their habits?Stefano, a 46-year-old cocaine addict from Padua, Italy, had all but accepted that he might die from his habit. Hed just relapse...

Researchers combine real vehicle, scene, and medical data to simulate car crashes on a supercomputer.One person dies in a road traffic accident every 25 seconds, according to estimates from the World ...

The future emissions of China and India are of huge global concern, but richer countries are responsible for most of the carbon dioxide humans have added to the atmosphere.A major point of contention ...

Researchers examine how Uber steers its drivers behavior with its automated management system, despite its promise of being your own boss.It sends texts with last-minute requests for extra shifts and ...