Tech

Agriculture

Robots will control everything you eat

Robots are now being introduced into all phases of how food is grown and prepared. In the future, though, they will be common.

Physics

Probing the power of the winds

Young researchers have been exploring the energy in wind to see how best they might tame it, harness it and understand its role in shaping the natural world.

Genetics

New tools can fix genes one letter at a time

New tools can edit the genome one letter at a time, correcting common errors that lead to disease.

Materials Science

Want a tougher space suit? Just add liquid

Using a special liquid, engineers are designing new treatments for spacesuits so that they can better resist puncturing from tiny meteorites and other hazards.

Microbes

Magnetic heating may replace surgery to cure some infections

Scientists are testing magnetic fields as a way to kill bacteria that drugs normally cannot reach — such as those on medical implants inside the body.

Tech

Young challengers take a deep dive into engineering

Thirty teens worked in teams to design, build and test remotely-operated vehicles. Their mission: to grab river sediment — and perhaps a shot at winning a major national competition.

Tech

AI can guide us — or just entertain

Advances in artificial intelligence are changing the worlds of medicine, education and the arts.

Science & Society

This robot won’t trip people up

New robots can follow the social rules of moving through a crowd, such as keeping to the right and passing on the left.

Computing

Computers can translate languages, but first they have to learn

Translation programs are getting quite good at converting text from one language to another. Translating between three or more languages at once is trickier.

Archaeology

Scientists detect mystery void in Great Pyramid of Giza

Using high-tech tools normally reserved for studies in particle physics, scientists have found a large, hidden void inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza.

Computing

Seeing the world through a robot’s eyes

Engineers in California have developed a new kind of camera that aims to give drones, self-driving cars and other robots better vision.

Physics

Teen identifies way to detect failing underground pipes

A teen researcher uses acoustics — here, pipe vibrations — to test whether buried water pipes are about to fail, and leak.