Technology Review : Video

Memoto Camera Logs Your Life

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

How to Make Gas-Guzzling Vans into Efficient Hybrids

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

Why Google Is Investing in Deep Learning

A Quick Tour of Windows 8

An overview of the user experience design of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.

Turning Floodwater into Drinking Water

A Thai government agency has developed a mobile unit called SOS that can purify contaminated water in the aftermath of a flood.

Neal Stephenson on a Mildly Feminist Question

Jason Pontin asks the science fiction author whether he typecasts female characters in his books. This past spring, Jason Pontin, editor in chief of MIT Technology Review, conducted a wide-ranging but informal conversation with science fiction writer Neal Stephenson about his craft, preoccupations, influences, and inspirations. Enjoy a six-part weekly series of video shorts based on their conversation.

Meet Baxter, a New Kind of Industrial Robot

A smarter, safer new industrial robot could bring automation to new areas of manual work and help many U.S. manufacturers regain a competitive edge.

Neal Stephenson on the Future of Books and the Ubiquity of Gadgets

Author Neal Stephenson discusses his views on the appeal of printed media and the recent developments in sci-tech that have captured his interest. This past spring, Jason Pontin, editor in chief of MIT Technology Review, conducted a wide-ranging but informal conversation with science fiction writer Neal Stephenson about his craft, preoccupations, influences, and inspirations. Enjoy a six-part weekly series of video shorts based on their conversation.

Jack Dorsey Talks Technology

At a Technology Review event in San Francisco, the creator of Twitter and Square explains his guidelines for creating good technology.

Neal Stephenson on Predictions and Surprises

The science-fiction author reflects on how real-world technology has been working out differently than he imagined in his novels. This past spring, Jason Pontin, editor in chief of MIT Technology Review, conducted a wide-ranging but informal conversation with science fiction writer Neal Stephenson about his craft, preoccupations, influences, and inspirations. Enjoy a six-part weekly series of video shorts based on their conversation.

Neal Stephenson on the Hieroglyph Project

Neal Stephenson explains his “Hieroglyph Project," and how it is intended to inspire us with optimistic visions of getting “big stuff done.” This past spring, Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief of MIT Technology Review, conducted a wide-ranging but informal conversation with science fiction writer Neal Stephenson about his craft, preoccupations, influences, and inspirations. Enjoy a six-part weekly series of video shorts based on their conversation.

Neal Stephenson on Optimism

Acclaimed author Neal Stephenson addresses the following question: Is there a categorical imperative for science fiction to be optimistic? This past spring, Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief of MIT Technology Review, conducted a wide-ranging but informal conversation with science fiction writer Neal Stephenson about his craft, preoccupations, influences, and inspirations. Enjoy a six-part weekly series of video shorts based on their conversation.

Meet 2012 TR35 Winner Ren Ng

Entrepreneur of the Year Ren Ng discusses his innovative work.

Meet 2012 TR35 Winner Leila Takayama

Takayama applies the tools of social science to make robots easier to live and work with.

Neal Stephenson on the State of Science Fiction

Acclaimed science fiction author Neal Stephenson answers the question: Why is most contemporary science fiction so debauched? This past spring, Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief of MIT Technology Review, conducted a wide-ranging but informal conversation with science fiction writer Neal Stephenson about his craft, preoccupations, influences, and inspirations. Enjoy a six-part weekly series of video shorts based on their conversation.

Powering a New Way of Life

A nonprofit in Thailand is transforming remote communities along the Myanmar border by supplying them with off-grid energy.

Shopping Online? These Robots Will Fill Your Order

A look inside the new warehouse automation system owned by Amazon.

Interview with George Dyson

The historian of technology discusses the remarkable story that inspired his latest book, Turing’s Cathedral.

The Technomagic of Sphero

Wireless battery charging and remote control via a Bluetooth-based smart-phone app gives this robot toy its appeal.

A Robot Recruit that Can Do It All

Strong enough to tow a car, Warrior is designed to be a jack-of-all-trades for military, police, and rescue services.

Windows on an iPad

By downloading a free application to an iPad, users get two gigabytes of storage and access to popular Office software.

Consumer-Driven Disruptions

A look at some of the small-scale innovations that went on to upend entire industries.(Licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia images from: Infrogmation, Priwo, Grm wnr, Atreyu, Rajkumar1220, Ericd, Crazy Louco. Other images courtesy of the: U.S. National Archives, Carrier, Motorola, Apple.)

Gadget Roundup: Part 2

A retro arcade system, a screen for business road warriors, and a brain wave reader are some of the best gadgets the editors of Technology Review have come across in the past year.

Gadget Roundup

Some of the coolest gadgets Technology Review has come across in the past year.

Eye Ball

A globe studded with cameras captures a panorama if you throw it in the air.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Piya Sorcar

Sorcar presents her work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Pieter Abbeel

Abbeel present his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Paul Wicks

Wicks present his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Noah Snavely

Snavely present his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Miriah Meyer

Meyer presents her work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner June Andronick

Andronick presents her work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Judd Antin

Antin presents his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Jesse Robbins

Robbins present his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Jernej Barbic

Barbic presents his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Jennifer Dionne

Dionne present her work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Fengnian Xia

Xia presents his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Jeff Hammerbacher

Hammerbacher presents his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Fan Yang

Yang presents her work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Gert Lanckriet

Lanckriet presents his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Dan Berkenstock

Berkenstock describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Christopher Bettinger

Bettinger describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Bhaskar Krishnamachar

Krishnamachari describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Brian Gerkey

Gerkey describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Ben Rubin

Rubin describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Alina Oprea

Oprea describes her work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Andrew Phillips

Phillips describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Ajit Narayanan

Narayanan describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Meet 2011 TR35 Winner Aishwarya Ratan

Ratan describes his work at EmTech 2011.

Two New Robots with Smart Phones for Brains

OLogic shows off two entertainment bots, a desktop "pet" and a mobile music machine.

The Virtual Nurse Will See You Now

In the hectic world of a hospital, a computer-simulated nurse can be surprisingly comforting.

Party Robot

Originally developed as a therapeutic tool to help autistic children with social communication, this robot is now being released as a toy that can dance in time to music or clapping. Sensors make the robot sensitive to types of touch, allowing it to respond differently to, say, pokes and squeezes.

Letter from the Editor

Our November/December 2011 issue features new technology for eavesdropping on the hive mind, an essay on the evolution of privacy, and much more.

A Social-Media Decoder

New technology deciphers— and empowers—the millions who talk back to their televisions through the Web.

From Concept to Cover

Chris Foss has created some of the most iconic images in science fiction over the course of his 40-year career. He has painted covers for the books of Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and many more. TRSF is his first major U.S. commission in recent years, and this video shows how Foss developed the painting from the sketch of an idea to a gripping image. For more about Foss’s work, visit www.chrisfossart.com.

An ECG for the iPhone

Inventor David Albert’s video of an iPhone hack proved a hit.

The Doctor and the iPad

Tablet computers are sweeping into medicine and bringing data to the patient bedside.

The First Fully Stretchable OLED

Researchers at UCLA demonstrate their fully stretchable OLED. They achieved the feat by sandwiching a carbon nanotube-polymer blend on either side of a light-emitting plastic.

Hologram Method Used to Study Neurons

Pierre Magistretti of the Brain Mind Institute at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne explains how holographic microscopy works.

Stem Cells and Entrepreneurs

How Cellular Dynamics International is commercializing the new technology of induced pluripotent stem cells.

The Science of IPS Cells

Biologist James Thompson and others discuss the discovery of IPS cells: the science and the potential for research and personalized medicine.

From the Editor

Technology Review features the TR35, 35 innovators under the age of 35, in its September/October 2011 issue.

Seeing the Future of the Office Internet

Cisco's chief futurist predicts digital avatar assistants—and more.

How Scientists Make Heart Cells

CDI scientists explain how they made David Ewing Duncan's beating heart cells in a petri dish and why it's a significant feat.

Printing Parts

Systems that print mechanical components with metal powder could be used to build lighter, more efficient airplanes.

Pushing the Limits of the Touch Screen

An engineer has rigged up several devices that enable a touch interface to respond to nuances such as pressure.

Robots that Learn from People

Pieter Abbeel has programmed robots to learn how to perform tasks without detailed instructions. One robot can fold laundry, while others can fly model helicopters or tie sutures.

Affordable Speech Synthesizers

Ajit Narayanan, founder of Invention Labs and one of the 2011 TR35, has designed a low-cost tablet-based speed synthesizer system called Avaz.

Analyzing Your Sleep

Ben Rubin, cofounder and CTO of Zeo and part of the 2011 TR35, has developed a consumer device that detects the user's phase of sleep.

Networking Patients to Combat Chronic Diseases

Paul Wicks, director of R&D at PatientsLikeMe, discusses his innovative work.

New Technology Brings Offshoring to Villages

The Xerox CTO describes research that allows manufacturing and office workers to avoid commuting to traffic-choked Indian cities.

Transparent Batteries

Researchers at Stanford are making transparent battery electrodes that could power future gadgets.

GE Develops Manufacturing Tools to Improve Jet Engines

During a recent tour, General Electric showed off a slew of manufacturing and production innovations aimed at staying competitive in one of its core businesses.

HP's New Touchpad Tablet

Technology Review IT editor, Erica Naone, demos and discusses HP's new Touchpad tablet.

Making Silicon Solar Cells Cheaper

The CTO of Suntech Power describes an innovative way to make the active materials for generating solar power.

Personal Science

Rajiv Mehta talks about the importance of personal science.

Cheap, Efficient Solar

Harry Atwater, the founder of a new startup called Alta Devices, outlines his plans to make solar affordable.

The Quantum Frontier

MIT researchers have been leading the way toward quantum computers—devices that could solve problems too big for all today's supercomputers put together.

Redesigning Solar Power

A new lab is inventing innovative ways to package and install solar cells, with the aim of making solar energy far more affordable.

Google's Perspective on Malware's Rise

Vint Cerf, a coinventor of the Internet's original protocols and now chief Internet evangelist for Google, describes what Google is doing to try to defeat the scourge of Web-based malware.

Hacking the Monitors

Kyle Machulis liberates data from self-tracking devices.

Stressed Chess

Dave Marvit demonstrates a new method for monitoring stress.

Seeing Robotics with New Eyes

With the help of the Kinect, Bilibot navigates, locates objects, and uses its robotic arm.

Blocks + Computing = A new kind of interface

Technology Review IT Editor Erica Naone demonstrates Sifteo’s new gaming hardware—interactive blocks that sense their physical orientation and detect each other.

Data Transfer at Light Speed

At Intel Research Day, the company demonstrated some of its silicon photonics technology for the first time. The goal of this work is to speed data transfer by replacing today’s electrical wiring with faster, more efficient fiber-optic connections.

Sony Sets Its Sights on Augmented Reality

The future of mobile gaming will merge the virtual and real worlds.

Making 3-D Models From Your Photos

See how free software can recreate an object in detailed 3-D using photos of it taken from different angles.

How Lithium-Ion Batteries Are Made

Technology Review visits Leyden Energy's pilot production line in Fremont, California to see how batteries are made.

A Sleep-Monitoring Shirt

Carson Darling and Thomas Lipoma, who cofounded Nyx Devices with Pablo Bello, and neurologist Matt Bianchi, demonstrate the Somnus sleep shirt. The nightshirt is embedded with fabric electronics to monitor the wearer’s breathing patterns. A small chip worn in a pocket of the shirt processes that data to determine phase of sleep, such as REM sleep (when we dream), light sleep or deep sleep.

The Invisible iPhone

A new interface lets you keep your phone in your pocket and use apps or answer calls by tapping your hand.

Color Quantum-Dot Display

Startup company QD Vision demonstrates their full color quantum-dot display. This prototype is the first step towards a low-power, richly colorful display.

Space Shuttle Endeavour Lifts Off

The youngest of the space shuttles blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8:56 AM EDT on May 16. It is headed to the International Space Station for its final 16-day mission.

Nanosatellite Ready to Search for Another Earth

Researchers at Draper Laboratory and MIT discuss and display the small satellite they have built. It will detect Earthlike planets outside our solar system.

What Data Means for Google

The company's director of research, Peter Norvig, discusses how Google bases its products and its internal processes on data -- and how such data comes in a cascade of new forms.

Commercializing Stretchable Silicon Electronics

Startup company MC10 is commercializing stretchable silicon for smart surgical tools and wearable sensors. One of its first products will be a surgical tool that can quickly map and treat electrical problems in the heart.

Ultrasharp 3-D Maps

A missile-targeting technology is adapted to process aerial photos into 3-D city maps sharper than Google Earth's.

Bill Joy's Energy Quest

The technologist turned venture capitalist describes his approach to investing in technologies that can avert climate change.

A Personalized Trip to the Grocery Store

Technology Review IT editor Erica Naone visits a Stop & Shop in Braintree, Massachusetts, to test Modiv Media’s new iPhone app. This lets consumers shop using a smart phone and serves up personalized offers when they do.

Hard Problems, Elegant Solutions, Big Impact

How we choose the "10 Emerging Technologies."

The Rare-Earth Crisis

Today's electric cars and wind turbines rely on a few elements that are mined almost entirely in China. Demand for these materials may soon exceed supply. Will this be China's next great economic advantage?

A Camera Built for Hacking

It may be ugly, but the Frankencamera's design enables rapid development of new photographic techniques.

TR10: Cloud Streaming

Bringing high-performance software to mobile devices

TR10: Solid-State Batteries

High-energy cells for cheaper electric cars

10 Emerging Technologies of 2011

Our annual list of the 10 emerging technologies that we think will have the greatest impact.

TR10: Synthetic Cells

Designing new genomes could speed the creation of vaccines and biofuel-producing bacteria

IceWall

MTI graduate student Yushiro Okamoto explains the idea behind IceWall, which he and fellow architecture graduate student Kian Hiu-Lan Yam designed as part of the MIT150 Festival of Art, Science, and Technology.

Relearning to See

People implanted with the first retinal prostheses must learn to interpret their new visual world.

Making Eyes

Over roughly nine days, a ball of mouse embryonic stem cells (gray) gives rise to a cup-shaped structure (green) with a complex three-dimensional architecture identical to the retina in early development. A tiny sac of cells balloons outward from the clump's surface; then the sac folds in on itself, with retinal pigment cells on the outside and retinal neurons on the inside.

SpaceX Sets Launch Date for Heavy-Lift Rocket

The company has announced a final design, and launch schedule, for a massive new rocket.

A New Rotary Engine Design

A start-up, Liquid Piston, aims to greatly improve the efficiency of internal combustion.

Engineered Organisms for Making Cheap Sugar

One company's method for low-cost, high-yield sugar production could help biofuels compete with fossil fuels.

App Turns Your Phone Into a 3-D Scanner

Software developed by researchers at Microsoft fuses cell-phone photos into a virtual copy of an object.

A Search Engine for the Human Body

Microsoft software recognizes organs and other structures in medical images.

Printing Striped Batteries

A leading researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center explains a plan to increase battery storage capacity.

An On-Off Switch for Anxiety

In this video, a mouse with a fiberoptic cable implanted into his brain explores a four-arm maze. The animal has been genetically engineered to express light-sensitive proteins in a specific part of the amygdala, a brain region linked to fear. Mice are naturally afraid of open spaces, and at the beginning of the video, the mouse spends most of his time in one corner of the maze, occasionally dashing out to explore his environment. Turning on the light (as indicated by blue text) activates a specific neural circuit, which appears to make the mouse much braver, continually exploring all the parts of the maze. The video is shown at ten times normal speed.

Cells in Living Color

The two upper panels of this video show different views of a cell while the lower left shows the presence of bubbles, called vesicles, within it. On the lower right, the thin petals can be see in cross-section as they form, ripple over the cell, and subside. Built from 40,000 images, this video provides scientists with an unprecedented amount of visual information.

Cells in Living Color: Filopodia

Cellular projections called filopodia grow and contract on the surface of this cell, waving like tiny limbs or porcupine quills.

Cells in Living Color: Chromosomes

Chromosomes in a cell line up next to each other and then slide apart as they are partitioned into two daughter cells.

Shell Partner Makes Cheap Biofuels

The CEO of Codexis describes how his company is making renewable fuels affordable.

Hacks of the Microsoft Kinect

At the 2011 Blur Conference, which focuses on human-computer interaction, hackers demonstrated how they adapted the Microsoft Kinect to work for purposes beyond what Microsoft originally intended.

The Physics of How Cats Drink

Cutta Cutta, the cat of MIT researcher Roman Stocker, demonstrates how felines balance the forces of inertia and gravity when they drink.

Inside A123's Electric Car Battery Factory

A glimpse inside a government-funded facility for producing advanced lithium-ion packs.

A Visit to Square

Twitter creator's new startup lets people accept credit cards with their smart phone.

A Commercial Space Shuttle

The Sierra Nevada Corporation is testing a spacecraft that could replace the space shuttle, carrying people and cargo into low earth orbit and back.

Innovating with Business Data

Are we only at the beginning of an era of IT-driven productivity gains? Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, says there’s still enormous potential for businesses to use information technology to test new processes and improve operations rapidly—and very cheaply.

Inside a Flagship of DIY

The Arduino is giving a new generation of tinkerers the ability to design and program their own hardware.

Growing Lasers on Computer Chips

Researchers at UC Berkeley are developing and testing lasers grown on silicon chips. Processors that incorporate electrical and optical components could make for faster supercomputers and speedier downloading on personal computers.

Football Helmet Tests for Safety

NOCSAE, an independent and non-profit standard-setting body, has developed sophisticated performance and standard tests for football helmets and facemasks, as well as other sports, and is a leader in scientific research to understand concussions and head injury. This is a drop test to the side of the helmet.

Football Helmet Testing

Apps Could Turn Your Smart Phone Into a Wallet

The first near-field communication apps are trickling in, but the handsets that can use them remain in the minority.

Scientists Use Light to Make Worms 'Dance'

The research could reveal how neural circuits work together in response to their environment.

Steering Pills Safely

In this video, researchers use a computer program control the position of magnetic pill inside a rat's intestine.

CES Video Notebook

Technology Review explores the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, looking for the big trends and small wonders amidst this year's crop of tablets, robots, concept cars, and other new products.

Spinning Nano Yarns

Researchers at the University of Texas in Dallas make high-tech yarns from nanotubes and powders. The yarns could be woven into battery electrodes, superconfucting fabrics, and wearable electronics.

Reprogramming Life

Researchers are developing software tools to make it easier and faster to redesign microbes that make biofuels or drugs.

Taking Apart the Microsoft Kinect

Technology Review's I.T. Editor, Erica Naone, demonstrates how the Microsoft Kinect works and then hacks it apart.

Telepresence Robot in Action

Technology Review's I.T. Editor, Tom Simonite, reviews a Vgo telepresence robot. Simonite is located in TR's San Francisco office and uses the robot to communicate "face-to-face" with colleagues in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A Decade of Genomics

On the 10th anniversary of the Human Genome Project, we ask: where are the therapies?

Printing Electronic Skin

Ali Javey, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkley, shows Technology Review how his lab prints electronic skin.

First Impressions of Google's New Notebook

Technology Review's I.T. Editor, Erica Naone, tests out the Web-reliant Cr-48. It starts up in an instant, and comes with "free" 3G. But Google's online app store needs work.

Molecular Moisturizing

Researchers improved on a technique called stimulated Raman spectroscopy to capture real-time images in the skin of living mice. To observe the absorption of trans-retinol, a common skin-care product, into a mouse’s skin, the team tuned two lasers to the frequency of a lipid in the drug and trained the lasers on the application site, yielding images in real time of the drug traveling down a hair shaft into the sebaceous gland.

Going with the Flow

Using stimulated Raman spectroscopy, researchers tuned lasers to the frequency of proteins in red blood cells. They trained the lasers on blood vessels in the ear of a mouse. A detector captured the resulting protein signals, translating them into images, which researchers sequenced together to create a video of red blood cells flowing through the capillaries of a mouse. The movie shows a Y-shaped junction of blood capillaries with individual red blood cells.

Exposing a Galaxy within the Brain

A new imaging method developed at Stanford reveals the complex array of synapses in the cortex.

Collaborative Augmented Reality Makes Beautiful Music

Researchers demonstrate a collaborative augmented reality game.

Dude, Where's My Zipcar?

Technology Review reporter Lauren Cox tests the Zipcar app, which lets drivers find the nearest available car in 55 cities, on the iPhone. The mobile-phone app lets customers be more spontaneous about renting a vehicle for an hour or so.

New Augmented Reality Glasses Demoed

Vuzix, a company that makes virtual- and augmented-reality goggles, recently visited Technology Review to demonstrate its new Wrap 920AR glasses.

Augmented Reality Demo for Real Estate

This video illustrates how you can get the price of buildings in Paris, simply by using the camera of a mobile phone and an augmented-reality application powered by Layar technology.

A Step toward Holographic Videoconferencing

A full-color holographic display system refreshes every two seconds, fast enough to send live 3-D images.

Brain Control

Technology Review visits Ed Boyden, an assistant professor at the Media Lab and leader of the Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT, in his lab, where he demonstrates a device to turn neurons on and off and discusses how photosensitive proteins can be used to study and manipulate the workings on the brain.

How to Make an ATM Spew Out Money

Barnaby Jack, director of security testing at the computer security company IOActive, demonstrates how to hack an ATM to make it dispense money.

How Not to Make Energy Decisions

Lessons from the battle over Cape Wind.

The Meaning of Our New Designs

Technology Review looks prettier--but new looks express a new strategy.

Q&A: Lawrence Lessig

Technology Review's deputy editor, Brian Bergstein, sat down with Lawrence Lessig, a net-neutrality advocate who directs Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, to discuss why he thinks innovation on the Internet is at risk.

A Gentler Robotic Touch

A demonstration of how Aaron Dollar makes simple and versatile robotic hands in his lab at Yale University.

Sensors for Emotions

Rosalind Picard, professor at MIT, explains and demonstrates the Q Sensor.

Can Advertising Be Fun?

Seth Priebatsch, founder and “chief ninja” of the mobile game company SCVNGR, explains how giving users a genuine sense of fun can lead to big returns for businesses.

A Real Space Hopper for Mars

The rocket-propelled vehicle would explore planets more efficiently than wheeled rovers.

Guerrilla Webfare: Unauthorized "Brand-jacking" Videos

Fernando Motolese of guerrilla video shop Kamikaze Nerds in Sao Paulo, Brazil explains why he engages in Internet spoofs, brand-jacking and anti-marketing antics.

The Ultimate Social Persuasion Device

In the near future, all citizens will wear a centrally-controlled, super iPhone that tracks your movements and can scan everyone around you to divulge their net worth, their shopping history and their dating potential. The so-called äppärät is an invention of Gary Shteyngart, author of the satiric novel “Super Sad True Love Story.” Is there an äppärät in your future? To find out more we caught up with Shteyngart at Newtonville Books, near Boston.

Introduction: Welcome to Business Impact

An introduction from Evan I. Schwartz, senior business editor at Technology Review, to our new premium publication, Business Impact.

EmTech Video Q&A: Harry Atwater

The CalTech professor discusses the future of solar power and shows off a flexible, high efficiency solar cell.

EmTech Video Q&A: Brett Brewer

The GM of Microsoft Live Labs demos his technology to visualize the mounds of data on the web.

EmTech Video Q&A: Matt Grob

The Senior Vice President of R&D at Qualcomm discusses the company’s augmented reality platform for mobile devices.

EmTech Video Q&A: Wesley Chan

The Google Ventures partner discusses entrepreneurship and spotting “game-changing” innovations.

EmTech Video Q&A: David Karp

At EmTech 2010 The founder of Tumblr discusses short-form blogging and how his site competes with Facebook and Twitter.

Combing AI with Mind Control

Researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland demonstrate a wheelchair that uses “shared control” to navigate.

Making a Nano-Water Filter for the Developing World

Researchers at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California are developing a filter that rapidly kills bacteria in water. The researchers hope their filter will be used in the developing world, where at least one billion people lack access to clean water.

Flying Robotic Hands

The Yale Aerial Manipulator uses a flexible robotic hand to successfully grasp a range of objects while hovering.

Creating Online Tools for Creatives

At his startup’s headquarters in New York, Avi Muchnick, a 2010 TR35 member, explains where the inspiration for his online multimedia editing suite, Aviary, came from, and how people can use it to share work.

Diving into Data

A giant sphere at the University of California Santa Barbara visualizes science data in 3D, from brain scans to new molecules.

Engineering Viruses to Destroy Biofilms

Timothy Lu, a 2010 TR35 member, demonstrates at his lab in Boston how he is using the tools of synthetic biology to wipe out the bacterial goo that can plague humans and infest industrial equipment.

35 Innovators under 35

Jason Pontin, Technology Review's Editor in Chief and Publisher, explains how and why we choose our young leaders.

Connecting Games with Reality

Kati London, named to the 2010 TR35, explains how she designs games that incorporate real-world data to educate players at Area/Code’s offices in New York.

Fighting Disaster with Crowdsourcing

David Kobia, the 2010 TR35 Humanitarian of the Year, explains how Ushahidi grew from a single blog post to a sophisticated online platform that can manage crises around the world.

How to Make Robotic Hands

Aaron Dollar, a 2010 TR35 member, demonstrates in his lab at Yale University how he makes inexpensive and flexible plastic hands that robots can use to grasp a wide range of objects.

Learning the Ways of the People of the Web

2010 TR35 member Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, studies how people use social networks and makes recommendations about how companies can best use social technologies to serve their users. Recently, Boyd has been a vocal advocate for better privacy controls on social networks.

How to Redesign Life

At the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD, researchers have developed one of the most powerful methods yet for redesigning life. By editing genomes on the computer, synthesizing them in the lab, and transplanting the genomes into cells, Venter Institute researchers can speed up the process of genetic engineering. Ultimately, they want to design and create microbes that efficiently produce clean fuels, vaccines, and other products.

Commercializing Neurotechnology

TR35 member Mikhail Shapiro explains why he wants to develop better interfaces for the brain.

Making Better Photonic Devices

Michelle Povinelli, a member of the 2010 TR35, explains how a fuller understanding of light’s fundamental physics can lead to better designs for telecommunications devices and solar cells.

Heartbeats at the Speed of Light

An optic fiber emitting infrared light from a diode laser has been placed just one millimeter away from the developing heart of a two-day old quail embryo. As the laser pulse changes its speed, the heart alters its beat to match. This system is the first time that the whole heart of a living animal has been paced with light--a method that could yield insight into the development of heart defects as well as, much further down the road, provide a new approach for building

A New Way to Use the Sun’s Energy

Researchers at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California are testing a new type of device that can simultaneously convert both the light and the heat in the sun’s rays into electricity.

Hacking the iPhone

Technology Review’s I.T. Editor, Erica Naone, demonstrates how an app called JailbreakMe hacks the iPhone.

New Focus for Digital Photography

Software that gives users more control of a camera could revolutionize photography.

How to Make an ATM Spit Out Money

Barnaby Jack, who is director of research at IOActive Labs, made cash pour from an ATM for minutes on end during a flashy presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Car Chargers Get Smart

A new touchscreen charging station is programmable and can use input from both users and utilities to get better electricity prices.

A Smoother Street View

Microsoft's new toy allows for a more seamless walk down an online avenue.

Genetic Tests Get Bad Grades

A federal investigation finds conflicting test results and false marketing claims.

Tracking Single Molecules

Using a new molecule-flattening technique, researchers at Harvard can track small objects, such as these DNA molecules, under a fluorescence microscope.

Multiplying DNA in Drops of Water

Co-founder and and Vice President Darren Link demonstrates RainDance's microfluidics technology.

An Interactive Virtual Kitchen Tabletop

Intel researchers and a University of Washington graduate student demonstrate how a depth-sensing camera and palm-top projector turn an ordinary work surface into an interactive one. The researchers demoed the system, dubbed Oasis, at the ninth annual Intel Research Day, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

New Lithium-Ion Batteries

Researchers at MIT describe new high-power lithium-ion batteries that use modified carbon nanotubes.

How to Grow Lung Tissue

Lung tissue was grown on the decellularized scaffolding of an old lung to yield a transplantable organ.

Printing Displays at HP

Researchers at HP are developing methods for printing high-performance, flexible, and lightweight displays on rolls of plastic.

Cyber Security and the Risk of Cyber War

Experts talk about the growing threat of cyber crime, espionage, and warfare, and how to thwart it.

Advanced Solar Technology

The CTO of Suntech explains the company’s advanced solar technology, and takes you inside the manufacturing facilities.

Making New Livers out of Old Ones

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital are building new livers by using old, unhealthy ones that would normally be discarded. The scientists use a gentle detergent to wash away old cells and debris. The remaining scaffold, which retains its blood-vessel architecture, can then be seeded with healthy liver cells and transplanted into a living animal.

Microsoft’s New Display

Microsoft has developed a new type of wedge-shaped lens that precisely controls the direction of light emitted from it. The lens can easily be integrated into a liquid crystal display, and when a camera is added, the system is able to track viewers and project stereoscopic video directly into their eyes. In this demonstration, the system supports tow independent stereoscopic video projects.

Falcon 9 Soars in Its Debut

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Friday, June 4. The rocket’s maiden test flight is considered a boon for the commercial space industry.

The First Phone to Use WiMAX

Technology Review computing and IT editor, Tom Simonite, reviews HTC’s EVO 4G phone, which is available on Sprint and is the first phone that uses WiMAX, a technology that allows fast wireless Internet over long distances.

Surveillance Camera Says What it Sees

A prototype computer vision system generates a live text description of what’s happening in a feed from a surveillance camera. This could ease video searching and analysis.

E Ink’s E-Paper Prototypes

At the Display Week conference in Seattle, the company E Ink demonstrated its latest electronic display paper prototypes. The devices show crisper, brighter color, and are being combined with flexible backplanes from new owner PVI.

New Color Screen Combines Beauty, Readability

At the Society for Information Display’s annual conference, representatives from Qualcomm demoed their Mirasol display in a touch-screen prototype electronic reader. The device plays video in full color and uses half the battery power of a liquid crystal display. It will be commercially available by the end of the year.

Eye Tracking for Mobile Control

Researchers explain how EyePhone, a mobile eye-tracking system, works.

Photosynthetic Fish and Other Oddities

Zebrafish embryos (green) are injected with photosynthetic cyanobacteria (red) grow and survive. Researchers hope the findings might one day enable animals to harvest energy from sunlight.

Augmented-Reality Floor Gives Physical Feedback

This demo of interactive floor tiles developed by researchers at the University of McGill in Quebec, Canada, responds to a user with visual, audio and physical cues. The floor tiles could be used in an augmented reality setting, for training, rehabilitation, or entertainment.

Solar Car Racing in Australia

In October 2009, MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team competed in the World Solar Challenge in Australia, the world’s longest solar-powered car race. Technology Review sat down with team captain, Alex Arambula, and team member, Chris Pentacoff, to discuss preparing for and racing in Australia.

Nanotube Fibers

At Rice University in Houston, TX, researchers are making carbon nanotubes into long fibers that are lightweight, conductive, and strong.

A TR10 Primer

What the 10 technologies tell you about us.

A Study in Transparency

Media Lab Complex encourages collaboration

TR10: Social TV

As one of this year’s TR10 innovators Marie-Jose Montpetit is helping companies like BT develop better ways to integrate social media with television. We asked her about how her system works and what benefits is might bring to viewers.

TR10: Solar Fuel

One of this year’s TR10 innovators, Joule Biotechnologies, is developing a way to make biofuels without agricultural plants, using genetically engineered photosynthetic bacteria. We asked founder Noubar Afeyan about how his biofuel differed from others, and how long it might be before people could be filling their cars with it.

TR10: Green Concrete

One of this year’s TR10 innovators is Novacem, a British startup trying to solve the emission problem with a new way of making cement. We asked the company’s chief scientist, Nikoloas Vlasopoulos, why traditional cement manufacture is responsible for so much carbon dioxide and how the new cement gets around the problem.

TR10: Cloud Programming

TR10 innovator, Joseph Hellerstein, is trying to make life easier for programmers by creating tools that can take over data management within a cloud. We asked him about the potential of cloud computing and how his approach will unlock that potential.

TR10: Dual-Action Antibodies

At Genentech, one of this year’s TR10 innovators, Germaine Fuh is developing a new variety of drug that can target more than one type of molecule, potentially reducing costs and simplifying treatment. We asked Fuh how it worked and what it might mean for patients.

TR10: Mobile 3-D

TR10 innovator, Dynamic Digital Depth, has developed software that can convert 2-D video to 3-D, and can even work on mobile devices, where autostereoscopic, or glasses-free, 3-D displays can be used. We asked Julien Flack, the company’s CTO, how his software adds a third dimension to existing 2-D content , and why mobile devices will be so important to 3-D.

TR10: Light-Trapping Photovoltaics

Kylie Catchpole, one of this year’s TR10 innovators, is exploiting the unusual optical properties of silver nanoparticles to boost the efficiency of thin-film cells. We asked her how the technology worked, and its prospects for commercialization.

TR10: Implantable Electronics

One of this year’s TR10 innovators, Fiorenzo Omenetto, is developing implants made from silicon and sheets of silk, which dissolve away when no longer needed. We asked Omenetto about why he developed the technology, and the new types of implantable devices it will enable.

TR10: Real-Time Search

Google’s Amit Singhal, one of this year’s TR10 innovators, is leading the search giant’s effort to master Real-Time Search. We asked him why Real-Time Search was important, and how Google sorted the wheat from the chaff.

Review: Apple’s iPad

Technology Review senior editor, Stephen Cass, reviews Apple’s new device, the iPad.

Real-World Virtual Reality

Virtual reality: Companies demonstrated a range of virtual reality products at the IEEE's Virtual Reality 2010 conference this week. These products are mainly used for training and for designing and testing equipment.

The Slow Rise of the Robot Surgeon

Surgeons at Children’s Hospital Boston repair a blocked kidney using the Da Vinci surgical robot.

Home 3-D: Here, or Hype?

Robert Perry of Panasonic discusses the future of 3-D technology during Panasonic’s Touch the Future tour.

GM’s Augmented Reality Display

GM explains how its enhanced vision system would work to help drivers.

Ultra-Efficient Gas Engine Passes Test

Mike Rocke explains how his company, Transonic Combustion, improves the efficiency of gasoline engines by 50 to 75 percent.

Making More Solar Cells from Silicon

Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, talks about his company’s new “direct wafer” solar cell manufacturing process.

Making Sense of Mountains of Data

Engineers from Microsoft Live Labs demonstrate Pivot, a tool for visualizing and manipulating data.

Sick Capital

Why it matters that VCs won't do their jobs.

Cheap Solar Power

Bill Gross, founder and chairman of eSolar, explains how the company plans to make solar power as cheap as coal.

Scaling Up Solar Power

At Applied Materials headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, technicians are working on equipment for making the biggest solar cells on the market.

Twitter and the Real-Time Web

Twitter cofounders Evan Williams and Biz Stone discuss recent search deals, and Google’s Amit Singhal and Dylan Casey explain real-time search.

Searching for Biofuels' Sweet Spot

Technology Review visits an Amyris plant outside of Sao Paula, Brazil, and learns how the company turns sugar into diesel fuel.

Turning Math into Cash

IBM has found a new source of revenue: using its mathematicians' formulas in business services.

The Future Of Personalized Medicine

One of the pioneers of the automated sequencing of genomes, Leroy Hood, talks about his work in personalized medicine, and the challenges that must be overcome.

Mr. Magnet in Action

Paul Thomas, a technical supervisor at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, has reached almost half a million students through his Mr. Magnet shows and millions more through television appearances.

A Giant Leap for Humanoid Kind

NASA and General Motors have developed a humanoid robot called Robonaut2. It is more dexterous and human-like than its predecessor and other, similar robots. NASA hopes to use it for precursor missions to the moon or Mars, or to work side-by-side with astronauts on the space station. GM says the technology could be used in its manufacturing plants or put into its products. In the video engineers discuss the robots importance and demonstrate how it works.

Making OLED Displays Cheaper

A start-up in Menlo Park, CA hopes to bring down the cost of organic light-emitting diode displays by making equipment for printing them on a large scale. Kateeva is testing a prototype large-area printer it will send to display manufacturers for testing next year.

Malleable Maps, Artistic Robots and Bubble Interfaces

An event showcases the intersection of design and technology.

Young Blood Reverses Signs of Aging in Old Mice

Amy Wagers, investigator at Boston-based Joslin Diabetes Center and assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, explains the regenerative power of young blood.

NASA's Next Space Suit

Dan Barry, vice president and director of research and development at Worcester, MA-based David Clark Company, demonstrates the company's early prototype of the Constellation space suit, NASA's next suit for travel to the moon, Mars and beyond. The company is designing the new space suit in partnership with Houston-based Oceaneering International, who was awarded a $500 million contract from NASA.

Made-to-Order Heart Cells

Stem cell advance will help drug development.

A Synchronous Clock Made of Bacteria

Such microorganisms might make environmental sensors or drug delivery systems.

Cosmetics Testing without Animals

This video shows dendritic cells moving through a chemical gradient in a microfluidic device. This component will be used to connect skin cells to an artificial lymph node, and mimic an allergic response. Once complete, the whole test might allow for the elimination of skin allergy testing on animals.

Color Comes to the Electronic Page

From this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, four display technologies vying to transform your next e-reader.

Inflatable Device Stops the Bleeding

Maynard Ramsey, the chief executive officer and chief scientist at CardioCommand, a Tampa, FL-based medical device company, demonstrates a new device to halt hemorrhaging. It is a balloon-based device, 12.25 inches long and .5 inches in diameter prior to deployment, that is inserted into a wound and inflated in less than 90 seconds.

Explaining Real-Time Search

Google Fellow Amit Singhal explains how tweets and other real-time Web information is captured by Google search.

"Emergent" Images to Outwit Spambots

See how emerging videos are able to hide a moving subject from pattern recognition software.

A Helmet to Prevent Paralysis

Engineers are designing a helmet that could protect the spine from serious injury.

Broadband on Rails

Two antenna feeds move freely around the outside of this compact lens, which is intended to provide broadband Internet access to trains that have to go through narrow tunnels. Each feed is capable of sending and receiving a different satellite signal.

On the Evolution of Technology

New technologies are missing many things, but especially their markets.

A President's Urgent Call—from MIT

Excerpts from Barack Obama’s address on clean energy at MIT.

"Very Stunning, Very Space, and Very Cool"

An oral history of the launch of space tourism.

The Geological Strata of Things

Old technologies seldom die; they get upgraded.

Parallel Universe

Robert X. Cringely, a writer, broadcaster, and computer guru, explains a computer’s components--microprocessors, parallel processing, and multicore architecture--and how they work together.

Interpreting the Genome

Stanley N. Lapidus, founder and chairman of Helicos Biosciences, talks about his decision to have his genome sequenced and the results made public as part of George Church’s Personal Genome Project.

Spinning Silk into Sensors

Fiorenzo Omenetto, associate professor of biomedical engineering and physics at Tufts University School of Engineering, explains his work in silk optics.

Lifeline for Renewable Power

General Electric’s Juan de Bedout demonstrates the company’s software system to improve the electric grid.

Perspectives on Cloud Security

Researchers describe the potential benefits, and security challenges, of cloud computing.

The Cryptographic Solution

Microsoft Researcher Kristin Lauter discusses cryptographic-based cloud access and search.

Trading Shares in Milliseconds

Manjo Narang, CEO of Tradeworx, talks about his company’s high-speed trading technology and what such systems mean in today’s stock market.

A Material to Capture Carbon Dioxide

Allen Wright, senior staff associate at Columbia University, demonstrates a material that captures carbon dioxide from the air, which could be used to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Why Climate Scientists Support Geoengineering Research

Ronald Prinn, a professor of atmospheric science and the director of the center for global change science at MIT, says why climate scientists have started to change their minds about geoengineering.

How Rocks Capture Carbon Dioxide

Peter Kelemen, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, describes how to capture and store carbon dioxide by speeding up a reaction found naturally in certain rocks.

Searching Unstructured Data

Mike Lynch, cofounder and chief executive of Autonomy, talks about how to search unstructured data and explains his company’s technology.

Nervy Repair Job

Douglas Smith, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how his new nerve stretching technique works to grow artificial nerve transplants.

Playing the Angles

How to Photograph the Earth

MIT students, Oliver Yeh and Justin Lee, explain, build, and demonstrate their device that takes pictures of the Earth for less than $150.

Synthetics Stop the Bleeding

Biomedical engineer Erin Lavik discusses her research developing nanoparticles that promotes blood clotting.

The Democrats' New Weapon

Watch Mark Sullivan, cofounder of Voter Activation Network, demonstrate a new voter database mapping interface called turf-cutter, which helps campaigns quickly divide territory before sending canvassers to knock on doors.

The Building, Digitally Remastered

In this era, the rectilinear glass box has become a quaint relic of the predigital past.

The Geography of Innovation

The global culture of valuable, fresh thinking.

TV Tennis, Anyone?

Stephen Cass, senior editor of special projects at Technology Review, puts together a Pong game kit.

Keeping Tabs on Tools

Ravi Pappu, cofounder of Cambridge-based ThingMagic, demonstrates a truck-based RFID system at the company’s lab in Woburn, MA. The system, called Tool Link, takes inventory of the items packed in a truck bed and alerts the user if any are missing.

Enhancing Video for the Visually Impaired

Researchers are using algorithms that can better the picture quality for people with macular degeneration.

What's Next for Computer Interfaces?

A user demonstrates a nanoTouch device.

No More Thumbprints

New chemistry and microsurfaces have led to super oil-repellent materials that are self-cleaning.

Magnetic Liquid Separates Blood Cells

An applied magnetic field creates waves in a liquid containing magnetic nanoparticles (not visible here) that separate two types of microbeads based on their size. The same technique can be used to separate blood cells and bacteria.

The Best Photon Detector Yet

Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's Photonics Technology Lab, describes the company’s new silicon-based avalanche photodetector and explains the technical challenges involved in making it.

The Extensible Obama

Watch Tom Daschle, the incoming secretary of health and human services, and Lauren Aronson, a member of Obama’s health-policy team, respond to online comments in this video made by the Obama transition team.

Back-Button to the Future

Mira Dontcheva, a researcher at Adobe Systems, explains how Zoetrope can be used to browse back through a Web page’s history. She demonstrates a few advanced techniques for looking at historic data and shows how to compare several Web pages over time.

A New Twist on Hydropower

Michael Bernitsas of the University of Michigan's department of marine engineering explains how his VIVACE generation system captures the energy in vortex-induced vibrations as water flows past a cylindrical bar. The system, he says, can work in slow currents where turbine and water-mill technologies are ineffective.

A Design for Cheaper Wind Power

A design that draws on jet engine technology could halve the cost of generating electricity from wind.

Modeling Brain Blasts

A computer simulation reveals how blast waves reverberate around a soldier's helmet.

Memristors Make Chips Cheaper

The first hybrid memristor-transistor chip could be cheaper and more energy efficient.

Astronauts Lose $100,000 Tool Kit

Important pieces of hardware float away as the astronauts watch in dismay.

Tongue Control

This video shows a person using the University of Wisconsin Brain-Computer Interface system with tongue stimulation.

Less-Invasive Brain Interfaces

This movie shows the thin-film micro-ECoG device being pressed down on the surface of water in a petri dish. The ultraflexible nature of the implant means that it cannot exert enough force to break the surface tension of the water. And the properties of polymer used allow it to stick and grab on to the water’s surface. The same thing happens when it is placed on the hydrated surface of the brain, allowing the implant to float with the brain as it moves within the skull without losing contact with the cortical surface.

Augmented Reality on Mobile Phones

A look at some of the newest developments.

Opening the Space Frontier

NASA’s Constellation Program plans to build spacecraft and vehicles to return astronauts to the Moon and possibly Mars.

The Shuttle Maneuvering in Space

The Space Shuttle Atlantis conducts a rendezvous pitch maneuver--a backflip to reach the same orbital velocity as another spacecraft--before docking with the International Space Station. Atlantis is traveling at an orbital velocity of 17,500 miles per hour and is rotating three-quarters of a degree per second.

Superstrong Carbon-Nanotube Fibers

A new process could make nanotube fibers that are strong enough to stop bullets.

A Wiring Diagram of the Brain

The emerging field of connectomics could help researchers decode the brain’s approach to information processing.

Bendable Magnetic Interface

A sensing surface developed by Microsoft researchers offers new ways to use computers.

Making 3D Maps on the Move

The Remotely Operated and Autonomous Mapping System (ROAMS) creates maps using a rotating laser and camera.

Test Driving Google Voice Search

The new application only occasionally thinks that I want flying pizza.

The Future of Healthcare

The technologies that are sure to better the industry.

Twitter and Ambient Intimacy

How Evan Williams helped create the new social medium of microblogging.

Biodegradable Transistors

Zhenan Bao, an associate professor of chemical engineering, and Christopher Bettinger, a postdoctoral fellow, show off the biodegradable electronics they make in their lab at Stanford University.

Helping Hands

This robotic rehabilitation device from Northeastern University uses electrically responsive fluid in its gears to adjust resistance as a patient performs gripping exercises. A patient who is recovering from a stroke, for example, could use the device to strengthen motor control as she plays a maze game.

A Robotic Gait Corrector

This device, one of several robotic rehabilitation tools from Northeastern University, adjusts a person’s gait as he walks.

Robo-Rehab for MRIs

This robotic rehabilitation device from Northeastern University is designed to let patients exercise hand and forearm muscles while in an MRI machine. Using a stroke-rehabilitation device in an MRI might let a doctor see the effects of the exercise on the brain.

Backpacks for Cells

In the first part of this time-lapse video, an immune cell equipped with a tiny polymer backpack gambols across a microscope slide for some six hours before getting stuck. In the second part of the video, cells with backpacks full of magnetic nanoparticles are tugged toward a magnet, while cells without backpacks stay put.

Tracking Traffic with Cell Phones

A new project collects traffic data from GPS-enabled cell phones.

Engineering Edible Bacteria

Synthetic biology could yield microbes that fight cavities and produce vitamins.

Firefox on Your Cell Phone

Madhava Enros, Mozilla’s user-experience designer, demonstrates the alpha release of Fennec, a Web browser for mobile devices.

Sequencing Price Drops Even Lower

This time-lapse video shows tightly packed balls of DNA being washed over a sequencing array. The array is designed so that the balls (white spots) stick to specific spots. The concentration of DNA balls that stick to the array increases over time. This tight packing of DNA strands decreases the amount of reagents needed in the sequencing reaction, lowering the cost of sequencing a genome.

Repairing Hubble

NASA's next servicing mission for the telescope will be one of its most challenging.

Sticky Space Spider

A robotic insect is designed to explore rough, alien terrain.

Obama's Web Future

Jascha Franklin-Hodge--cofounder of Blue State Digital, which built Obama’s online social-networking tools--describes how the president-elect’s social-networking strategy made for a well-oiled Election Day effort. Franklin-Hodge also discusses the future of Obama’s e-mail database of "millions and millions" of supporters.

Stealthy Nanoparticles Attack Cancer Cells

Jeff Hrkach and Greg Troiano of BIND Biosciences explain how they make drug-delivering nanoparticles.

The Healthy Skinny Pill

In 2007, researchers in Europe studied the health effects of resveratrol, a compound found in red wine. Part of the study included testing mice’s endurance by having them run on a treadmill. Here, the mouse on the right was fed resveratrol, while the mouse on the left was untreated. The treated mouse ran longer and harder than its running mate. This year, researchers conducted a study using a new compound, SRT1720, which targets the same pathway as resveratrol. Again, they tested the mice on the treadmill and found that mice fed this compound showed a similar improvement in performance.

Patching Hearts

This video shows a patch of engineered heart tissue "beating" in response to electrical field stimulation. Rat heart cells are embedded in a scaffold that mimics the properties of the heart.

Philanthropy's New Prototype

The cofounder of MIT's Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, wants to make $100 laptops available to poor children throughout the world. The next few months will be critical in determining whether the One Laptop per Child project succeeds.

In Praise of Print

Where traditional magazines are better than the web.

Voyage of the Bacteria Bots

Bacteria (fast white spots) swim through human blood in a microfluidic substrate with guidance from an MRI machine. The bacteria swim against the current, past red blood cells (slower white spots).

A Robot Music Instructor

A clever flute-playing robot offers an impressive rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee. Its “lungs” consist of a bellow that moves air in and out, and its “tongue” can block air in two places to transition between notes. Its “vocal cords” are a vibrato device that can change vibrations according to the air flow, and it even has elastic “lips” that can control its airstream, changing in width, thickness, and angle as it plays.

Testing Cheap Wind Power

A continuously variable transmission could lead to cheaper wind power--if it is rugged enough.

Rich Miner Speaks

Following a packed keynote at last week's Mobile Internet World conference, Google's group manager of open platforms, Rich Miner, sat down to take questions from the audience. Here, he comments on the process that Google used to develop Android and on the pressures of an open platform.

Muscle-Computer Interface Meets Microsoft’s Surface

This clip shows a muscle-computer interface coupled to Microsoft’s Surface touch table.

Muscle-Bound Computer Interface

This video shows how a muscle-sensing computer interface interprets specific hand gestures.

Microsoft's Many Multitouch Mice

Microsoft’s five multitouch mouse prototypes--the Orb, Arty, Side Mouse, FTIR and Cap Mouse--are demonstrated in this video. Each mouse combines traditional functions, such as click and drag, with the ability to use simple gestures to zoom or browse photos.

Biomedical Robots Galore

At the BioRob 2008 Conference, in Arizona, researchers from around the world gathered to present robots with a wide range of abilities--from mimicking the strange properties of living systems to aiding health outside and inside the human body.

Micro-vehicle Imitates the Winged Maple Seed

The new "robo-seed" flies using just a single propeller.

Faster Maintenance with Augmented Reality

An augmented-reality headset developed at Columbia University shows virtual arrows, text labels, and warnings, depending on where the user is looking.

Tiny Devices Use Light to Grab Cells

Ken Crozier, associate professor at Harvard University, shows off three optical devices he’s developing in the lab. These devices use laser light to grab onto particles such as biological cells and might be integrated into clinical diagnostics.

Glue That Sticks to Nearly Everything

For an easy-to-make adhesive inspired by mussels, possible applications abound.

How NASA's Next Mars Rover Will Land

Watch this video to learn how the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), scheduled to launch in 2009, will land on the Martian surface. It is a completely new approach that, while being technically sophisticated, is also just plain cool.

Robot Mimics a Canine Helper

An assistive robot at Georgia Institute of Technology, called El-E, can open drawers, doors and even a microwave by grasping affixed towels, much in the same way a service dog would. El-E can also follow verbal commands, such as “tug it” or “tug it down.” An assistive robot like this could benefit those with disabilities or the elderly living at home.

A 3D Video of the Embryonic Heartbeat

In this video of a mouse embryo, made 8.5 days after conception and one day after the heart has begun to form, the heartbeat is visible. The video was made using a variation on a technique called optical-coherence tomography. It’s being used by researchers at the University of Houston to take the highest resolution video yet of the developing mammalian heart. Their goal is a better understanding of why one percent of US infants are born with cardiovascular problems.

Untangling Web Information

The Semantic Web organizer Twine offers bookmarking with built-in AI.

Redirecting Motion in Augmented Reality

Within this game, software automatically displaces virtual objects so that players will not interfere with one another’s physical space. Called Redirected Motion, the technique could help in other situations where users share an augmented reality space.

Bringing Books to Life

U.K. readers of Templar Publishing’s Drake’s Comprehensive Compendium of Dragonology can use a Web camera with their book to control an on-screen animation of a dragon.

Tracking Multiple Objects in Augmented Reality

Researchers at the University of Oxford have developed an object-recognition system that successfully tracks multiple objects in an indoor space.

Ghosts in the Machine

How my personal experiences prompted "Prescription: Networking."

White Matter

Biomedical editor Emily Singer had a diffusion tensor scan, a variation of MRI that allows scientists to visualize the brain’s white matter, at UCLA. Neuroscientist Andrew Frew used brain imaging software from BrainLab to create these movies, highlighting different sections of white matter.

Brain Imaging and IQ

Richard Haier, a psychologist and emeritus professor at the University of California, Irvine, explains how brain imaging is shedding light on intelligence.

Mining Fool's Gold for Solar

Berkeley researcher Cyrus Wadia talks about his vision for the future of solar energy and demonstrates how to make a solar cell from fool’s gold.

Apollo's Rocket Scientists

What is the legacy of the Apollo program, and what can we learn from it to help us confront the scientific and engineering challenges of our own time? This short film kicked off the "Giant Leaps" Symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. The symposium was organized by the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department, and held at MIT on June 11, 2009.

Tagging the World

This video explains the Bokode concept of embedding small optical tags easily readable by normal cameras.

Robofish

This robofish prototype, less than a foot long, swims via a single motor.

LOLrioKart Tour

A student takes a tour of the Institute in the LOLrioKart.

The LOLrioKart

MIT students test the LOLrioKart.

Falling, Unwinding, Cascading

Kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson is a former artist in residence at MIT and the inventor of the foam construction toy Toobers and Zots. He led the Friday After Thanksgiving Chain Reaction at the MIT Museum in 2008.

Prescription: Networking

Boston Medical Center is one of a relative few of U.S. hospitals that have managed to break down bureaucratic barriers to exchange electronic medical records with community health centers having different owners—a first step toward statewide and nationwide exchanges to improve health-care quality and reduce waste. Meg Aranow, the hospital’s chief information officer, and Andrew Ulrich, an emergency department physician, describe the rationale for and emerging uses of this electronic-records network now serving many of Boston’s inner-city patients.

Health-Care IT: The Economic Perspective

With Congress locked in a debate over how to reform the United States’ $2.3 trillion health-care industry, Harvard economist and health-care policy expert David Cutler explains how information technology affects the quality and economics of health care.

Demonstrating Health-Care Networking

Dan Newman, chief medical information officer of Boston Medical Center, explains the workings of the hospital’s new electronic-records network connecting BMC with community health centers in the Boston area.

iTube

Why 23,201 people care that Justine Ezarik just ate a cookie.

Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Terrorism

Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard University and the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, talks about the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Fuel-Cell Power-Up

MIT professor of chemical engineering Paula Hammond explains the difference between fuel cells and batteries, how a fuel cell works, and why a methanol fuel cell in particular is useful. Through her work, she brings methanol fuel cells closer to use in practical applications, such as powering cell phones and laptops.

Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, founders of the personal-genomics company 23andMe, talk about their goals for the company and the drive to personalize medicine.

The Brain Unveiled

This video combines different types of brain imaging to visualize a brain tumor in a female patient. Superimposed on a picture of the patient’s head are black and white images generated from traditional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presented sequentially in three different axes: side to side, front to back, and top to bottom. The tumor is then shown in yellow in the left hemisphere of the brain. Scientists further analyzed the data collected from the MRI to map the network of nerve fibers in the brain, seen here as red, green, and purple fibers. Neurosurgeons use these maps during surgery to remove the tumor to avoid damaging fiber tracts that are linked to important brain functions.

Upwardly Mobile

India is the fastest-growing mobile communications market in the world. The rural poor are rapidly adopting phones, so the technology could become a platform for providing banking services. Sanjay Swamy, CEO of the mobile-payment platform mChek, talks about the potential.

A VC's Perspective on Mobile Banking in India

Mohanjit Jolly, executive director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, in India, describes how the country’s rural poor could improve their lives thanks to credit and banking services obtained via increasingly cheap mobile-phone services.

Dear Mr. President

Like snowflakes upon a sea, and as little regarded, are letters to a new president.

Making Heart Muscle

Scientists grew cardiac muscle cells on a thin polymer film, then tested the cells’ ability to contract. As they contract, the cells distort the shape of the polymer.

Telescopes See Farther

This animation shows the Thirty Meter Observatory and telescope design, which will use advanced optics to peer deep into the early universe.

The Marcellus Shale Gas Rush

Over the last several years, vast amounts of natural gas have been found in the Marcellus shale that lies underneath vast areas of western New York, western and northern Pennsylvania, and parts of Ohio and West Virginia. If geologists are right, the Marcellus shale could be the world’s second-largest natural-gas field in the world. The natural gas is held tightly trapped in the shale, but advanced drilling techniques have made it economical to drill for the gas. Much of the activity is centered in the counties south of Pittsburgh.

How to (Rapidly) Move a Drilling Rig

This speeded-up video shows how a natural-gas drilling rig, at a Range Resources site, can be quickly moved to drill a series of wells, each only a few feet apart. The specially designed, multi-ton rig “walks” from one well to the next, allowing Range to efficiently drill a half-dozen wells at the site.

Drilling for Shale Gas

Economically recovering natural gas from shale deposits depends on advanced drilling techniques. This video illustrates how horizontal drilling allows gas producers to follow a shale deposit for up to a mile, greatly increasing the productivity of the well. It also illustrates the technique of “fracturing,” in which large volumes of water are used to shatter the shale, allowing the natural gas to flow to the well.

Oppenheimer's Ghost

Can we control the evolution and uses of technology?

An Easier Upgrade to Holographic Storage

Watch Brian Lawrence, manager of GE’s Integrated Polymer Systems Lab, in Niskayuna, NY, discuss the history of recording media. He also explains how holographic storage discs are made and how data is written to them.

Sticky Nanotape

An adhesive made out of carbon nanotubes is structured like the surface of a gecko foot. It’s 10 times more adhesive, but still reusable, as demonstrated in this video.

Novel Chip for Monitoring Breast Cancer

This video illustrates how estrogen is extracted from a drop of human blood using a novel microfluidics chip developed at the University of Torotono. The samples are lysed, and then the estrogen is extracted into a polar solvent (methanol), while the unwanted parts of the blood sample are extracted into a non-polar solvent (isooctane).

Light-Switched Drug Delivery

This three-dimensional micrograph shows a living cell (shown in green) with engineered capsules (shown in red) inside. An electric shock was applied to the cell to get the capsules inside. While that approach works well in vitro, the researchers hope to come up with a more acceptable approach for clinical applications.

Simpler Flexible Displays

This animated cartoon is projected by a 635-nanometer scanning laser at eight kilohertz onto a flexible plastic screen. Screens that fluoresce blue, green, and yellow-red could eventually be combined to create a full-color display.

How to Deliver Online Gaming, Minus the Lag

OnLive CEO Steve Perlman explains how his cloud videogame service deals with real network conditions.

Teaching Robots New Tricks

An autonomous helicopter performs a slew of tricks using a flight path based on video analysis of the maneuvers. The helicopter automatically adjusts its course during flight to account for changes in wind speed.

Flexible Robotic Hand Shows Off Dexterity

In this 2007 video, a researcher controls the flexible, soft robotic SDM hand to demonstrate the variety of items it can grasp, even if holding them imprecisely. It can also pick up a glass of wine without spilling it, and remove a CD from a CD stack.

A Simpler, Gentler Robotic Grip

In this more recent video, the SDM hand now has sensors embedded in it, so that it can detect and grasp objects with its flexible fingers on its own and figure out the best grasp for an object.

GE's Risky Energy Research

Michael Idelchik, VP of Advanced Technologies, discusses energy research.

Craig Mundie's Cloud Vision

Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer discusses ways to transform personal computing.

Building a Self-Assembling Stomach-Bot

The team at ETH Zurich tested a single and double magnet setup to see which works better for robotic capsule self-assembly. The hope is to eventually construct a self-assembling, surgical robot that can investigate the intestines.

Stomach-Bot in Action

The modules stay securely linked by the magnets at the ends of the capsules.

Laser-Triggered Chemical Reactions

Nylon microcapsules containing carbon nanotubes heat up and then burst when illuminated with a near-infrared laser. These photo-triggered capsules can release chemicals on demand, allowing for precise control of chemical reactions.

Intelligent, Chatty Machines

A startup hopes to help computers have meaningful conversations with people.

NASA Road-Tests New Moon Rover

A NASA-led team of researchers called the Desert Research and Technology Studies (D-RATS) field test their new lunar rover and human-exploration robotic systems in Black Point Lava Flow, AZ.

Color-Blind Monkeys Get Full Color Vision

Dalton, a squirrel monkey who used to be red-green colorblind, can now see those colors, thanks to a novel gene therapy treatment. Scientists test his color vision by showing him a circle of red dots within a grey-green background. When Dalton touches the correct location of the red spot, he is rewarded with a drop of juice.

The Future of Solar

Emanuel Sachs, 1366 Technologies's chief technology officer and professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, reflects on lessons learned from his earlier startup, Evergreen Solar, and discusses whether breakthroughs are needed for solar power to compete with conventional sources of electricity.

Improving Solar Cell Efficiency

Emanuel Sachs, 1366 Technologies's chief technology officer and a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, explains the physics of solar cells and how to make them more efficient.

Solar Lab Tour

Craig Lund, director of business development at 1366 Technologies, and Emanuel Sachs, the company's chief technology officer, give a behind-the-scenes look at the company's lab and pilot manufacturing line.

A Turing Test for Computer Game Bots

This clip shows a BotPrize judge (identified as player 711) from last year, playing against a bot in Unreal Tournament 2004.

A New Perspective on the Virtual World

A startup hopes to compete with Google Earth by building a more natural world.

A New Type of Molecular Switch

IBM researchers report a potential breakthrough in molecular electronics.

Cleaner Weed Eaters

Bernardo Herzer, the founder and CEO of Lehr, a startup based in Los Angeles, describes the company’s environmentally-friendly lawn equipment and demonstrates two of Lehr's products.

The Art of the Possible

Can Eric Bonabeau's Hunch Engine expand your mind?

10 Ways to Think about Innovation

What successful young technologists know

A Helping Hand for Surgery

A tiny gripper that responds to chemical triggers could be a new tool for surgery.

Changing A Cell's Biological Battery

This video shows how researchers at Oregon Health & Science University created a fertile egg through a process they call spindle-chromosomal complex transfer, which allowed for the complete replacement of mitochondrial DNA.

Harvesting Power from the Ocean

A new technology could generate electricity from waves.

Flybot Takes Wing

In its first flight, Robert Wood’s robotic fly mimics the wing motion of real insects to successfully take off. The tiny, flexible robotic parts are created with a novel fabrication technique.

How-To Hits the Web

Instructables CEO Eric Wilhelm discusses the philosophy behind the website, which allows people to describe their do-it-yourself projects step by step.

Electric Avenue

JB Straubel shows off the Roadster, Tesla Motors’ high-performance electric sports car, and discusses the future of electric vehicles.

Protecting the Heart

Surgical resident and bioengineer Bilal Shafi talks about heart failure and demonstrates how his new technology prevents it.

Making Graphene

Kostya Novoselov, a fellow at the University of Manchester, demonstrates his low-tech technique for making graphene in the lab.

Shared Searching

This brief demo highlights the features of SearchTogether that allow groups of people to more effectively share the work and the results of online information hunts.

Projector Tracking

In work that built on his doctoral dissertation, Johnny Lee, along with colleagues at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, prototyped a projector system that could keep an image framed on a moving handheld screen.

Wii-mote for Whiteboards

Johnny Lee demonstrates how to build a low-cost digital whiteboard using the Nintendo Wii remote and an infrared-light emitter.

Simple Stem Cells

Konrad Hochedlinger describes the benefits of induced pluripotent stem cells and explains how he has improved their production.

Improving Imaging

Nicholas Fang explains how superlenses can enable scientists to use standard microscopes to view individual molecules inside living cells.

jack: presenting Twitter

CEO Jack Dorsey recounts the origins of his obsession with status updates and how it led to the birth of Twitter—and to original uses for microblogging.

Faster Flow

A comparison of the performance of an animated simulation of fluid flow on different processors highlights how much faster RapidMind can make programs run on both multicore processors and specialized processors, such as graphics chips.

People-aware computing

Tanzeem Choudhury demonstrates her wearable sensor platform and describes how software can analyze the data to provide valuable information about users’ activity patterns, social networks, and even health.

Dropping In

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert discusses how his vision and the open-source nature of the project benefit the content-management system.

An Intelligent Electric Grid

Peter L. Corsell, founder and CEO of GridPoint, talks about the problems inherent in today’s electric grid and describes how GridPoint’s technology improves the system’s efficiency, flexibility, and reliability.

A Growing Repertoire

Chen founded Thatgamecompany to create and market Zen game. Its first original title, Flower, will be released for Sony PlayStation 3 later this year.

Flight of Fancy

As a graduate student in interactive media at the University of Southern California, Chen used flow theory to create Cloud, an award-winning game that allows players to experience relaxing, meditative flight from a child’s perspective.

In-Box Revisited

A brief “tour” of Xobni highlights the features that make the Outlook plug-in so helpful.

Bomb Buster

Aimée Rose demonstrates one of the ultrasensitive, handheld explosives detectors that she helped to develop, first as a graduate student at MIT and then as a research scientist at ICx Technologies.

Doing the Dishes

In order to unload a dishwasher, STAIR determines on the fly how best to grasp unfamiliar objects.

Fetching Objects

Cued by a verbal command, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (STAIR) retrieves a stapler from an unfamiliar room.

Robotic Assistance

Stanford’s Andrew Ng explains his work to build a general-purpose household robot and demonstrates some of the prototype’s unique abilities.

How Obama Really Did It

Jascha Franklin-Hodge, cofounder and chief technology officer of Blue State Digital, describes how the company helped create and manage Barack Obama's highly successful online social network.

Does the U.S. Need a CTO?

Mitch Kapor explains why the country needs a CTO.

Intensifying the Sun

Jon Mapel, cofounder of Covalent Solar, explains how the solar-power company got its start and how its technology works.

Tesla Roadster

Tesla's chief technology officer, JB Straubel, discusses the technology behind the electric Roadster as he drives through San Carlos, CA.

Authenticity in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility

Do social technologies make us less sincere?

35 Innovators under 35

Jason Pontin, TR’s Editor in Chief, talks about selecting this year's winners and highlights a few.

TR35: James Carey

Jim Carey, co-founder of SiOnyx, explains how his company makes “black silicon” and how it could be used to make devices such as inexpensive night-vision equipment.

TR35: Andrea Thomaz

Here, the social robot Simon tests its manipulation abilities to pick up an object and place it in a basket. In a simulation, Simon gives social cues, such as nods and eye movement, to communicate to an instructor. The social instructor gives instructions (typed), which Simon follows to successfully build a toy block house. After a few sessions with the operator, Simon understands that the absolute location of the house is not important, only the relative location of the pieces.

Bone-setting Glue

A video narrated by Russell Stewart shows the sandcastle worm creating its mineral tube and a brief demonstration of synthetic adhesive based on the worm's natural glue.

On Openness

What freedom attracts.

When Buffy Met Her Vampire Match

Video artists Jonathan McIntosh and Julie Levin Russo discuss how open technologies could ease the difficult task of remixing existing television shows and movies.

TR35: Jorge Conde

Jorge Conde, co-founder and CEO of Knome, describes what you can learn from your genome and demonstrates the company’s unique browser for surfing the genome.

TR35: Andrew Perlman

Andrew Perlman describes a process for converting coal into natural gas, as well as other energy-related projects he's working on.

TR35: Jeffrey Bigham

Jeff Bigham of the University of Washington demonstrates WebAnywhere, which allows the visually impaired to use a Web browser on public terminals without the need to install or configure special accessibility software.

TR35: Cody Friesen

Cody Friesen, an associate professor of materials science at Arizona State University, explains his new battery design.

TR35: Pranav Mistry

Pranav Mistry, a graduate student at MIT, explains how his new wearable device, SixthSense, enhances the real world with digital information.

TR35: Michelle Khine

Michelle Khine, a biomedical engineer at University of California, Irvine, explains how she uses children’s toys to make high-tech diagnostic chips.

TR35: Shahram Izadi

Microsoft researcher Shahram Izadi explains the benefits of using touch in computing technology. Here, he discusses--and demonstrates--a new way of interacting with digital information on a touch screen.

The Electric Acid Test

On the Isle of Man, the beginnings of a marketable electric motorcycle.

Making Video as Easy to Edit as Text

Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard and Mark Surman demonstrate a novel insertion of Twitter feeds into real-time video streams and discuss how open-source video tools will make such innovation easy.

TR35: José Gómez-Márquez

Jose Gomez-Marquez, program director for the Innovations in International Health program at MIT, demonstrates some of the medical technologies he is developing for use in countries such as Nicaragua.

TR35: Adrien Treuille

Adrien Treuille, an assistant professor in the computer graphics group at Carnegie Mellon University, describes how better physics simulations could have implications in fields as diverse as architecture, racing, and medicine.

A Touch of Ingenuity

Ken Perlin, a professor of computer science at NYU, and Ilya Rosenberg, an NYU graduate student, show off their pressure-sensitive touch pads.

Digital Info on the Real World

Pranav Mistry, a graduate student at MIT, demos his augmented-reality system, SixthSense, in Cambridge, MA.

TR35: Kevin Fu

Kevin Fu, a software engineer and assistant professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, explains how he secures RFID systems from would-be hackers.

A Secret Tool for the U.S. Swim Team

Swimmer Ariana Kukors presses her fingers into a device built to measure the force she generates with her freestyle kick. (She doesn't hold on to anything.) The red vertical line shows the amount of force at a point in time. Kukors's kick is strong and consistent, which is why the wave signal generally has the same amplitude throughout the recording.

2007 TR35: Innovator of the Year

David Berry at Flagship Ventures is creating genetically engineered organisms that make biofuels.

Body Parts, New and Improved

Amputee athletes are getting faster and stronger.

Whom Should We Reward?

Innovations in technology and science have many authors, although only a few are recognized.

Drawing Circuits with Nano Pens

Each white square is a polymer nano pen. When the pen tips make contact with a surface, the amount of light that they reflect increases, allowing for easy monitoring of the writing process.

Rogue Pharmacies Dominate Bing's Ads

LegitScript and KnujOn released a report documenting the prevalence of ads from illegal Internet pharmacies on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The Brain Unmasked

This animation was generated from a normal human subject. It shows only the fibers that originate in a particular cross section of the brain. The blue arc in the middle of the brain is part of the cingulum bundle. Radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital are beginning to use this method to examine their patients’ brain: it provides a quick way to scan through the entire set of data for abnormalities.

Sun + Water = Fuel

With catalysts created by an MIT chemist, sunlight can turn water into hydrogen. If the process can scale up, it could make solar power a dominant source of energy.

Controlling a Gut Bot's Position

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have made a swallowable capsule robot that they can anchor to specific spots in the gut. In the center of the capsule robot rests a leg; the transparent polymer elastomer footpad is visible. The footpads are covered with oil-coated micropillars that stick to tissue without damaging it.

Crowdsourcing Closer Government Scrutiny

Watch a video explaining how to use the government's new IT Dashboard.

Looking Back, Hopping Forward

The Talaris vehicle is being tested at 50%, 65%, and 75% throttle, hovering at each level before increasing to the next thrust threshold. The test vehicle will be able to simulate the moon’s gravity by removing 5/6 of its own weight, which will help develop guidance, navigation and control algorithms for the Next Giant Leap team’s lunar hopper.

How to Land Safely Back on the Moon

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently tested the LIDAR sensors and algorithms that will translate raw data into a 3-D terrain map of the moon’s surface for future lunar-landing expeditions. This video describes the test and the technology used for autonomous landings and hazard detection.

Solar Sailing in Space

NASA’s Dean Alhorn, lead engineer for the NanoSail-D satellite, demonstrates how the spacecraft will deploy its solar sail in space.

Q&A: Mark Little, Head of GE Global Research

The head of research at GE discusses the stimulus package and new technologies for addressing climate change.

Brain Surgery Using Sound Waves

This animation shows how InSightec’s high-intensity ultrasound technology, used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging, can destroy small pieces of diseased brain tissue without cutting into the skull.

Helping Robots Get a Grip

Research at Columbia University shows a faster, more efficient way to control a complicated robotic hand.

Lithium-Ion Motorcycles

Better batteries are making electric motorcycles possible, providing a cleaner alternative to pollution-spewing gas-powered bikes.

A Musical Score for Disease

Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, translated populations of genes into musical notes. Each constellation (green) represents a key network of interrelated genes (blue). Each network is represented by a musical note. In healthy cells, the notes form music in harmony, indicating a healthy state. In cancer cells, the soundtrack veers out of harmony, signaling a transition from a healthy to a diseased state.

The Big Smart Grid Challenges

GE researchers explain how the key elements of an intelligent grid will work, and what they could mean for consumers.

Making Colors with Magnets

A new nanomaterial could lead to novel types of displays.

How to Make UAVs Fully Autonomous

The sense-and-avoid system uses a four-megapixel camera on a pan tilt to detect obstacles from the ground. It puts red boxes around planes and birds, and blue boxes around movement that it determines is not an obstacle (e.g., dust on the lens). The green box shows the actual position of the Piper Archer II airplane being tracked from two to five miles away. Such a visual system will be useful to UAVs trying to avoid obstacles.

NASA’s Launch Abort System

An animation shows how the new launch abort system will work.

Motor Firing

NASA tests the motors for its launch abort system, which will be part of its next launch vehicle.

Robotic Grasping Tool

The researchers settled on a pneumatic grasping hook for a wheeled robot.

Grappling Hook for Spiderman-like Robot

A researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Technology tests an early version of the grappling hook.

A Robot That's Learning to Smile

The UCSD robot watches itself to learn how to pull new facial expressions.

Artificial Knees Made to Order

This video shows how ConforMIS uses a patient's CT and MRI imaging data to create a customized knee implant, as well as a customized instrument that helps guide the surgeon in placing the implant correctly.

A Better Solar Collector

Jonathan Mapel, cofounder of Covalent Solar, based in Cambridge, MA, uses commonly available plastic sheets to illustrate how a new solar concentrator works. He then shows a prototype of the new solar concentrator, which features advanced dyes that make it highly efficient.

Digging a Smarter Crowd

Digg's new recommendation system relies on the wisdom of crowds.

It's Not Too Late

A Virtually New Web

The collision of virtual reality and mapping brings excitement to cyberspace.

The Alternative

Catastrophic climate change is not inevitable. We possess the technologies that could forestall global warming. Why can't we use them?

Energy Loans

At a recent conference at the United Nations, the person in charge of the Department of Energy's finances told Technology Review how his agency is pushing innovation.

$100 Laptop Becomes a $5 PC

A demonstration video from the Sugar Labs Foundation shows the workings of the educational platform once confined mainly to the so-called $100 laptop, but now available for download to revitalize old computers via a USB drive.

An Electric Car for City Driving

A new electric vehicle uses polymer-electrolyte batteries.

Ares I Lifts Off

An animation showing how the Ares I rocket, NASA’s next launch vehicle to carry humans to space, will perform.

Blastoff of Ares V

An animation showing the Ares V rocket, NASA’s next launch vehicle to carry heavy cargo to the moon and beyond, in flight.

Energy-Efficiency Technologies Panel

The panel presented highlights of technologies and approaches to energy-efficient building, featuring John Sterman, Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and engineering systems director, System Dynamics Group; Nicholas Gayeski, doctoral candidate in Building Technology Program; Walt Henry, Department of Facilities; and Harvey Michaels, Department of Urban Studies and Planning and MITEI. This discussion took place on January 14, 2009, as part of Energy Futures Week.

2009 MIT Energy Conference: Managing Demand

Panel session with Harvey Michaels (MIT, moderator), Tim Healy (EnerNOC), Bernard Neenan (EPRI), and Sue Coakley (Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships).

Leon Glicksman on Sustainability

Sustainability@MIT copresident and Sloan student Adam Siegel interviews Leon Glicksman ’59, PhD ’64, cochair of the MIT Campus Energy Task Force, and gains his input on campus sustainability.

On Answers

Four kinds of search engines.

Building NASA's Future

Engineers at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, are constructing Ares I-X, a test flight rocket that is part of NASA’s plan to return humans to the moon, and then travel to Mars and beyond.

Building Blocks of a New Interface

David Merrill, inventor of Siftables, interactive electronic building blocks, demonstrates his technology at the 2009 TED conference.

Solar Power Technology

Richard Swanson, founder of SunPower, in San Jose, CA, discusses his company’s solar-panel technology for building efficient solar plants.

Wolfram Demos His "Knowledge Engine”

Stephen Wolfram shows off the best of Wolfram Alpha in action.

Designing for the Cloud

Stephen Cass, senior editor of special projects at TR, interviews Dwight Merriman, CEO and cofounder of 10Gen, a startup that is developing a database designed to cope with the idiosyncrasies of cloud computing.

Fusion Electricity

Ed Moses, director of the National Ignition Facility, explains how the facility works and how it could lead to fusion power.

How to Ignite Fusion

Bruno Van Wonterghem, NIF’s operations manager, shows off areas of the laser fusion facility that will be off-limits to the public.

An Interview with Stephen Wolfram

In an interview with David Talbot, Technology Review’s chief correspondent, Stephen Wolfram describes what motivated him to launch Wolfram Alpha, how the “knowledge engine” works, and where it’s headed.

Open-Source Data Glove

Jack Vice, president and CTO of AnthroTronix, uses the AcceleGlove to control a robotic arm.

Who Owns Your Friends?

Social-networking sites are fighting over control of users' personal information.

Your Medical Data Online

Google and Microsoft are offering rival programs that let people manage their own health information.

Stephen Quake on Sequencing

The bioengineer at Stanford University who cofounded HeliScope Biosciences talks about the company’s novel machine for sequencing and its implications.

Brain Games

Do new controllers that purport to interpret brain activity really work?

Single Molecule Sequencing

A look at how HeliScope Biosciences sequences a single molecule of DNA.

A Messy Art

A neurosurgeon explains how she manages to cope with the newest technologies for brain surgery.

Home Tweet Home

A look at Twitter's offices days before they prepared for a move to a more grown-up space.

The Next Bubble

Are Web 2.0 companies the unlucky beneficiaries of a speculative mania?

Cell Phones That Listen and Learn

SoundSense captures known and new sounds to create a real-time log of a user's activities.

The Future of Human Exploration

A look at NASA’s Constellation Program and its plan to travel to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Test Driving the Volt

Kevin Bullis, Technology Review’s energy editor, spoke with Frank Weber and Tony Posowatz, GM executives, about GM’s new plug-in hybrid electric car called the Volt, and then took a test version of the vehicle for a rare test drive. (Note: The speed of the car, referenced in the video, is kilometers per hour.)

A Tour of GM’s New Battery Lab

Kevin Bullis, Technology Review’s energy reporter, received a tour of GM’s new battery lab and learned new details about the GM Volt battery pack.

New Batteries Readied for GM's Electric Vehicle

The technologies behind the battery packs for the GM Volt are being tested and could be ready within a year.

Targeting the Brain with Sound Waves

Low-intensity, low-frequency ultrasound waves can trigger neural activity in brain tissue. Here, acoustically triggered activity, which spreads through the neural circuit, is shown in the warmer colors (red and yellow).

Google Explores "Eyes-Free" Phones

Google engineers, T.V. Raman, and Charles Chen demonstrate the eyes-free capabilities that can be easily programmed into Android-based applications.

Plastic Logic's Touch-Screen E-Reader

Plastic Logic's e-reader features a touch-screen interface that lets users organize and search for files and annotate documents.

What is Watson?

Researchers at IBM have developed a computer system uses natural language techniques to process a question.

More-Powerful Fuel Cells

A cheap polymer material increases the power output of methanol fuel cells by 50 percent.

Modeling Sneaky Robots

This system, labeled “R” for robot guard, knows to wait behind objects and move in the shadows in order to successfully intercept an intruder (“I”).

Recycling Robot Shows Clutter-Sorting Skills

A new vision system can identify objects within clutter.

Tiny Machine Commands a Swarm of Bacteria

The bacteria propel the machine in different directions.

A Scampering Climber

A new climbing robot quickly makes its way up a telephone pole.

Automated Ice Sculpting

This machine developed by researchers from McGill University, in Canada, makes ice sculptures by carefully laying down deposits of ice. Here it begins to build a snowflake sculpture. (The video is shown at five times normal speed.)

Crash-Test Robots

Researchers at the German Aerospace Center are studying the impact of collisions between wayward robots and crash-test dummies. They hope to develop effective accident-prevention systems.

Detecting Pedestrians

In this video, a camera rests atop an ordinary car. Software developed by researchers at ETH Zurich and Toyota rapidly identifies pedestrians and other vehicles.

Automated Cars in an Automatic City

Robotic cars navigate around a miniature city created by researchers at Boston University while observing traffic rules and avoiding collisions.

Tumbling Around

This robot, Adelopod, was created by researchers at the University of Minnesota. It tumbles over itself--a simple, low-power way to get around.

Precision Control of Micro Machines

Researchers control microscopic magnets individually by manipulating magnetic and electric fields. The magnets could one day be used to assemble microscopic structures or deliver drugs to a cell.

Amazon's Bigger Kindle

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demonstrates the Kindle DX at Pace University, in New York City.

Soul of a New Mobile Machine

From conception to buzz, from three-way spring to soft-touch paint: inside the design of a multimedia communications gadget.

Stem Cells Reborn

In the wake of scientific fraud in South Korea, researchers are renewing their race to clone stem cells.

Soul of a New Mobile Machine

From conception to buzz, from three-way spring to soft-touch paint: inside the design of a multimedia communications gadget.

On Beautiful Machines

Well-designed technologies are minimally complicated.

Teleoperated Design Revealed for Assistant Robots

A system lets users manage a team of robots through cloud computing.

Second Skin Captures Motion

Graduate student Dennis Miaw demonstrates Second Skin. The system tracks his arm’s motion and vibrates to indicate how he should move to correct his position.

Touch Screens with Pop-up Buttons

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon discuss a touch screen that also has morphing buttons.

A New E-Paper Competitor

Tiny reservoirs containing ink sit inside each polymer pixel in a new type of electronic-paper display developed at the University of Cincinnati. A voltage applied across the material quickly draws the ink out and spreads it over the entire pixel area.

Going Green with TR Digital

Jason Pontin discusses the advantages of receiving the digital edition of Technology Review and how to subscribe. Video by Brittany Sauser - Find out more

Personal Medical Monitoring

Keeping tabs on your vitals with Microsoft HealthVault.

Jennifer Chayes

The director of the new Massachusetts-based Microsoft Research lab wants to use mathematics to design better search engines, recommendation systems, and online auctions.

The Making of a New Collider

The biggest physics experiment ever, CERN's new particle accelerator, goes live this summer.

Taking Apart the Livescribe Pulse

See the inner workings of the Livescribe Pulse, a computerized pen that gives handwritten notes audio support.

An Electrifying Startup

A new lithium-ion battery from A123 Systems could help electric cars and hybrids come to dominate the roads.

Brain Trauma in Iraq

Thousands of U.S. soldiers have survived powerful explosions in Iraq. Many are returning home with brain injuries that could result in long-term disabilities.

Creating a Heart

An ingenious method for making new organs could one day revolutionize medical transplants.

Una Laptop por Niño

The philanthropic effort dubbed the $100 Laptop has not met its grand initial goals. But its first deployment, in Peru, may turn skeptics into believers.

The Heroic Age

On the natural philosophy of elementary particles.

Technology and the Economy

Daron Acemoglu, a professor of applied economics at MIT, discusses whether the federal stimulus bill, which includes tens of billions for energy and information technology, can save the economy.

Saving the Economy

The U.S. stimulus bill includes $100 billion to support energy and information technologies, but economists are skeptical it will create jobs and ensure long-term economic growth.

Better Way to Wire Up Cells

This patch of beating heart cells is been positioned over an array of nanowire transistors, one of which is visible at center. The nanowires can make high-resolution recordings of electrical signals in biological cells.

How Tor Works

A video demonstrating how Tor uses a series of relays to protect anonymity online.

Can Technology Save the Economy?

Dale Jorgenson, a professor in the department of economics at Harvard University, talks about the pros and cons of the stimulus package.

Nanotubes Come into Fashion

University of Michigan chemistry professor Nicholas Kotov shows off the smart textiles he makes by coating cotton with carbon nanotubes.

Hunt for Dark Matter

MIT physicist Gabriella Sciolla explains what dark matter is, what physicists believe it might be like, and what technologies are behind the search for dark matter.

Dissent Made Safer

Roger Dingledine, leader of the Tor Project, describes where the anonymity technology came from, who uses it today, and how it will improve--and its usage will expand--in the future.

Manipulating Memory

Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, explains the theory of reconsolidation, and describes how it might be used to treat anxiety disorders.

Innovation During a Recession

A five-member panel of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs describes how to invest and start companies during a recession--and why now might be the best time to bring new technologies to market.

The Silver Lining

Excerpts from a panel discussion on entrepreneurship include discussions of why recessions provide disruptions that are good for startup companies and where government stimulus money fits in.

Business Bots Unleashed

Robotic devices presented at the RoboBusiness 2009 Conference in Boston.

Taking the Segway-GM Puma for a Test-Drive

Kevin Bullis, TR’s energy reporter, gets a ride in a prototype vehicle called Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility (P.U.M.A) at the New York Auto show. The vehicle is meant to transform urban transportation.

Fixing Lungs Outside the Body

A pair of lungs breathes outside the body with the aid of a device codeveloped by the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, and Vitrolife. Prior to transplant, lungs can be preserved, assessed, and genetically repaired for up to 12 hours using the XVIVO system, according to researchers.

Energy and Climate Bill Advances

As legislators discuss major new legislation for moving the United States away from its dependence on fossil fuels, Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, reflects on lessons that can be learned from previous shifts in energy use. Yergin recently released a new edition of his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.

Harnessing Direct Solar Power for Propulsion

A UC Berkeley researcher uses a magnifying glass to focus sunlight onto a small plastic boat. Nanotubes at one end of the boat absorb the sun’s heat, propelling the boat through the water. The second video shows a rotor that works on the same principle. A similar design could be used to make simple solar-powered pumps.

Monitoring Muscle

Seward Rutkove explains how a technique called electrical impedance myography (EIM) can be used to measure the health of muscles. He demonstrates a handheld device that can now perform EIM measurements much more quickly than before.

Why Chrysler Chose A123 Batteries

An animation shows the components of a new modular battery system for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

Mixing Real and Virtual Controls

This video demonstrates people using a combination of multitouch surface controls and physical controls to edit audio tracks.

Brain Cells' Long Migration

A real-time video of neurons navigating the brain using blood vessels as paths. Neurons are labeled in green, and the blood vessels in red.

Google Voice on G1

A demonstration of Google Voice on G1.

Robot Scientist Designs Its Own Experiments

A robot scientist called Adam performs yeast experiments autonomously.

Google Voice on the iPhone

A demonstration of Google Voice on the iPhone.

Mapping Disasters in 3-D

A demonstration of a software program called RubbleViewer that maps rubble in disaster-rescue situations and builds a 3-D map that rescue personnel can navigate and annotate.

A Disappearing Heart Stent

A bioabsorbable drug-eluting stent developed by Abbott treats coronary artery disease and is absorbed into the walls of treated arteries within two years. It leaves behind blood vessels that appeared to move and function similar to normal arteries.

A Better, Cheaper Multitouch Interface

In this video, the researchers demonstrate a few applications that could be incorporated with their pressure-sensitive touch pad, dubbed the UnMousePad. The researchers connect the pad to a computer and display to create a map of the intensity and location of pressure points. The pad can also be used to draw with fingers, write with a stylus, sculpt virtual globes, and control electronic musical equipment.

3-D View of HIV Infection

A rotating three-dimensional view of an HIV infected T cell (green) forming virological synapses with three healthy CD4+ cells (red). The viral structural protein, shown in green, accumulates in button-shaped structures at the contact sites.

HIV Transmission Between Cells

This movie shows high speed imaging of HIV transfer across a virological synapse. The video begins with a still view of two T cells with transmitted light and an outline of a spot where a synaptic button has formed between them. The movie then shows the movement of fluorescent viral protein into the synaptic button, followed by transfer of material from the button into the target cells. Note the movie focuses on the movement of the viral protein without indicating the outlines of the recipient cell.

Infected HIV Cells

The video shows a cell that has engaged in a synapse becoming infected days later. Infection was captured by continuous long term imaging over 3 days. The HIV green fluorescence image is presented on the left while an overlay of green fluorescence and bright field image is shown on the right. Images were acquired every 10 minutes over 67 hours.

Fixing a Genetic Flaw

A treatment helps restore muscle function to dogs with a form of muscular dystrophy.

Light-as-Air, Heatproof Nanotube Muscles

A two-millimeter-wide strip of an airy carbon-nanotube material expands to more than three times its width when a five-kilovolt voltage is applied to it.

A Heatstroke-Sensing Helmet

Hothead Technologies has developed a system that can sense and warn a user of heatstroke. In this video, an RFID transmitter is fitted in a headband and a white temperature-sensing patch touches the wearer's forehead. Readings are beamed to a PDA (not shown). When the wearer's temperature hits 102.5 and stays there for 20 seconds, an alarm sounds on the PDA.

A Better Biofuel Bug

Scott Laughlin, CEO of Zymetis, discusses his company’s work to genetically modify bacteria that efficiently converts biomass to sugar.

Gravity Satellite Blasts Off on Climate Mission

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is a new satellite developed by the European Space Agency to measure the earth’s gravity field. Here, researchers discuss the mission and how it will impact climate-change research.

How the Experts Quantify Sports

Experts on a panel called “Basketball Analytics” at MIT Sloan School of Management’s Sports Analytics Conference 2009 discussed ways to quantify sports.

Mapping a City's Rhythm

The New York startup, Sense Networks, has developed algorithms that can identify distinct types of behaviors of people in a city, and group them into so-called tribes. The first animation shows the changing whereabouts of these tribes over the course of an evening in San Francisco and the second animation depicts the process of identifying the primary tribes visiting the top 200 nightlife destinations during a certain period of the night.

Cash-Strapped Green Tech Changes Strategy

Watch Andrew Perlman, president and CEO of Great Point Energy, explain his company’s technology for converting coal into natural gas.

Energy-Saving Helicopter Blades

NASA researchers are using smart materials to improve helicopter performance.

Tune In to Radio Twitter

A student project sorts tweets by sentiment and puts them on a radio.

A Smarter Web

New technologies will make online search more intelligent--and may even lead to a "Web 3.0."

On Science Fiction

How it influences the imaginations of technologists.

Technology and Optimism

Why technologists are so confident.

TR10: Software-Defined Networking

Nick McKeown believes that remotely controlling network hardware with software can bring the Internet up to speed.

TR10: Traveling-Wave Reactor

A traveling-wave reactor could use widely available depleted uranium and operate for 60 years without refueling.

TR10: $100 Genome

BioNanomatrix cofounder Han Cao explains how his company’s nanofluidic chip could dramatically decrease the cost of genome sequencing.

TR10: Liquid Battery

Donald Sadoway describes why we need a better battery and how his new battery works.

TR10: Racetrack Memory

Stuart Parkin, a research fellow at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, describes racetrack memory, a new concept for storing data. Parkin and his team believe that racetrack memory could match the capacity of magnetic hard drives and the ruggedness of flash memory, making it a possible replacement for both.

TR10: HashCache

Vivek Pai explains how broadband access alone cannot bridge the digital divide.

TR10: Intelligent Software Assistant

Siri cofounders Adam Cheyer, Dag Kittlaus, and Tom Gruber describe how an intelligent software assistant would work, and how their product's technology is rooted in highly ambitious artificial-intelligence research, funded by the U.S. military.

TR10: Biological Machines

Michel Maharbiz and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, are developing implants for giant beetles that allow scientists to control the insects’ flight. Researchers hope that the beetles can one day be used for search and rescue or reconnaissance in areas inaccessible to people or other robots.

Making Paper Diagnostic Tests

The paper diagnostic chips are made in a few steps, shown here by graduate student Andres Martinez, a member of the Whitesides Research Group.

TR10: Paper Diagnostics

George Whitesides explains how diagnostic paper chips could revolutionize health care in disparate places.

TR10: Nanopiezoelectronics

Zhong Lin Wang, a professor of materials science at Georgia Tech, describes his work on nanoscale devices that convert mechanical energy into power for the nano world.

A Zero-Emissions City in the Desert

A solar test field in Masdar City will help determine what zero-emissions technologies will work best in the heat and dust of the desert.

Saving Energy in Masdar City

Gerard Evenden, the senior partner at the U.K.-based firm Foster and Partners, who developed the master plan for Masdar City, explains how he will save energy.

The Most Important Meal of the Day

The morning students served breakfast to a visiting hero.

Expandable Silicon

A new chip design could lead to far cheaper large-area electronics.

Microsoft's Shiny New Toy

Photosynth is still a work in progress. It is dazzling, but what is it for?

Art Games

Digital artists are using game technologies to create bold new works.

TR10: Modeling Surprise

Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.

TR10: Probabilistic Chips

Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.

TR10: Offline Web Applications

Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.

Amazon Kindle

The online giant hopes it's created the ipod of digital books.

TR10: Reality Mining

Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn about human behavior.

TR10: NanoRadio

Alex Zettl's tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.

Ethanol from Garbage and Old Tires

A versatile new process for making biofuels could slash their cost.

TR10: Cellulolytic Enzymes

Frances Arnold is designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.

TR10: NanoRadio

Alex Zettl's tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.

TR10: Graphene Transistors

A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer of Georgia Tech could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.

TR10: Connectomics

Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the web of neural circuits.

TR10: Atomic Magnetometers

John Kitching's tiny magnetic-field sensors will take MRI where it's never gone before.

TR10: Wireless Power

Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

TR10: Graphene Transistors

A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer of Georgia Tech could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.

TR10: Modeling Surprise

Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.

TR10: Probabilistic Chips

Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.

TR10: NanoRadio

Alex Zettl's tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.

TR10: Wireless Power

Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

TR10: Atomic Magnetometers

John Kitching's tiny magnetic-field sensors will take MRI where it's never gone before.

TR10: Offline Web Applications

Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.

TR10: Graphene Transistors

A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer of Georgia Tech could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.

TR10: Connectomics

Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the web of neural circuits.

TR10: Reality Mining

Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn about human behavior.

TR10: Cellulolytic Enzymes

Frances Arnold is designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.

How to Stay Young

The easy part is understanding a new technology; what's harder is to think creatively about it.

The Next Generation of iPhone Hacks

Apple's plan to release a software kit that lets people create legitimate add-ons for the iPhone could make the device appeal to an even wider audience.

Harnessing Hamster Power with a Nanogenerator

The hamster in this video is wearing a generator that turns mechanical energy into electrical current when the hamster runs or scratches. The two graphs on the device show current and voltage.

Laser Show in the Surgical Suite

Lasers and a century-old dye could supplant needles and thread.

A Lifelike Prosthetic Arm

A new surgical technique, developed by scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, allows patients who have lost arms to use residual nerve signals to control a prosthetic limb. This video shows three patients testing a prototype limb being developed by DARPA. The patients can perform complex tasks, including picking up a cup, grasping a cracker without breaking it, and putting a spoon in a cup.

The Master Plan

An animated fly-through shows the major components of a new zero-emissions, zero-waste city being built in the Middle East.

Lighting Up Cells in 3-D

A new microscopy technique called iPALM has been used to reveal structures within cells. Fluorescent labels have been attached to integrins, proteins that cells use to attach to surfaces. The yellow and red regions depict areas where the cell has used integrins to attach to a glass surface. The blue and purple regions are networks of integrins inside a cell.

Knee Power

A new human-powered generator tries to capture walking energy.

Large-Scale Rewritable Holograms

A new material allows researchers to write and erase 3-D images for displays.

Printing without Ink

Startup ZINK Imaging is giving inkless printing a new look.

Augmenting Mucus to Keep Out Infection

A treatment that shrinks gaps in the mucus membrane might protect caregivers during an influenza outbreak.

NASA's New Planetary-Exploring Robot

NASA's newest exploration rover, dubbed Axel for its design, can climb steep and rocky terrain and explore deep craters on planets like Mars. It uses only three actuators to operate upside down, right side up, turn in place, and follow illogical paths. Axel can maneuver autonomously using cameras, sensors, and wireless communication, or be tethered to a larger spacecraft.

Electromagnetic Railgun Blasts Off

A supersonic bullet is fired with a record-breaking 10 megajoules of muzzle energy.

Yahoo Adds a Notepad to Search

A new tool could help people organize information from Web searches.

A Robomedic for the Battlefield

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon have engineered a snakelike robotic arm that can monitor health signs and potentially administer treatments. The robot is equipped with sensors and a small camera, which wirelessly relays video to a laptop. A researcher watches the video onscreen and wirelessly controls the robot’s movements with a joystick. The robot can move anywhere along the length of the body, and can lower itself to administer oxygen or monitor a person’s breathing.

Google Earth Plumbs the Ocean Depths

The software now lets users dive miles beneath the ocean waves.

The Army's Remote-Controlled Beetle

A scientist sends a wireless signal from the laptop to the beetle to start and then stop flight. The beetle, seen in the upper part of the frame, is tethered for practical purposes. The insect is attached to a clear plate, so that its flight pattern can be better observed. An oscilloscope shows the electrical signals as they are delivered: a short oscillating pulse triggers the animal to flap its wings, and it continues flapping until a short single pulse tells it to stop.

The Adventures of Spirit

NASA’s mars exploration rover, Spirit, has explored the Red Planet for half a decade, overcoming technical challenges and making significant discoveries.

The Life of Opportunity

NASA’s mars exploration rover, Opportunity, has trekked the surface of the Red Planet for five years. It discovered the first signs of ancient ice and is helping to answer the question: Is there life on Mars?

Modeling Malware Over Wi-Fi

Researchers at Indiana University lead by Alessandro Vespignani have created a mathematical model that shows how people using a Wi-Fi wireless internet connection are targets for infection.

Building Safer, Superior Stents

Researchers at MIT have developed a computer model that simulates the dynamics of blood flowing around a drug-eluting stent. This allows them to evaluate how the drug is released and distributed over time in the arterial wall.

The Glucose-Monitoring Tattoo

Shown here are heart-muscle cells grown in a dish. Sodium rushing into the cells coincides with contraction (as happens during a normal heartbeat) and modulates the sensors’ fluorescence.

FDA Clears First Embryonic-Stem-Cell Therapy Trials

This video illustrates Geron’s, a California based cell therapy company, embryonic stem cell therapy for spinal cord injury in rats. The company has received clearance from the US FDA to begin clinical trials.

A Ball-Bearing Drum Machine

A prototype electronic musical instrument called “BeatBearing” makes drum patterns using ball bearings.

Beetle Boat Runs on Surface Tension

A tiny bioinspired boat is powered by the surface tension of water as seen in this video. The second half of the video shows the rudder capability.

Touch Screens for Many Fingers

Researchers have bigger plans for multi-touch screens than the novel interface on Apple's iPhone.

Cheaper Robot Rehabilitation

A modified 3-D game controller helps improve fine motor control.

Growing New Hearts from Old

Donor hearts could make good scaffolding for new organs.

MRI for Viruses

An MRI imager that is 100 million times more powerful could create 3-D images of viruses.

A Helping Microhand for Surgeons

Researchers use magnets to navigate a microgripping “hand” through a coiled tube and to guide it to a dyed bead and a cell mass. The grippers can be actuated to close like a fist around an object by biochemical cues or by an increase in temperature, the means used to make the hand grip the blue bead and the cell mass in these videos.

Sign-Language Translator

In a video of a native signer signing words from a classic American Sign Language dictionary, researchers have marked the start and end of each sign.

New E-Paper Technology Speeds Up

A simple prototype device, made from the Toronto researchers’ new material, changes color as it displays a sequence of digits.

Europe's Re-Entry Vehicle In Action

ESA is building a spacecraft that can safely reenter earth's atmosphere.

Cleaning Up Shaky Home Video

A series of split-screen videos illustrate how MotionDSP's new software improves video quality.

Tidal-Power System Hits Record Output

Marine Current Turbines' SeaGen system quadruples the world tidal-turbine power record.

Ford's New Car Parks Itself

A new parking system takes the hard work out of parallel parking.

The Alchemist

A chef in Chicago wants to blow your mind

On Rules

Strict and simple conventions favor the useful expression of ideas