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110 articles from Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories

Not finding life on Venus would be disappointing. But it’s good science at work.

Last month’s report that there may be phosphine gas in the Venusian clouds came with a stunning implication: extraterrestrial life. On Earth, phosphine is a chemical produced by some kinds of bacteria that live in oxygen-poor conditions. Its presence on Venus, announced by a team led by Cardiff University’s Jane Greaves, raised the possibility that there could be life in what has long...


FRIDAY 30. OCTOBER 2020


Five Supreme Court rulings that signal what to expect next

Things usually move pretty slowly for the US Supreme Court, with cases sometimes taking years to make their way through to a ruling. But these days it’s moving so quickly that the newest justice didn’t even have time to participate in the first two crucial voting-related rulings after her confirmation. The breakneck pace reveals that the nation’s highest court is already shaping the 2020...

AI has cracked a key mathematical puzzle for understanding our world

Unless you’re a physicist or an engineer, there really isn’t much reason for you to know about partial differential equations. I know. After years of poring over them in undergrad while studying mechanical engineering, I’ve never used them since in the real world. But partial differential equations, or PDEs, are also kind of magical. They’re a category of math equations that are really...


THURSDAY 29. OCTOBER 2020


A wave of ransomware hits US hospitals as coronavirus spikes

American hospitals are being targeted in a wave of ransomware attacks as covid-19 infections in the US break records and push the country’s health infrastructure to the brink. As reports emerge of attacks that interrupted healthcare in at least six US hospitals, experts and government officials say they expect the impact to worsen—and warn that the attacks could potentially threaten...