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13,780 articles from Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories

Blog - Human Networks And Causality Cones

Studying the interactions between people in ever increasing detail reveals entirely new patterns of human behaviour--and poses challenges for network science The study of networks has changed the way we think about our world and the way that societies organise themselves within it. In particular, the discovery that many real world networks can be thought as small worlds, in which most nodes...


MONDAY 7. JUNE 2010


Blog - And now the power forecast...

A new mathematical technique for measuring how close power grids are to catastrophic failure could help prevent outages in future In the afternoon of 14 August 2003, a massive power fluctuation rippled through the grid supplying power to the north eastern US and Canada. The fluctuation caused more than 500 generators throughout the region to shut down leaving some 55 million people without power....

Blog - Introducing the Electromagnetic Bazooka

A technique borrowed from acoustics could lead to a super-powerful amplifier of microwave radiation. Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), featured in movies like Goldeneye and The Matrix, are the stuff of electrical engineers' nightmares. Imagine a conventional explosive that sends out a shockwave of electromagnetic radiation so powerful that it short circuits computers, stops cars dead...


SATURDAY 5. JUNE 2010



FRIDAY 4. JUNE 2010


Blog - Why A Good A Memory Is Bad For You

The counterintuitive finding that too good a memory makes foragers inefficient reveals a glimpse of the forces that govern the evolution of intelligence In recent years, a small revolution has occurred in the study of animal foraging patterns. Various new ways have emerged to track and record the movement of animals over relatively long periods and computer scientists have developed models that do...


THURSDAY 3. JUNE 2010


Blog - The Evolution of Computer Science

Computing the energy levels of a helium atom in 1958 was significantly harder than it is today. But a comparison of then and now methods reveals some counter intuitive anomalies about the impact of computer science. In 1958, Chaim Pekeris completed a landmark project in computer science. As a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Technology in Israel, he become fascinated with the relatively new...


WEDNESDAY 2. JUNE 2010


Blog - Econophysicist Accurately Forecasts Gold Price Collapse

The first results from the Financial Bubble Experiment will have huge implications for econophysics There are good reasons to think that stock markets are fundamentally unpredictable. Many econophysicists believe for example, that the data from these markets bear a startling resemblance to other data from seemingly unconnected phenomena, such as the size of earthquakes, forest fires and...


TUESDAY 1. JUNE 2010



MONDAY 31. MAY 2010


Blog - The Kilogram and the Kitchen Sink

Physicists can't make up their minds how heavy a kilogram should be. Perhaps they should allow a new generation of scientists to help In 1983, physicists at the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures decided to redefine the metre. For a century until then, the metre had been the distance between two points on a bar of platinum and iridium measured at the melting point of ice....


SATURDAY 29. MAY 2010



FRIDAY 28. MAY 2010


Blog - Why Shrek Has No Hair: The Challenges of Virtual Hairstyling

New system uses haptics to allow designers to comb hair just like they would in real life Imagine that you had to design a virtual hairstyle by painstakingly defining the position and shape of every single hair on a character's head. It sounds like a joke, but modeling hair in this way - with a heaping helping of post-processing for added realism - remains the industry standard for...

Blog - What's Next for E Ink

The company's latest prototypes show crisper, brighter color, and are being combined with flexible backplanes. On the floor of the exhibit hall at the Society for Information Display conference in Seattle this week were many amazing technologies. One of the things that impressed me the most was...

Blog - Android-Powered Sensors Monitors Vital Signs and More

Adding sensors to smartphones turns them into always-on recorders of medically significant information. In science fiction films from Aliens to Avatar, commanders back at the base station always know when soldiers of the future get taken out by hostiles--because their vital signs are being monitored in real time. Doing that with present-day technology is a challenge, not least because...


THURSDAY 27. MAY 2010