Science

Most current fusion power projects require tritium – an incredibly scarce and problematic fuel. TAE is targeting cheaper, safer hydrogen-boron (H-B) fusion, and it's just announced a world-first measurement of H-B fusion in magnetically confined plasma.

Denver's Keystone Tower Systems says it can cut the cost of wind energy with tech borrowed from pipemaking. It uses spiral welding techniques to roll sheet steel into huge turbine towers on-site, stronger, faster and cheaper than current techniques.

Perovskites are one of the most promising new materials for solar cell technology. Now engineers at the University of Rochester have developed a way to more than triple the material’s efficiency by adding a layer of reflective silver underneath it.

A study of 15,000 adults suffering from acute lower back pain found that not only is the effectiveness of the medicines uncertain, but that the scientific evidence base used to inform good healthcare decisions is shockingly "fragile and incomplete."

Some cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapy. Belgian scientists have investigated the cause of chemotherapy resistance and switched off the gene contributing to it, making cancer cells more sensitive to treatment.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have combined human stem cells with flexible electronics to create a new type of neural implant that has the potential to help amputees or those who’ve lost the use of their limbs.

It was a glass half-full situation on March 22, 2023 as Relativity Space carried out the first successful launch of an almost entirely 3D-printed rocket from Launch Complex 16 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:23 pm EDT.

Samples taken from the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu continue to provide scientists with important insights. The discovery of the nucleobase uracil, a part of RNA, in the samples, hints at the potential beginnings of life on our planet.

Japan may soon join a very exclusive club as its privately-led Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander went into orbit around the Moon on March 21 at 10:24 JST after completing a controlled main engine burn in anticipation of a landing attempt in late April.

You may have heard how the BPA (bisphenol A) in some food-packaging plastics has been linked to various health problems. Scientists are thus developing a more innocuous alternative, and it's made from tomato waste which would otherwise be discarded.

Even though glass is praised for being fully recyclable, the EPA states that only about a third of discarded glass items actually get recycled. With that problem in mind, scientists have developed a new type of glass which is biodegradable.

Scientists at the University of Rochester claim to have created a material that acts as a superconductor at room temperature and lower pressures than ever before. If confirmed, this “reddmatter,” as they call it, could mark a major breakthrough.

In a win for both bees and ecologists, a team of roboticists and biologists has developed a robotic honeycomb that both keeps the bees toasty during cold snaps and allows them to be studied unobtrusively.

Research which shows why DNA is repaired in certain cells but not in others could help ward off the ravages of aging, and diseases including cancer. It all hinges on a protein group called the DREAM complex.

You might wonder what mice on a stage inside a 360-degree virtual-reality dome might have to do with dementia, but studying how the brain makes sense of changing visual cues could lead to better understanding of why people with cognitive loss feel lost.

Based on a 25-year record of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, a team of scientists led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have shown that changes in snowfall over Antarctica can have significant short-term effects on global sea level rises.

In countries such as India, a great deal of toxic dye waste from the textile industry is released into waterways, harming people and the environment. A new wood-derived filtration media could remove much of that dye from wastewater streams.

The IPCC has released its latest report, pulling together the findings of previous reports to provide a more complete picture of how human-caused climate change continues to affect the planet and what we need to do to address it.

A groundbreaking new study could answer a perplexing astrophysics mystery without complicating our current models. Physicists suggest that black holes could contain a strange form of energy that’s accelerating the expansion of the universe.

Astronomers have put together one of the most comprehensive maps of all the matter in the universe. The huge undertaking hints at a slightly smoother universe than we thought, suggesting that something might be missing from our models.

Physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a completely new type of quantum entanglement, the spooky phenomenon that binds particles across any distance. This allowed scientists to peer inside nuclei in more detail than ever before.

A research team from the UK's Nottingham Trent University, the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales Canberra has developed a display prototype that could replace the LCD panels common to many of today's big-screen TVs.

RFID tags wirelessly provide information on products or other items, but they can only be read by dedicated portable devices. That may soon change, however, as a tag-integrated chip and a software update could allow smartphones to do the job.

While the field of stretchable electronics does hold a lot of promise, joining the parts of such devices together can be tricky. A new connector is designed to help, as it stretches between the components plus it links them in a matter of seconds.

Three teams of scientists have achieved a major milestone in quantum computing. All three groups demonstrated better than 99 percent accuracy in silicon-based quantum devices, paving the way for practical, scalable, error-free quantum computers.

IBM has unveiled the Eagle, the world’s most powerful quantum processor. Boasting 127 quantum bits (qubits), the Eagle is a major step towards commercial quantum computers outperforming traditional machines.

An Australian/German company is developing powerful quantum accelerators the size of graphics cards. They work at room temperature, undercutting and outperforming today's huge, cryo-cooled quantum supercomputers, promising industry-wide disruption.