Harvard

Gases used as refrigerants in cooling systems can leak into the atmosphere and become major contributors to climate change. Now engineers at Harvard have demonstrated a new prototype cooling device that uses a solid-state material as a refrigerant.

Traditional computer chips run on electricity, while the emerging photonic chips use light. Now, scientists at Harvard have demonstrated a new kind of chip that transmits data in the form of sound waves.

A team of Harvard engineers working to advance laser technology have turned to one of the strongest known materials in diamonds, which they've used to form a new mirror that can endure beams strong enough to burn through steel.

Researchers at Harvard and Emory have created a biohybrid fish out of human heart cells that swims autonomously for months at a time as the cells beat. The project is a sidestep on the way to eventually growing new functional hearts for transplant.

It's ironic that even though many people are starving, a great deal of food gets discarded because it spoils before it can be eaten. A new natural-source packaging material could help, by making foods last longer – plus it's biodegradable.

Ordinarily, if you're building something, you don't want the materials to buckle under pressure. In a new Harvard University-designed system, however, that buckling action allows flat-packed objects to be twisted into useful three-dimensional forms.

Scientists have come up with a promising new design for an experimental battery, one which they say could lead to electric cars that charge in as little as 10 minutes, by combining a sandwich-style layered construction with a solid electrolyte.

Hankook's R&D department has been working with biorobotics experts from Seoul National University and Harvard engineers on a weird transforming origami wheel project. These folding oddities can drastically alter their diameter and carry heavy loads.

Fish have a sensory system known as the lateral line, which allows them to detect movements and pressure gradients in the water. Scientists have now given a robotic fish its own version of that system, letting it determine the best swimming speed.

Although wing-flapping micro-drones do already exist, the things tend to be quite fragile – and thus not ideally suited to real-world use. An experimental new one, however, utilizes a softer mechanism for greatly enhanced durability.

We've already heard about small flying or wheeled robots that cooperate on tasks by working in collaborative "swarms." Harvard University researchers have now gone a step further, by developing tiny underwater robots that school together like fish.

A quantum internet would be much faster and more secure than the regular web – and now it may be one step closer to reality. Scientists have used quantum teleportation to send information over long distances, with a higher fidelity than ever before.