University of Illinois

If a robot is going to be tiny, then it better have a way of getting around the many obstacles that will block its way. A new type of robot takes a unique approach to doing so, by jumping like a click beetle.

Back in 2012, we heard about tiny biped "biobot" robots that used actual muscle tissue to walk. Well, the descendants of those bots are now equipped with LEDs, which allow them to be remotely steered in a practical fashion.

It’s a cruel irony that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in undrinkable water. Scientists have now modeled the feasibility of a hypothetical system that can capture water vapor from ocean air and condense it into drinking water, at a large scale.

Just like many of the flowers in your garden, rice has traditionally been an annual plant – that means new crops have to be sown every year. A perennial version is now available, however, which comes back on its own over multiple growing seasons.

In a bid to reduce the environmental burden associated with both the manufacturing and disposal of plastics, scientists have demonstrated a new upcycling technique that turns one common form of it into another.

Engineers at UIC have developed a device that can efficiently convert captured carbon dioxide into ethylene, a plastic precursor material. When run using renewable energy, the technique could make for net negative emissions in plastic production.

A team from the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley has demonstrated a new cooling method that sucks heat out of electronics so efficiently that it allows designers to run 7.4 times more power through a given volume than conventional heat sinks.

An intriguing new study has zeroed in on a brain region that is central to the development of both alcohol abuse and anxiety in adults, and demonstrated how gene editing could be used to wipe clean a person's predisposition to both disorders.

Scientists have created new artificial microbes by combining two very different organisms into one functioning entity. The hybrid of a yeast and a bacterium adds evidence to a long-standing hypothesis on how advanced life may have evolved.

As with most things, nature’s data storage system, DNA, far surpasses anything we’ve created. Now, researchers have doubled its already incredible storage capacity by adding extra letters to its “alphabet,” and developed a new way to read it back.

Heightened tissue growth can result when cells come under tension, and a new study on cancer cells has pinpointed the biological mechanism that drives this process, which the authors believe can be targeted to prevent tumor development.

"Artificial leaf" systems could play a key role in the fight against climate change, and a team of engineers has just picked up the pace with a solution that captures carbon dioxide at 100 times the rate of current technologies.