Nano-whatever is all the rage. They're a big deal because they can make a blacker version of black and lots of other things but what does that even mean? Richard Compton and his team at Oxford…

CSIRO researchers have discovered a new class of fatty acids -- alpha-hydroxy polyacetylenic fatty acids -- that they say could be used as sensors for detecting changes in temperature and mechanical…

In the rapid and fast-growing world of nanotechnology, researchers are continually on the lookout for new building blocks to push innovation and discovery to scales much smaller than the tiniest…

Your contact lenses of the future could be completely biodegradable. A soft contact lens is a hydrogel - a solid, gelatinous mass consisting of water incorporated in a polymer network. Now Berkeley…

Cracks in buildings that close without external help may seem a little far fetched but we already have a good template in the human body's ability to heal wounds by sending blood platelets to the…

A frequency-agile metamaterial that for the first time can be tuned over a range of frequencies in the so-called “terahertz gap” has been engineered by a team of researchers from Boston College, Los…

Even in new designs, it's not a bad idea to see how old Mother Nature does it. Using that principle, a group of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory is mimicking bacteria to…

Electronics work better under cold conditions (-150 C). With less thermal noise, detectors are more sensitive and speed and reliability are increased. Low-noise amplifiers reduce noise further.…

Green is in. Even the army is making sure to use environmentally friendly paint on its bombers and environmentally conscious people who have made great efforts to put ethical bullets into mainstream…

Heavy water is water (H2O) in which oxygen is bound to atoms of the hydrogen isotope deuterium (2H). Heavy water is so named because it is significantly more dense (>1.1 g/cm3) than ordinary ("…