Election campaigns tend to slight science. But once a new president is in office, technical issues have a way of demanding attention. Here's a quick rundown of the scientific challenges the next PO...
In a stunning landscape of jagged limestone hills in southwestern China, engineers are putting the finishing touches on a grand astronomy facility: a half-kilometer-wide dish nestled in a natural d...
One of the largest floods in human history might have started a civilization. It begins with an earthquake 4,000 years ago in what is now China. Learn more: http://scim.ag/2aW7D9W Read the research...
Big leaps in our understanding of protein folding can open doors to new protein-based medicines and materials--designed from the ground up. Learn more: http://scim.ag/2a3mGvZ JOIN AAAS: http://scim...
Every summer Ashlee Rowe of Michigan State University spends a few weeks in the southwestern United States catching bark scorpions by the light of the moon. These stinging critters carry venom that...
Amy Apprill of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution studies the tiny microbial hitchhikers that tag along as the humpback whale makes its way across the globe. Learn more: http://specialproject...
At the Dream & Nightmare Laboratory at the University of Montreal, Elizaveta Solomonova is searching for expert dreamers: people who can visit dream land and report back accurately what they see, h...
About 100 years ago, Detroit's Corktown neighborhood was under siege. After building the massive central train station, the city was waiting on a few holdout homes to clear the area in front to mak...
Kate Prigge of the Monell Chemical Senses Center studies what things smell like—to us, to canines, and to machines. By using many different sensing technologies, from mass spectrometers to working ...
Most of what we know about the universe is carried to us on light waves. But many things are happening that don’t leave clues on the electromagnetic spectrum. That’s where LIGO or the the Laser Int...
Allison Okamura and the CHARM lab at Stanford University focus on what the sense of touch can bring to robot-human interactions. Learn more: http://specialprojects.sciencemag.org/xxfiles/
Robots have captured our collective imagination ever since we first made machines. From robotic soldiers to metal pop stars, meet some of the bots that are blurring the borders between human and machine!
Our hands don't just hold things-- they need to sense pressure and texture in order to help us grip and manipulate. This robot hand can detect bumpy patterns and even feel things like softness--wat...
SALTO the robot uses power modulation to store up energy before leaping into action. It uses wall jumps and back flips to achieve maximum agility. Learn more: http://scim.ag/2h2lJFz
While batteries, screens and other electronic components get smaller and smaller, lenses have not done their part. Now, with a material science approach, scientists have created tiny meta-material ...
Ever wonder why it’s so hard to kill a cockroach? It turns out, cockroaches’ bodies are built to squish. Researchers took a close look at how these guys can survive extreme compression and used wha...