Category Archives: Technology
Feature: Open for Everyone
Haydn King describes the open-source software movement and two of its most striking characters “I’m doing a free operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional)…” announced a young Finnish PhD student to an internet message board on the 25th of August 1991. In the two decades since Linus Torvalds made this announcement, [...]
Also posted in Feature Articles Leave a comment
Cover: Electron Microscopy
Nicola Love explains the technique used to obtain this issue’s cover image In the 1670s Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek revolutionised science when he began to experiment with magnification. His curiosity to observe anything that could be placed under a magnifying lens led him to be the first person to describe many microscopic entities, such as bacteria, [...]
Also posted in Editorial, Life sciences Leave a comment
Captain, there’s something on the radar
The Royal Navy have just unveiled their new radar system and the Artisan 3D boasts statistics stats that would impress tech-addicts everywhere. The manufacturers BAE Systems claim that the new device can detect objects as small as a tennis ball up to 25km away even when they’re travelling at three times the speed of [...]
Also posted in News Leave a comment
DNA could store digital files
A group led by Nick Goldman in Hinxton, UK, has demonstrated that DNA – the so-called “code of life” – can now be used to accurately archive all-sorts of digital media. Information encoded in DNA could be stored and read for thousands of years. The research published in Nature this week, describes how the [...]
Also posted in News Leave a comment
Need a use for your old Christmas tree? Give it a second life in biomedicine!
You’ve lost and won countless games of Monopoly, consumed your body weight in turkey sandwiches and selection boxes, and sung along to the last Christmas song on the radio. There’s no getting away from it: Twelfth Night is rapidly approaching, and with it, the annual ritual of stripping the home of its tinsel, wreaths [...]
Also posted in Medical & clinical, News Leave a comment
The pixie of all pixels
Scientists at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge have demonstrated a new use for carbon nanotubes (CNTs). By harnessing the conductive and light scattering abilities of these nanoscopic pixels they have projected a static hologram of the word ‘CAMBRIDGE’. Carbon nanotubes are a mind-boggling one billionth of a metre wide consisting [...]
Bumblebees could teach robots how to navigate
Bumblebees are surprisingly efficient navigators. With simple brains and no mental map to guide them, bumblebees must learn routes to optimise flight paths between flowers. This allows bees to reduce their travel distance by up to 80 percent, and understanding how they do this may improve future navigation technologies. Mathieu Lihoreau and colleagues from [...]
Also posted in Life sciences, News Leave a comment
Facebook could be addictive
You could be addicted to Facebook, suggests a new study lead by a team of researchers in Norway. Cecilie Schou Andreassen leads the project “Facebook Addiction” at the University of Bergen. Together with colleagues, they have developed a new psychological scale to measure Facebook addiction, the first of its kind worldwide. Results of the new [...]
Also posted in News, Psychology Leave a comment
Bionic eye gives hope for blindness
Scientists at Stanford University in California have invented a wireless retinal implant which can help to cure blindness. Illnesses such as macular degeneration and retinal pigmentosa result in the degeneration of light-detecting cells in the eye which can ultimately lead to complete loss of sight. Currently, retinal implants used to treat these conditions are battery [...]
Also posted in Life sciences, News Leave a comment
Feature: Cracking Codes