This Robotic Chemist Does Over 600 Experiments a Week and Learns From Its Own Work . AI is being widely applied to speed up the search for new drugs and new materials that could dramatically improve critical technologies like batteries and solar panels. M

Google Loon Is Now Beaming WiFi Down to Earth From Giant Balloons . Four years ago, three big tech companies had plans in the works to beam internet down to Earth from the sky, and each scenario sounded wilder than the next. SpaceX requested permission to

Why We Need Mass Automation to Pandemic-Proof the Supply Chain . The scale of goods moving around the planet at any moment is staggering. Raw materials are dug up in one country, spun into parts and pieces in another, and assembled into products in a thir

The 3D Printed Homes of the Future Are Giant Eggs on Mars . Last month, a 3D printed house that can float on a pontoon was unveiled in the Czech Republic. Last year, work started on a community of 3D printed houses for low-income families in Mexico. While

How Drones and Aerial Vehicles Could Change Cities . Drones, personal flying vehicles, and air taxis may be part of our everyday life in the very near future. Drones and air taxis will create new means of mobility and transport routes. Drones will be use.

How Fake Viruses Can Help Us Make Powerful New Vaccines . Roughly 15 years ago, in a seeming prank, a pair of smiley faces graced the cover of Nature, one of the world’s preeminent science journals. Flash forward to today, and those smiley faces may be ke

AI Behaving Badly: New Model Could Help AI Make More Ethical Choices . The ethics of AI is a hot topic at the minute, particularly with the ongoing controversies around facial recognition software. Now mathematicians have developed a model that can help b

TuSimple's Robot Big Rigs Will Automate Freight Coast to Coast . In 2016, an 18-wheeler jam-packed with cans of Budweiser made a beer run from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs—with no driver at the wheel. It was one small 120-mile jaunt for a robot big

The Tour de France Is Going Virtual, and It Starts This Weekend . The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we do things, big-time. The events, places, and activities we were used to enjoying have been canceled, closed, or in some cases, permanently sh

A Highway to Smell: How Scientists Used Light to Incept Smell in Mice . I was on a panel a few weeks ago and realized I forgot to turn off the oven. Utterly mortified, I told my Zoom attendees that I had to save my lasagna that was likely burning into a s