Tech news stories

Corn is grown not only for food, it is also an important renewable energy source. Renewable biofuels can come with hidden economic and environmental issues, and the question of whether corn is better utilized as food or as a biofuel has persisted since ethanol came into use. For the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois have quantified and compared these issues in terms of economics of the entire production system to determine if the benefits of biofuel corn outweigh the costs.

Most cars and trucks in the United States run on a blend of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol, a renewable fuel made primarily from fermented corn. But to produce the 14 billion gallons of ethanol consumed annually by American drivers requires millions of acres of farmland.

Fusion power has the potential to provide clean and safe energy that is free from carbon dioxide emissions. However, imitating the solar energy process is a difficult task to achieve.

A new design concept that aims to combine the luxury of a hotel room with a high-speed rail system could make traveling between U.S. cities faster and far more comfortable.

France’s national railway operator has announced plans to have driverless trains ready for use by 2023. As autonomous vehicles promise a safer, more efficient method of transportation, companies across the globe are pursuing the technology.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi’s lab have given the first demonstration of three-dimensional imaging of objects through walls using ordinary wireless signal. The technique, which involves two drones working in tandem, could have a variety of applications, such as emergency search-and-rescue, archaeological discovery and structural monitoring.

An elegantly simple experiment with floating particles self-assembling in response to sound waves has provided a new framework for studying how seemingly lifelike behaviors emerge in response to external forces.

For several centuries now, scientists have known that light behaves like a wave, expanding out from its source until absorbed or reflected by objects, which are in turn illuminated.

In recent years, however, research has indicated that light can also behave like a liquid — flowing around objects and reconstituting on the other side.

Identity theft is often a multi-layered process. Once a thief gets one bit of your information, they try to use it to get more. The hackers behind the 2015 data breach of the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), for example, used personal information they’d previously stolen from thousands of Americans to answer security questions on the IRS website, and in turn get access to their tax returns.

Different types of memories stored in the same neuron of the marine snail Aplysia can be selectively erased, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and McGill University and published today in Current Biology.

The exploded skull of a man who died in the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago has been pieced together giving scientists a unique opportunity to capture the ancient face using 3D imaging.

DC power lines are being used again thanks to their ability to outperform AC lines over long distances and directly connect with renewable power sources. This makes bringing green energy from distant rural locations to urban centers possible.

A vaccine developed at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) to block the “high” of heroin has proven effective in non-human primates. This is the first vaccine against an opioid to pass this stage of preclinical testing.

New research from the University of Liverpool, published in the journal Nanoscale, has probed the structure and material properties of protein machines in bacteria, which have the capacity to convert carbon dioxide into sugar through photosynthesis.

Would you have pig cells implanted in your brain? Some people with Parkinson’s disease have, in the hope it will stop their disease progressing.

There’s something inherently creepy and annoying about drones buzzing over our heads — a frequent backyard irritation in cities like New York. But it turns out, a drone’s spying abilities can be useful: an uncrewed drone discovered a super-rare plant on a steep cliff on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi.