Applied Sciences

The cracking of concrete pavements is merely a nuisance, but cracks in roads, bridges and buildings are a hazard. A way of making concrete that healed such cracks spontaneously would thus be very welcome. And a team led by Henk Jonkers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands may have come up with one.
| 2 min read

Skyline Solar, a startup that today announced its existence to the world, has developed a cheaper way to harvest energy from the sun. The company's solar panels concentrate sunlight onto a small area, reducing the amount of expensive semiconductor material needed to generate electricity.
| 3 min read

In early April, Adam Wilson posted a status update on the social networking Web site Twitter just by thinking about it.
| 3 min read

A new, simpler programming language for wireless sensor networks is designed for easy use by geologists who might use them to monitor volcanoes and biologists who rely on them to understand birds' nesting behaviors, for example. Researchers at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University have written the language with the novice programmer in mind.
| 2 min read

A series of food safety crises, including melamine contamination in pet foods; E coli-tainted spinach, peppers and green onions; and a Salmonella typhimurium outbreak in peanut products have transformed food analysts from vigilant sentries into veritable centurions stridently safeguarding the quality, regulatory compliance and safety of our food.
| 5+ min read









