Twenty years have passed since Concorde's final flight, marking the end of supersonic commercial aviation. Over the years, many projects promising to revolutionize super-fast travel have emerged but have failed to deliver. However, a Swiss-based startup called Destinus is now attempting to develo

The biggest show of the year for the mobile industry converges every February in Barcelona—MWC Barcelona (formerly known as Mobile World Congress), held by the cellular industry group GSMA. This is my fourth year attending MWC as an industry analyst and the show always gives me a perspective on the

The New Zealand–based company is pioneering a new way of reusing rockets that's distinct from what competitors like SpaceX and Blue Origin have done. New Zealand company Rocket Lab has hit a key milestone with the successful launch and recovery of its flagship Electron rocket. The mission, the firm

Last month, a navy blue, six-seater aircraft took off at Cranfield Airport in England. Usually, a 15-minute, 20-mile flight wouldn't be noteworthy -- but this was the world's first hydrogen fuel-cell-powered flight for a commercial-size aircraft. The plane's powertrain -- the mechanism which drives

Two major breakthroughs in solar cell technology could vastly improve the way energy is harvested from the sun. The two studies, published in Nature Energy and Nature Photonics, will transform the efficiency and significantly reduce the cost of producing solar cells, scientists say. The first break

The hybrid solar energy converter features a solar module with glowing red cells built at Tulane. Credit: Photo courtesy of Matthew Escarra Tulane University researchers are part of a team of scientists who have developed a hybrid solar energy converter that generates electricity and steam with

The next major revolution in computer chip technology is now a step closer to reality. Researchers have shown that carbon nanotube transistors can be made rapidly in commercial facilities, with the same equipment used to manufacture traditional silicon-based transistors – the backbone of today's co

Maxime Firth's business is complicated to manage, even in good times. His company, Onduline, turns recycled fibres into roofing material, after dousing them with bitumen to make them waterproof, and sells products in 100 countries. Its eight production plants span from Nizhny Novgorod in Russia and

Here’s a list of promising drugs being tried on people infected with the virus. The new coronavirus that has sickened more than 70,000 people in central China is spreading, setting off outbreaks in South Korea, Iran, and Italy, and now threatens to move around the globe as a true pandemic. The US C

IN BRIEF After five years’ work, an MIT team can now fabricate a transparent version of a silica aerogel, an ultralight material that blocks heat transfer. They have used their aerogel in a solar thermal collector to generate temperatures suitable for water and space heating and more—without using t

A 3D printing system that controls the behavior of live bacteria could someday enable medical devices with therapeutic agents built in. A method for printing 3D objects that can control living organisms in predictable ways has been developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at MIT an

Canada is pitching itself to the world as a high-tech hotbed Justin Trudeau’s government has been praised for its focus on research and innovation since coming to office in November 2015, boosting funding for research by C$9.4 billion, launching five innovation superclusters for R&D in artificial

Captured carbon dioxide could be used to extract useful metals from recycled technology such as smartphone batteries rather than just being buried underground. The technique could help make it more economical to capture the greenhouse gas before it enters the atmosphere. “By simultaneously extractin

StarckGate observed this fantastic new tech at the MIT Media Lab, where the Tangible Media Group believes the future of computing is tactile. Unveiled today, the inFORM is MIT's new scrying pool for imagining the interfaces of tomorrow. Almost like a table of living clay, the inFORM is a surf

The electric vehicle startup’s platform approach helped it raise nearly $3 billion this year. The sheer spectacle of Tesla’s Cybertruck unveiling, from the severe angles to the smashed windows, will go down as the biggest news in electric pickup trucks this year. But a rival startup that has yet

On Tuesday, A.I.-focused technology firm Hypergiant Industries announced a machine that uses the aquatic organisms to sequester carbon dioxide. Algae, the company claims, is “one of nature’s most efficient machines.” By pairing it with a machine learning system, its developers hope to make these tal

How AI will shape the network of the future With 5G networks rolling out around the world, engineers are turning their attention to the next incarnation. Mobile-phone technology has changed the way humans understand and interact with the world and with each other. It’s hard to think of a technology

In spring 2018, the surprising discovery of superconductivity in a new material set the scientific community abuzz. Built by layering one carbon sheet atop another and twisting the top one at a “magic” angle, the material enabled electrons to flow without resistance, a trait that could dramatically

Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with teams from the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague and Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem have developed a new 2-D material to produce hydrogen, which is the basis of alternative energy. The material efficiently

Tired of standing in line? Wait a bit longer, and you may never have to again. Everyone from Amazon to Silicon Valley startups are trying to eliminate lines in retail stores. Amazon has opened 24 of its Amazon Go stores, which use cameras and artificial intelligence to see what you've taken off she

The first 10 fuel cell electric trucks set to revolutionise the green hydrogen mobility ecosystem in Switzerland have been shipped from South Korea. Hyundai Motor Company on Sunday said the first 10 Hyundai XCIENT Fuel Cells, the world’s first mass-produced fuel cell heavy-duty truck, were on their

• Facebook AI has built and open-sourced BlenderBot, the largest-ever open-domain chatbot. It outperforms others in terms of engagement and also feels more human, according to human evaluators. • The culmination of years of research in conversational AI, this is the first chatbot to blend a diverse

The experimental train will be created by converting ScotRail carriages retired in December. It is likely to be tested on a heritage line in Scotland like the Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway, which has been used for trials of battery trains. Testing would then be switched to a main line. Conversion wor

The news: The European Union’s newly released white paper containing guidelines for regulating AI acknowledges the potential for artificial intelligence to “lead to breaches of fundamental rights,” such as bias, suppression of dissent, and lack of privacy. It suggests legal requirements such as: —Ma

For the first time, MIT researchers have enabled a soft robotic arm to understand its configuration in 3D space, by leveraging only motion and position data from its own “sensorized” skin.Soft robots constructed from highly compliant materials, similar to those found in living organisms, are being c

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker will kick off Thursday’s morning program, featuring TED-style talks from MIT faculty and remarks by Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt, as well as a panel of entrepreneurs and investors on computing for the marketplace. The afternoon features a Q&A session with MIT Presi

pair of biomarkers of brain function — one that represents listening effort, and another that measures the ability to process rapid changes in frequencies — may help explain why a person with normal hearing may struggle to follow conversations in noisy environments, according to a new study led by H

Something to look forward to: Some of the biggest problems that need solving in the enterprise world require sifting through vast amounts of data and finding the best possible solution given a number of factors and requirements, some of which are at times unknown. For years, quantum computing has be

THE GLOBAL STAGE FOR INNOVATION CES is the world's gathering place for all those who thrive on the business of consumer technologies. It has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for 50 years — the global stage where next-generation innovations are introduced t

The European Green Deal sets out how to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, boosting the economy, improving people's health and quality of life, caring for nature, and leaving no one behind The European Commission today presented The European Green Deal – a roadmap for makin