Showing results by publisher "MIT Technology Review" in All Categories

A two-year government study has found a small increase in two types of cancer in male rats exposed to the kind of radiation that cell phones emit. Given the ubiquity of cell-phone usage, the implications of the findings are substantial, if they are replicated in humans.

Air particulates are invisible, but a new generation of indoor air monitors makes it easy to know the air quality instantaneously and take immediate corrective action. In my family’s case, we learned that turning on the exhaust fan helps - it lowers the PM2.5 from 250 to 100 micrograms per cubic meter, but getting the number below 50 required opening windows in the front and back of the house to get cross ventilation.

If all goes according to plan, sometime next month a surgeon in Texas will use a needle to inject viruses laden with DNA from light-sensitive algae into the eye of a legally blind person in a bet that it could let the patient see again, if only in blurry black-and-white.

Facebook keeps its map of the social connections of the 1.6 billion people who use the service each month to itself. But it is giving away for free new maps it is building that describe patterns of population density in the world’s poorest countries in unprecedented detail.

Police departments, government offices, corporations, and countless individuals have been victims of malicious software that encrypts data and demands payment for its return. But a spate of recent ransomware infections at hospitals has some experts worried that patient care could suffer.

A startup called Zipline will use a fleet of long-distance drones to airdrop precious blood and medicines to remote medical facilities across Rwanda. The potentially life-saving project hints at the potential for unmanned aerial vehicles to revolutionize the delivery of some goods. But it also highlights the fact that drone delivery currently makes most sense only in extreme situations.

For all the remarkable progress being made in artificial intelligence, and warnings about the upheaval this might bring, the smartest computer would still struggle to make it through the eighth grade.

Might the communities of microörganisms living in healthy plants hold the keys to dramatically increasing crop yields? A new venture-backed company is betting yes. Indigo, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup, is developing microbe-based crop treatments identified through the study of the beneficial bacteria and fungi - collectively known as the microbiome - that naturally live in and around plants.

Move over, silicon. Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, is preparing to embrace alternatives to the technology that has sustained computing for more than 50 years. William Holt, who leads the company’s technology and manufacturing group, said this week that for chips to keep improving, Intel will soon have to start using fundamentally new technologies.

Could a neck-worn device protect the brains of athletes and soldiers against traumatic injury? That’s the promise of technology that researchers are beginning to test in humans after several years of animal studies.

Helmet designers have so far failed to account for a key cause of brain injury - the kinetic energy that travels through the head after an impact and makes the brain slosh inside the skull. That’s according to Ellen Arruda, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan, who is leading an effort to change that. She and her colleagues have unveiled a prototype of a new helmet technology capable of dissipating a significant portion of that kinetic energy before it reaches the brain.

Rudeness is on the rise in the United States, and consumer technology is partly to blame. That may seem a harsh indictment for such seemingly innocuous creations as the telephone answering machine, boom box radio-cassette player, and talking computer chip in automobiles. But they are relatively cheap to manufacture and insinuate themselves into every corner of daily life. The result is a decline of civilization as we have known it.

In this issue: "In Apple vs. the FBI, There Is No Technical Middle Ground" by David Talbot; "How Apple Could Fed-Proof Its Software Update System" by Tom Simonite; "Pentagon Hackers Are Waging America's First Cyberwar" by Tom Simonite; "The Missing Link of Artificial Intelligence" by Tom Simonite; "An AI with 30 Years' Worth of Knowledge Finally Goes to Work" by Will Knight; "Technical Roadblock Might Shatter Bitcoin Dreams" by Tom Simonite; "In First Human Test of Optogenetics, Doctors Aim to Restore Sight to the Blind" by Katherine Bourzac.

In this issue: "5 Things You Need to Know about Facebook’s Next 10 Years" by Rachel Metz and Tom Simonite. "Wireless, Super-Fast Internet Access Is Coming to Your Home" by David Talbot. "The Nauseating Disappointment of Oculus Rift" by Rachel Metz. "The Unbelievable Reality of the Impossible Hyperloop" by Ryan Bradley. "Coffee Under Threat" by Nanette Byrnes. "Who Approved the Genetically Engineered Foods Coming to Your Plate? No One." by Mike Orcutt. "When Smartphones Become Too Addictive, Stylish Dumb Phones Offer a Respite" by Rachel Metz.

In this issue: "Can CRISPR Save Ben Dupree?" by Antonio Regalado; "Your Driverless Ride Is Arriving" by Will Knight; "Elon Musk's House of Gigacards" by Peter Burrows; "The One and Only Texas Wind Boom" by Richard Martin; and "Learning to Prosper in a Factory Town" by Nanette Byrnes.

In this issue: "A Change of Mind" by Bonnie Rochman. "Kindergarten for Computers" by Will Knight. "Are Young Athletes Risking Brain Damage?" by Amanda Schaffer. "Hot and Violent" by David Rotman. "Stop Emissions!" by Ken Caldeira. "A Sensible Climate Policy" by Richard Martin. "The End of Internet Advertising as We've Known It" by Doc Searls.

In this issue: "Microsoft's Top Lawyer Becomes a Civil Rights Crusader" by Tom Simonite; "Bill Gates Doubles His Bet on Wiping Out Mosquitoes with Gene Editing" by Antonio Regalado; "Manufacturing Dopamine in the Brain with Gene Therapy" by Antonio Regalado; "China's Headlong Rush into an Ultra-expensive Cancer Therapy" by Yiting Sun; "Fetal Cells Offer Promise in Prenatal Testing" by Bonnie Rochman; "A Big Step Forward in the Quest for a Better Painkiller" by Adam Piore; "Life as an Entrepreneur in a Violent Mexico" by Adam Popescu.

In this issue: "10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2015: Where Are They Now?" by Tom Simonite; "5 Robot Trends to Watch for in 2016" by Will Knight; "What Will It Take to Build a Virtuous AI?" by Will Knight; "What Robots and AI Learned in 2015" by Will Knight; "The 6 Most Important Things That Happened in Virtual Reality in 2015" by Rachel Metz; "Human-Animal Chimeras Are Gestating on U.S. Research Farms" by Antonio Regalado; "Parents Turn to Prozac to Treat Down Syndrome" by Bonnie Rochman; "2015 in Biomedicine: Baby Engineering, Spray-On GMOs, and Cancer Cures" by Antonio Regalado.

In this issue: "35 Innovators Under 35 – Visionaries" by The Editors of Technology Review; "35 Innovators Under 35 – Inventors" by The Editors of Technology Review; "35 Innovators Under 35 – Entrepreneurs" by The Editors of Technology Review; "35 Innovators Under 35 – Pioneers" by The Editors of Technology Review; "35 Innovators Under 35 – Humanitarians" by The Editors of Technology Review; and "AI's Unspoken Problem" by Will Knight.

In this issue: "How Bad Will Trump Be for Climate Policy?" by David Victor; "Trump's Impact on Clean-Energy Businesses" by Peter Fairley; "Amazon's Next Big Move: Take Over the Mall" by Nicholas Carr; "Mark Zuckerberg Is Funding a Facebook for Human Cells" by Antonio Regalado; "Web Pioneer Tries to Incubate a Second Digital Revolution" by Tom Simonite; "The Decline in Chinese Cyberattacks: The Story Behind the Numbers" by Mara Hvistendahl; "On Patrol with America's Top Bioterror Cop" by Antonio Regalado; "Companies Bet on Designer Bacteria as New Way to Treat Disease" by Antonio Regalado.