Category: Technology

Probing Venus’ mountains — Science News, February 12, 1972 Venus’ perpetually cloud-shrouded surface remains penetrable only by radio waves. A planetary radar group now reports…

A 1920s science headline, “Ice cream from crude oil,” may best capture the era’s unbridled enthusiasm for chemistry. “Edible fats, the same as those in…

The Big Picture features technology through the lens of photographers. Every month, IEEE Spectrum selects the most stunning technology images recently captured by photographers around…

What are today’s tech leaders concerned about? Trying to maintain strong cybersecurity for a hybrid workforce and protecting their systems from cyberattacks as more and…

In late November of 2021, a 6,090-square-foot (566 square-meter) parcel, located within the evocatively named “Fashion Street” district of an up-and-coming development called Decentraland sold…

While the sound of footsteps slowly growing louder may be a sure sign of impending doom in any horror film, the pulse of video game…

Bad things happen when demand outstrips supply. We learned that lesson too well at the start of the pandemic, when demand for toilet paper, disinfecting…

Last year, the US government got serious about snuffing out robocalls. Effective 30 June 2021, the FCC mandated that phone providers verify all callers’ IDs…

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar…

Of the many physicists who didn’t win a Nobel Prize, Edwin Herbert Hall is among a select group for whom the failure seems a particular…

DARPA has announced the first phase of a shiny new program called RACER, which stands for Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency. I’m not…

Network coding pioneer Muriel Médard calls herself a pathological optimist. The MIT electrical engineering and computer science professor’s positive thinking has led to new ways…

“A bit of bedlam.” That’s how the physician Graeme Clark described the scene at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, on…

Three months ago the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26) declared that by 2030 the world must cut total carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent relative to…

LCDs may be the mainstay of consumer displays, but when it comes to picture quality, including high contrast ratio, brighter colors, and wider viewing angles,…

Jay Last Silicon Valley pioneer Life member, 92; died 11 November Last is considered to be one of the eight “Fathers of Silicon Valley,” according…

Among the great engineers of the 20th century, who contributed the most to our 21st-century technologies? I say: Claude Shannon. Shannon is best known for…

How you interact with a crowd may help you stick out from it, at least to artificial intelligence. When fed information about a target individual’s…

In these days of seemingly neverending chip shortages, more and greater varieties of semiconductors are in demand. Chip fabs around the world are now racing…

Meta, parent company of Facebook, says it has built a research supercomputer that is among the fastest on the planet. By the middle of this…

Feral pigeons are responsible for over a billion dollars of economic losses here in the United States every year. They’re especially annoying because the species…

Consumer technology is often a story of revolutionary leaps followed by a descent into familiarity. The first computers advanced so quickly that new models went…

Alzheimer’s disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Typically, doctors use a combination of cognitive tests, brain imaging, and observation of behavior that can be expensive…

An autonomous car needs to do many things to make the grade, but without a doubt, sensing and understanding its environment are the most critical.…

Breakout was the best video game ever invented, many designers say, because it was the first true video game. Before Breakout, all were games like…

It was the end of 2008, October, right before the holiday shopping season. Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey released her highly anticipated Favorite Things list, with…

IEEE Life Fellow Asad M. Madni is the recipient of this year’s IEEE Medal of Honor. He is being recognized “for pioneering contributions to the…

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar…

At first the dream of riding a rocket into space was laughed off the stage by critics who said that you’d have to carry along…

This week, startup Metalenz announced that it has created a silicon chip that, paired with an image sensor, can distinguish objects by the way they…

AT&T and Verizon finally fired up vital components of their 5G networks in the United States on Wednesday. Mostly. The two companies had already agreed…

A team of Chinese and European researchers are planning to use the moon as a shield to detect otherwise hard-to-observe low frequencies of the electromagnetic…

Moving freight by rail hasn’t changed a whole heck of a lot over the last several decades. And there are good reasons for this: trains…

The South African patent office made history in July when it issued a patent that listed an artificial intelligence system as the inventor. The patent…

For years, scientists have tried to crack a mathematical mystery: Is there an equation that can perfectly describe each and every bird egg? Variable shell…

In 1971 video games were played in computer science laboratories when the professors were not looking—and in very few other places. In 1973 millions of…

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar…

The IEEE Board of Directors has nominated Life Fellow Thomas Coughlin and Senior Members Kathleen Kramer and Maike Luiken as candidates for IEEE president-elect. IEEE…

Unitree Robotics, well known for providing affordable legged robots along with questionable Star Wars-themed promotional videos, has announced a brand new, custom-made, 6-degree-of-freedom robotic arm…

Shrink down to the level of atoms and you enter the quantum world, so supremely weird that even a physicist will sometimes gape. Hook that…

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Sensors traditionally have been used for camera imaging, as well as communicating information about humidity, temperature, motion, speed, proximity, and other aspects of the environment.…

It’s not often that we see a home robot that manages to be both relatively affordable and realistically technologically achievable while also solving a clear…

This is a sponsored article brought to you by Avidbots. The days of having single-purpose robots for specific tasks are behind us. A robot must…

While growing up in Germany, Heike Riel helped her father design and build furniture in the family workshop. She says the experience taught her that…

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics.…