Now a new device has been developed which can direct and focus streams of cells in a liquid, and even separate them out according to size. “We can take a stream of cells and focus, defocus and reflect it as if it’s a light beam,” says Robert Austin of Princeton University, who developed the device [...]

An audacious proposal to build a 5,000-mile electricity supergrid, stretching from Siberia to Morocco and Egypt to Iceland, would slash Europe’s CO2 emissions by a quarter, scientists say.
The scheme would make the use of renewable energy, particularly wind power, so reliable and cheap that it would replace fossil fuels on an unprecedented scale, serving 1.1 [...]

Today only small numbers of Ainu remain, and they constitute one of Japan’s most marginalised groups.
On Friday they will have something to celebrate.
Japan’s parliament is to adopt a resolution that, for the first time, formally recognises the Ainu as “an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture”.
In a nation that has always preferred [...]

First, what is RepRap?
A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and - in addition - make other industrial products. Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost.
A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture [...]

When contemplating the world’s environmental problems, it’s sometimes hard not to feel like humanity is screwed. But then you attend an event like Future Cities, a panel of sustainability experts held last night at the World Science Festival, and it seems like we might just figure out how to thrive on this planet after all.
Full [...]