Materials

An atemporal history of puffed cereals suggests that the links between food and industry stretch back to the beginnings of civilization. The latest in our series on the science and technology of food, co-produced with GOOD.

Michelle Obama teams up with Walmart to fight obesity and bring down the cost of healthy food. But the problems of processed food emerged from yesterday's answers to questions of purity, safety, and health; will the future be any different? The latest in our series on the science and technology of food, co-produced with GOOD.

Remember how we used to say that when the machines start reproducing, we'll know we're in trouble"? Well maybe it's time for a gut-check on that one. Video after the jump.

Protozoan Pong and neurostimulating LCD projectors illuminate the control mechanisms of simpler organisms.

GOOD's Nicola Twilley wonders how the industrial analysis of qualities like texture, consistency, and juiciness will transform age-old culinary cultures, in the second in a joint series exploring the science and technology of food.

3D printing and fab labs are cool, but what this guy can do with a bandsaw (and you cannot, so don't even try) is patently awesome. Video after the jump.

Researchers have developed a prototype for coiled nanowires that could one day serve as stretchable circuitry. But can they make them walk down nano-stairways on their own?

Emeco's famously sturdy aluminum "Navy chairs" aren't cast�they're cut, pressed, rolled, and buffed�but their manufacture shows them to be part of a metal caste system, and players in a dance of fabrication. Video after the jump.

A team of scientist at Purdue University takes a biomimetic approach to engineering solar cells, appropriating the components of living systems to novel ends.

A film promoting the European linen industry offers a rapturous look at machinery spinning straw into gold. Video after the jump.