Emerging Tech

Solitary bees with a talent for producing durable polymers may point the way to a petroleum-free future.

At Berkeley, a Kinect hack takes flight.

Perhaps the secret to extraterrestrial life resides here on Earth.

In Google Earth, seeing the forest for the trees.

A Microsoft patent filed in May (and published yesterday) describes a �topography-changing� display in which shape-memory polymers would react to light signals to change the texture of a display surface, a technology that may be used to develop tactile touchscreens or other controls.

Day by day, the hacks are getting more interesting.

German robotics company Festo offers a postfuturist menagerie: autonomous kites, silver air-jellyfish and flying robo-penguins.

NASA's latest nanosatellites seek answers to questions about the place of life in the universe�at a very small scale.

University of Newcastle researchers may have come up with a biotechnology answer to the roadway printer I posted about yesterday: bacteria modified to colonize cracks in concrete and fix ruined buildings and crumbling roadways.

3-D printing is going viral. With 3-D fabrication technology at for the desktop, for LEGOs, and for nanoscale materials, it was only a matter of time before the paradigm found its way into space�and corporate science fiction. But this promising technology still has to prove itself in terrestrial infrastructure first.