'Swarm Electrification' in Bangladesh Lets Neighbours Swap Solar Electricity

Ten households in Shakimali Matborkandi, a village in the Shariatpur district of Bangladesh, have seen a dramatic change over the past year in the way they light their home...

Off-grid solar to help Myanmar bring electricity to all by 2030

Four feet in length, of aggressive disposition, and deadly poisonous: you don’t want to stand on a Russell’s viper in the dark. Especially if there’s no a...

Meet the Cyborg Beetles, Real Insects That Are Controlled Like Robots

The future is crawling towards us on six legs. Motherboard traveled to Singapore to meet with Dr. Hirotaka Sato, an aerospace engineer at Nanyang Technological University. ...

Do We Know What Our Children Want?

"There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place."

J.K. Rowling

Over the last one century or so, ordin...

Scientists Are Using the Enzyme That Makes Fireflies Glow to Track Brain Cells

Fireflies and other bioluminescence-producing species (e.g. bacteria, jellyfish, worms, sharks) create light through a chemical reaction in their body catalyzed by an enzym...

This New Technology Could Save The Troubled Nuclear Power Industry

The future of the nuclear industry may happen somewhere on scenic but relatively isolated land that’s about 100 miles southwest of Yellowstone National Park. Amid the...

California's Key Climate Change Program Aims For New Life

In advance of a political showdown in the state Legislature, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration made its first formal effort Tuesday to extend the life of the program ...

New Chemical Assembly Process Opens Door To Atomically Thin Electronics

Simply, silicon is a bulk material. Silicon's semiconducting properties occur thanks to additional dopants added to its crystal lattice structure, and taking advantage of t...

NASA's New X-Plane Is An Anyplane Prototype For The People

Given this ancestry, perhaps what makes NASA's newly announced X-plane, the X-57 Maxwell, so striking is that the concept is built around what's kind of just a normal-ass g...