Tech

Computing

Smartphones put your privacy at risk

Smartphones have become essential companions. But they can leak data about you. In fact, the potential for invading your privacy is higher than you might think.

Computing

How to stop phone apps from spying on you

Many apps — especially free ones — collect data on a user and then sell them to advertisers. A new tool can help monitor that misuse of personal data and beef up privacy protection.

Agriculture

Robots will control everything you eat

Robots are now being introduced into all phases of how food is grown and prepared. In the future, though, they will be common.

Physics

Probing the power of the winds

Young researchers have been exploring the energy in wind to see how best they might tame it, harness it and understand its role in shaping the natural world.

Genetics

New tools can fix genes one letter at a time

New tools can edit the genome one letter at a time, correcting common errors that lead to disease.

Tech

Want a tougher space suit? Just add liquid

Using a special liquid, engineers are designing new treatments for spacesuits so that they can better resist puncturing from tiny meteorites and other hazards.

Tech

Magnetic heating may replace surgery to cure some infections

Scientists are testing magnetic fields as a way to kill bacteria that drugs normally cannot reach — such as those on medical implants inside the body.

Tech

Young challengers take a deep dive into engineering

Thirty teens worked in teams to design, build and test remotely-operated vehicles. Their mission: to grab river sediment — and perhaps a shot at winning a major national competition.

Tech

AI can guide us — or just entertain

Advances in artificial intelligence are changing the worlds of medicine, education and the arts.

Tech

This robot won’t trip people up

New robots can follow the social rules of moving through a crowd, such as keeping to the right and passing on the left.

Tech

Computers can translate languages, but first they have to learn

Translation programs are getting quite good at converting text from one language to another. Translating between three or more languages at once is trickier.

Archaeology

Scientists detect mystery void in Great Pyramid of Giza

Using high-tech tools normally reserved for studies in particle physics, scientists have found a large, hidden void inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza.