Inventions, technology, and creative solutions solving real-world problems.
The University of Queensland's BASE mRNA Facility will build quality-control technology for ARPA-H's GIVE program, which aims to let US hospitals produce personalized RNA medicines on demand. UQ's share is up to $57 million.
MIT's CERBERUZ team won NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge with a machine that grinds mixed plastics and aerospace foam into powder and molds it into new parts, with no water or chemicals. The team won $925,000 over the competition.
MIT and Boston Children's Hospital researchers built E(3)-Pose, a model that uses the left-right symmetry of the fetal head to track its position during MRI, so scans can adjust on the fly instead of leaving gaps.
Scientists at Tanzania's TARI-Selian have been trained to use a low-cost LAMP test from the John Innes Centre that confirms wheat blast in 30 to 60 minutes. The disease, which can wipe out whole fields, is already in neighboring Zambia.
MIT researchers built an AI model that links 3D crystal structures with written descriptions of their properties. Asked for solid-state battery electrolytes, it surfaced materials already identified as promising candidates.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the OpenAI Foundation are committing $50 million to Cities Deliver, which will fund groups that work with city governments on AI for health, jobs, climate resilience and public services. Proposals are due 29 November.
Physicists built metamaterials from dozens of linked sensors and motors that start vibrating chaotically and then settle into one slow, synchronized rhythm, a state called a time crystal. The work, led from Amsterdam and Birmingham, is in Nature.
Adding zinc bromide and methylammonium chloride while perovskite crystals form cut defects, so the material held energy from sunlight about 10 times longer, a team from Princeton, UC San Diego and South Korea reported in Science.
MIT engineers built a soft silicone sheet with light-carrying rubber fibers that rebuilds its own shape on screen almost in real time. They hope it could one day help physical therapists track patients' movement.
A 16-element Ka-band transmitter mounted on a foldable membrane aboard Japan's RAISE-4 satellite measured how the membrane bent after unfolding and corrected for it, Institute of Science Tokyo said. The team sees it as groundwork for 6G satellite networks.
A vibrating wristband first built as a foamcore prototype in MIT's product-design class is now FDA-cleared for adults with essential tremor. In two trials, more than 70% of patients improved. Insurance coverage is the next hurdle.
Shiksha Copilot, an AI system from Microsoft Research India evaluated with Cornell, saved more than 1,000 teachers in Karnataka about two hours a week, and about 30,000 teachers in Telangana now use it.
Scientists led by Germany's Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon made a polystyrene with about 50% plant-based content, produced with microwaves and designed with breaking points so it can be broken down after use.
President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the CSIR's FuturePharma facility in Pretoria on 7 October. The open-access site helps researchers and young companies scale up medicine ingredients, part of a push to cut South Africa's reliance on imported drugs.
Attacus Acoustics, a new University of Bristol spinout, is commercializing a sound-absorbing material inspired by moth wings that it says can be up to ten times thinner than conventional soundproofing.
ACME Solar has brought 107 MW / 437 MWh of new battery energy storage online at two projects in Rajasthan, taking the company’s operational storage capacity in India to 4.96 GWh.
Oregon State University chemists report a light-driven material that produces hydrogen from water using sulfur-containing organic parts instead of an added expensive metal catalyst, a design they say could help lower the cost of green hydrogen.
Rezolv Energy has switched on the first phase of its VIFOR wind farm in Buzău County, 30 Vestas turbines producing 192 MW, the largest wind project brought online in Romania in more than a decade.
Engineering firm GICON has raised a pilot wind turbine in Schipkau, Germany, to 365 meters, with its hub at 300 meters. It should start running in November and is designed to tap stronger, steadier winds high above ordinary turbines.
A Binghamton University team built paper wallpaper that generates a small current from room humidity. An array of 1,596 units powered a wireless keyboard and lowered the room's humidity in lab tests.
A University at Buffalo team led by Amit Goyal has built a sensor that measures recycled plastic content directly, without relying on paperwork, earning two 2026 R&D 100 Awards and a patent application.
MIT researchers have built 3D-printed "bifur-circuit" blocks that reconfigure into a huge range of stable shapes while keeping their electrical connections fully intact, a step toward furniture and gadgets that can physically transform.
About our innovation coverage
Innovation covers new technology that solves practical problems: medical devices, cleaner materials, satellites and space hardware, energy systems and digital tools built for places that are usually left out. We are interested in what works, how it works and who it is for.
We distinguish a laboratory result from a product people can use. A prototype, a successful test in orbit or a regulatory clearance are reported as exactly that, with the remaining steps, such as scaling up, approval or insurance coverage, stated plainly. Claims come from the company, university or agency that made them, and we name it.