Ever since the dawn of the space age, a quixotic subculture of physicists, engineers, and science-fiction writers have devoted their lunch hours and weekends to drawing up plans for…

I am speeding down New Jersey’s highways, propelled by gasoline with a dash of ethanol, an alcoholic biofuel brewed from stewed corn kernels. As I drive through the outskirts of…

A truck is traveling on the freeway. Inside, stacks of bananas are piled high. Picked a few weeks ago at a plantation, they’ve traveled overseas in climate-controlled cargo ships,…

In engineering, uncertainty is usually as welcome as sand in a salad. The development of digital technologies, from the alphabet to the DVD, has been driven in large part by the desire…

When Angelica Lim bakes macaroons, she has her own kitchen helper, Naoki. Her assistant is only good at the repetitive tasks, like sifting flour, but he makes the job more fun. Naoki…

On the second balmy day of the year in New York, Neil Harbisson, a Catalan artist, musician, and self-professed “cyborg,” walked into a café in the Nolita district of Manhattan.…

The most basic function of a living organism is to take in energy and spend it on survival and reproduction. If humans are unique, then so must our energy use be. What we know today…