A quantum afterburner extracts laser light from vehicle exhaust.

The hot gases belching out of your car’s exhaust are not just useless waste. They are a laser waiting to happen, says physicist Marlan Scully1.

All you need to harness this potential, suggests Scully, of Texas A&M University in College Station, is a quantum afterburner. This hypothetical modification would use quantum mechanics to boost the engine’s efficiency by clawing back waste heat and turning it

Many of today’s medicines were discovered by trial and error: a substance is found which helps alleviate the symptoms of a disease, and it may take years before scientists really understand how it works. Typically they find that a drug has its effects by attaching itself to a particular molecule in a cell and blocking part of its activity, the way you might prevent someone from turning a light on or off by putting a lock over the switch. Scientists now hope to take the opposite approach, and custom-d

Government funding puts Chinese plant biotechnology second only to US

While westerners vacillate about the risks and benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops, China is embracing the technology. A new survey shows that the Chinese are working on more plant biotechnology products than anyone outside North America1.

Chinese research institutes claim to have developed 141 GM plants, 65 of which have been approved for release into the environment. Scott Rozelle, an agricultura

Sensors and loudspeakers reduce in-car racket.

Tired of shouting to your passenger as you drive, striving to make your voice heard over the rumble of the car? Help is on the way, in the form of strategically placed sensors and loudspeakers.

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Taejon have developed a prototype system that shaves up to 6 decibels off the typical motoring noise of around 60 decibels. That’s more than any other co

Ireland’s huge hexagonal columns are a natural consequence of lava cooling.

The Giant’s Causeway is not the work of men or monsters, but a natural consequence of how lava cools and solidifies, new computer simulations suggest.

The causeway is a field of roughly hexagonal basalt columns up to 40 feet high on the shores of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. It arose when a flow of volcanic rock split into hexagonal columns to relieve stress, according to Eduardo Jagla

A technique used by academics to analyse poetry may soon help industry to find out whether computer safety systems really ARE safe. In a novel example of interdisciplinary academic work, English literature meets computing science in an project to design a decision-making framework for the safety industry.

Newcastle University researcher Jim Armstrong, who holds a first degree in English Literature and a PhD in Computing Science, is investigating how the technique ‘deconstruction’ – usually