Microsensors may be the key to solving the mystery behind the collapse of honeybee colonies. Australian researchers announced  that they have attached tiny, top-of-the-line trackers to about 10,000 healthy honeybees in an effort to find out what is driving a decline in the pollinators’ global population. The experiment, supported by an international group of scientists, farmers, beekeepers, and tech companies, is the latest to use tracking and tagging technology to study animal behavior and resp...

Solar power could be increased tenfold without additional storage in the near future. A team of Harvard scientists and engineers demonstrated a rechargeable battery that could make storing electricity from intermittently available energy sources, like sun and wind which is safe and cost-effective for both residential and commercial use. Much of the nation’s energy policy is premised on the assumption that clean, renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, will require huge quantities o...

Chemical technology can instantaneously separate elements and enable a smaller scale recycler. The latest news from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania is that they have pioneered a process that could enable the efficient recycling of two metals, neodymium and dysprosium. These elements comprise the small, powerful magnets that are found in many high-tech devices. Despite their ubiquity in consumer electronics, rare-earth metals are, as their name suggests, hard to come by. Mi...

An eco-friendly architectural concept for cultivating food within skyscrapers. Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist and professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, is credited with popularizing the concept of vertical farming. It is estimated that over the next four decades, our population will increase by 3 billion people and that 80% of us will be living in cities Many scientists are concerned that the amount of land required to feed us in the future will not be...