In an example of life imitating art, biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs.

The results could lead to better treatments for diabetes and muscle diseases in humans.

Mice that grow larger muscles and can run for twice as long as their unaltered littermates before tiring could point toward new treatments for the muscle loss that can occur with aging.  

Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman discusses the potential uses for quasicrystals.

Dan Shechtman, the Philip Tobias professor of materials engineering at the Haifa Technion Israel Institute of Technology, was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry last week for his discovery of quasicrystals—a form of matter with an atomic structure that was previously thought impossible.

In 1982, Shechtman discovered a new atomic structure when studying a rapidly cooled mix of aluminum and manganese.

Researchers show that a smart phone can measure some vital signs accurately and conveniently.

A new smart-phone app can take your pulse and measure your breathing simply by detecting subtle changes in skin color. All you need to do is hold an index finger over a smart phone's video camera for a few minutes.

Earlier this year, researchers from MIT's Media Lab showed that a computer could reliably measure heart rate using just a mirror and a webcam.

Stanford researchers think the wireless mouth guards will be better than specialized helmets at measuring head injuries.

Despite growing concern over the long-term consequences of head injuries in contact sports, researchers still aren't sure how different types of blows affect the brain.

Now a team at Stanford University is employing sensor-laden mouth guards to gauge the effects of head injuries in football players. The researchers plan to expand their research to other sports, including women's lacrosse and hockey.

Designed to teach math to students in poor countries, the device will be the first to use a new energy-efficient computing strategy.

After a year of testing in a remote village in India, researchers are ready to scale up production of an ultra-low-power $35 tablet called the I-slate.

The I-slate is designed to teach math and other subjects to students whose schools lack electricity or to students who don't have access to teachers at all. The device will enter full-scale production next year, and will be the first device to apply a low-power technology called probabilistic CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) to achieve a longer battery life.

A stretchy binder material that's compatible with existing factories could help electric cars and portable electronics go 30 percent longer.

Lithium-ion battery electrodes bound together by a new highly conductive material have a much greater storage capacity—a development that could eventually increase the range of electric cars and the life of smart-phone batteries without increasing their cost. Unlike many high-capacity electrodes developed over the last few years, these can be made using the equipment already found in today's battery factories.

The Modlet lets you monitor your power usage via mobile device, and turn off appliances remotely.

Electronics and appliances waste a lot of energy when they're plugged in but not being used. There's even a term for all that waste—"vampire power." A home entertainment center in standby mode, for example, can draw as much electricity as a refrigerator.

A range of new devices offer to help you manage this problem. The latest is ThinkEco's Modlet, a gizmo little bigger than a "wall wart"-style plug that packs enough brains to continuously monitor the energy usage of any device plugged into it.

A Pittsburgh company says its battery has the long life and cheap cost needed to be practical for energy storage.

Utilities need cheap, long-lasting ways to store the excess energy produced by power plants, especially as intermittent power from solar and wind farms is added to the mix. Unfortunately, the batteries available for grid-level storage are either too expensive or don't last for the thousands of cycles needed to make them cost-effective.

A new battery developed by Aquion Energy in Pittsburgh uses simple chemistry—a water-based electrolyte and abundant materials such as sodium and manganese—and is expected to cost $300 for a kilowatt-hour of storage capacity, less than a third of what it would cost to use lithium-ion batteries.

Under a fee-for-service structure, doctors aren't motivated to embrace innovation.

The advent of cheaper sensors and wireless transmitters, along with ubiquitous computing power in the form of smart phones, is making it easier and easier for patients with chronic diseases to track their conditions at home. But many health-care providers seem reluctant to adopt these technologies.

Experts say this is, in large part, because of the reimbursement system in U.S. health care, where physicians are paid for each test or office visit they provide.