Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have built a quantum processor that can factor a composite number - in this case the number 15 - into its constituent prime factors, 3 and 5.
To demonstrate that DNA's suitable for use as a large-scale data storage medium, a team of scientists has encoded a 5.27MB book using DNA microchips, and then read it back again.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have worked out how to create tiny robots, just a few microns long, that can swim through liquids such as water and could one day be used for everything from drug delivery to construction.
A new 'spintronic' organic light-emitting diode promises to be brighter, lower-cost and more environmentally friendly than those currently used in lighting, television and computer displays and other electronic devices.
Scientists have taken a big step towards practical quantum computing, with the creation of qubits that can exist in a solid-state system at room temperature.
Researchers have calculated that it should be perfectly possible to grow a perfect, meter-long single-walled carbon nanotube 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Scientists have demonstrated that it's possible to store information in individual molecules, potentially paving the way for storage devices that could be thousands of times smaller than today.
Computers could become sarcastic or exaggerate for effect, say two Stanford researchers, who have developed a mathematical model aimed at improving natural language processing.
