A contact lens that could put names to faces and guide soldiers in combat

Cities can learn from comparing their carbon footprints

HOW and why do greenhouse-gas emissions differ between cities? Since more than half of the world’s people now live in such metropolitan areas, that is an important question. If the worst could copy the habits of the best, climate change might be slowed significantly.

Designs conceived for the handicapped, such as voice commands for PCs, often lead to products for the masses

Sand. Shrubs. Burst tires. More sand. The last thing you would expect as you drive along the Red Sea near Mecca is to encounter an ultramodern science city. Yet there it is. Appearing after an 80 kilometer drive from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest city, the 36 square kilometer campus of King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) appears like a Fata Morgana out of the desert sand.

A new climate treaty could provide a highly effective way to reduce carbon emissions by paying people to not cut down forests

A big AIDS-vaccine trial reports encouraging results

SOME good news about AIDS. After more than two decades of research those labouring to find a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes the disease, have found a method that might actually work.

Gene therapy holds promise in the treatment of cancer as well as a large number of other diseases. However, developing a scalable system for delivering genes to cells both efficiently and safely has been challenging. Now, two teams of researchers have developed versatile nanotechnology-enabled platforms that could get therapeutic genes safely and efficiently into cancer cells.