Wearable brain monitoring sensors allowed researchers to measure cognitive workload while aircraft pilots completed memory tasks. […]

Hurricane Patricia, which battered the west coast of Mexico in 2015, was the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Amid the extreme violence of the storm, scientists observed something new: a downward beam of positrons, the antimatter counterpart of electrons, creating a burst of powerful gamma-rays and X-rays. […]

A nanorobotics team has assembled a new microrobotics system that pushes forward the frontiers of optical nanotechnologies. Combining several existing technologies, the newly developed nanofactory builds microstructures in a large vacuum chamber and fixes components onto optical fiber tips with nanometer accuracy. The microhouse construction demonstrates how researchers can advance optical sensing technologies when they manipulate ion guns, electron beams and finely controlled robotic piloting. […]

Engineers have developed a new virtual-reality training system for drones that enables a vehicle to 'see' a rich, virtual environment while flying in an empty physical space. The system, which the team has dubbed 'Flight Goggles,' could significantly reduce the number of crashes that drones experience in actual training sessions. It can also serve as a virtual testbed for any number of environments and conditions in which researchers might want to train fast-flying drones. […]

Engineers have designed a robotic glider that can skim along the water's surface, riding the wind like an albatross while also surfing the waves like a sailboat. […]