Stories by Author

Evan Ackerman

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Evan Ackerman is a native Oregonian who now lives, somewhat unwillingly, in San Francisco. He has a background in creative writing and astrogeology, neither of which are necessarily appropriate for someone who is now a full-time blogger. Evan also writes for IEEE Spectrum's robotics blog, and when he's not parked at his computer with his eyes glazed over, you can find him getting injured on a soccer field or playing bagpipes excellently.

Bird photo booth: say 'SEEDS!'

Evan Ackerman
Tuesday, November 6, 2012 - 3:03pm
 
Taking pictures of birds is about to get a lot easier than frantically running after them with the biggest telephoto lens you can steal: now on Kickstarter is a remote controlled bird photo booth that lets you take spectacular bird pictures without having to work for it.

Europe approves DNA-rewriting meds to cure genetic disease

Evan Ackerman
Monday, November 5, 2012 - 3:01pm
 
Having a genetic disease means that there's something wrong with your DNA. Somewhere, in those millions of base pairs, even the simplest mutation (or mis-coding) in a gene can cause all sorts of serious problems, and since the problem is at such a basic level, it's impossible to fix without rewriting the essence of what makes you you. And we can now do that.

Crushed silicon more than triples battery capacity in tests

Evan Ackerman
Friday, November 2, 2012 - 5:58pm
 
It's been like 30 seconds since we posted about some new trick that'll make batteries less terrible, so it's high time for some updates: researchers at Rice University have found that stuffing piles of crushed silicon into lithium-ion batteries can increase their capacity by a factor of three, but the real news here is that it's both easy to do, and cheap.

Living concrete fixes its own cracks with built-in bacteria

Evan Ackerman
Friday, November 2, 2012 - 4:08pm
 
Concrete is the most popular building material on the planet, probably because it's very strong, easy to work with and cheap, being made mostly of rocks. There are some durability issues with concrete, though, and to make it stronger, Dutch scientists have added self-healing capsules to help buildings heal cracks on their own.

First all-carbon solar cell made from nanotubes and buckyballs

Evan Ackerman
Friday, November 2, 2012 - 3:33am
 
Part of the reason that solar cells aren't on top of every roof everywhere harvesting energy is that they're expensive, and part of the reason that solar cells are expensive is because they're made with exotic elements like indium. How about, let's instead make them with one of the top five most common elements in the entire Universe: say hello to the all-carbon solar cell.

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