ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

Researchers have discovered how neurons in a small area of the mammalian brain help filter distracting or disruptive signals -- specifically from the hands -- to coordinate dexterous movements. Their results may hold lessons in how the brain filters other sensory information as well.

A compositional link between planets and their respective host star has long been assumed in astronomy. Scientists now deliver empirical evidence to support the assumption -- and partly contradict it at the same time.

Researchers developed a metasurface that uses very deep, very narrow holes, rather than very tall pillars, to focus light to a single spot.

Uses of facial images and facial recognition technologies -- to unlock a phone or in airport security -- are becoming increasingly common in everyday life. But how do people feel about using such data in healthcare and biomedical research?

Not all ice is the same. The solid form of water comes in more than a dozen different - sometimes more, sometimes less crystalline - structures, depending on the conditions of pressure and temperature in the environment. Superionic ice is a special crystalline form, half solid, half liquid - and electrically conductive. Its existence has been predicted on the basis of various models and has already been observed on several occasions under - very extreme - laboratory conditions. New results provide another piece of the puzzle in the spectrum of the manifestations of water. And they may also help to explain the unusual magnetic fields of the planets Uranus and Neptune, which contain a lot of water.

Researchers have developed a simple spatial light modulator made from gold electrodes covered by a thin film of electro-optical material that changes its optical properties in response to electric signals.

Researchers have succeeded in creating a new type of super-stable, durable glass with potential applications ranging from medicines, advanced digital screens, and solar cell technology. The study shows how mixing multiple molecules -- up to eight at a time -- can result in a material that performs as well as the best currently known glass formers.

Interactions between iron, water, oxygen and ions quickly become complex. Scientists have now developed a more precise method to observe how iron minerals like rust form.

Solar prominences hover above the visible solar disk like giant clouds, held there by a supporting framework of magnetic forces, originating from layers deep within the Sun. The magnetic lines of force are moved by ever-present gas currents -- and when the supporting framework moves, so does the prominence cloud. A research team has observed how magnetic forces lifted a prominence by 25,000 kilometers -- about two Earth diameters -- within ten minutes.

Researchers have theoretically demonstrated that the correlations of light can be controlled with a metamaterial known as enhanced epsilon-near-zero (eENZ) materials. The material allows small and high-quality lasers that are expected to have applications for example in imaging, flow detection and wireless optical communication.

A new article proposes that space probes could hitch a ride with 'centaurs' as they become comets. Along the way, the spacecraft would gather data that would otherwise be impossible to record -- including how comets, Earth-like planets, and even the solar system formed.