This archive covers technology and innovation breakthroughs that improve lives, protect the environment, and expand human possibility. From medical devices to clean energy tools, the stories here focus on what’s working and who’s making it happen.
For decades researchers have been trying to develop a vaccine for the deadly respiratory disease. It looks like 2023 will be the landmark year where not only one, but possibly three different vaccines are approved.
Pilot programs are ongoing in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, and Hawai’i are already seeing promising results.
The Nature Conservancy announced it will work with partners to buy a piece of Barbados’ national debt and refinance it to facilitate this goal.
Artificial DNA that turns cancer’s own biology against itself marks a genuine conceptual leap in oncology. Japanese researchers at the University of Tokyo engineered synthetic molecules that lie dormant until they detect a chemical cancer cells overproduce — then restructure themselves into a signal the immune system reads as a threat, destroying the tumor from within. Early tests spanned multiple cancer types, suggesting broad potential. This kind of precision — working with the body’s existing defenses rather than overwhelming them — is exactly the direction cancer medicine has been reaching toward, and this research moves that goal meaningfully closer.
Denmark is moving forward with an initiative that will take huge quantities of captured carbon out to an oil rig in the North Sea, and pump it down to sequester it in the sandstone formations that once held oil and gas.
In a study published in Pharmaceutics, scientists tested their vaccine on 60 rats. The immunized animals could produce antibodies that stop the deadly drug’s effects.
The Phase 1/2 trial data from Janssen Research & Development covered hundreds of myeloma patients. Based on preliminary trial data, the FDA has granted it “Breakthrough Therapy” designation.
Fusion energy just cleared a barrier scientists have been chasing since the 1950s — producing more energy from a reaction than was needed to trigger it. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved this by blasting tiny hydrogen fuel capsules with lasers until they released roughly 20 percent more energy than the lasers delivered. The result doesn’t mean fusion power plants are imminent; enormous engineering challenges remain between this laboratory milestone and a working grid. But it does confirm that fusion’s central promise is physically real — and that gives scientists, investors, and policymakers something genuinely new to build on.
The machine dispensed more than 3,000 doses of naloxone and 10,000 drug test strips in the first year after it was installed in February 2021.
Sales of the climate-friendly heating technology are set to hit record levels, especially in Europe where some countries are seeing sales double in the first half of 2022 compared with the same period last year.
