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Experts say the cascading blackout that put millions of Westerners in the dark last week was no surprise: Major power outages have more than doubled in the last decade. "This is just evidence that we need a smarter, better, more secure system," said Massoud Amin, director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, who has analyzed federal data on the reliability of the nation's electric grid.

The brightest gamma ray beam ever created- more than a thousand billion times more brilliant than the sun- has been produced in research led at the University of Strathclyde- and could open up new possibilities for medicine.

A road that charges electric cars has long been a pipe dream for combating range anxiety, but these Japanese scientists are making it work in real life.

A research team at Michigan State University has developed a laser that could detect roadside bombs – the deadliest enemy weapon encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just as a camera flash illuminates unseen objects hidden in darkness, a sequence of laser pulses can be used to study the elusive quantum behavior of a large "macroscopic" object. This method provides a novel tool of unprecedented performance for current experiments that push the boundaries of the quantum world to larger and larger scales.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Used in Hollywood and the advertising industry to create exotic special effects, ferrofluids are seemingly magical materials that are both liquid and magnetic at once. In a study published today in Physical Review B, Yale electrical engineering professor Hur Koser and colleagues from the University of Georgia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrate for the first time an approach that allows ferrofluids to be pumped by magnetic fields alone. The invention could lead to new applications for this mysterious material.

This year is slated to be one of the most charred on record, as wildfires have burned more than 7.5 million U.S. acres to date.

What's a concerned citizen to do? In an effort to reduce the amount of water the state imports, it's now producing an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas while it cleans its wastewater. Here’s a conundrum

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stony Brook University researchers,

One of the world's oldest publishing companies brought in a ringer to revolutionize the way the company does business.

People can change -- but how? This is the central concern of “Redirect,” a new book by Timothy D

No longer content to let the U.S. and Europe dictate the pace and direction of innovation, countries around the world are funding their own R&D to solve their own problems. The United States and Europe have long been the center of scientific and technological innovation, and the story of the day is how China may be usurping their place.

Northwestern University scientists have developed new materials that can detect hard radiation, a very difficult thing to do. The method could lead to a handheld device for detecting nuclear weapons and materials, such as a "nuclear bomb in a suitcase" scenario.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown that it is possible to reduce the minimum voltage necessary to store charge in a capacitor, an achievement that could reduce the power draw and heat generation of today's electronics.

On the anniversary of September 11, Inc.com reflects on innovations that emerged out of the countrys most tragic event, from Meetup to One World Trade Center.