Gemstones like precious opal are beautiful to look at and deceivingly complex. As you look at such gems from different angles ...

Octopuses are the undisputed kings of camouflage. Whereas engineers have learned to mimic the colors, octopuses also match ...

From adaptive wearables to light-based signaling ideas, researchers are exploring what comes next The feathers of a ...

The Stanford team created a metasurface from a polymer previously used in solar panels and printable electronics. They found ...

Stanford researchers have developed a flexible material that can quickly change its surface texture and colors, offering potential applications in camouflage, art, robotics, and even nanoscale ...

By harnessing electron-beam patterning to control the swelling and contraction of a soft polymer, researchers created a ...

Readers respond to a guest essay by a student at Harvard. Also: Our phone choices; falling behind China on energy.

Inspired by the remarkable camouflage abilities of octopus and cuttlefish, Stanford researchers have developed a soft material that can rapidly shift its surface texture and color at extremely fine ...

Google Drive's recently introduced Gemini-based summarization features make me uncomfortable about my private document.

Louis E. Brus, a chemist and Nobel laureate who discovered quantum dots, tiny crystals that emit various colors of light ...

Planned obsolescence? She doesn’t even go here.