The data centres servicing our beloved digital devices gobble huge amounts of electricity. A new way to think about heat and energy could help us meet growing demand without burning through the world's resources

Twitter used to be full of cat memes and had a culture of sharing. Now, I pay a company to make sure my presence on the site is extremely limited, writes Annalee Newitz

The UK government has pledged to make smart motorways safer by rolling out a radar detection system within the next three years, but New Scientist can reveal that just 7 per cent of the roads are protected by the measure today

TikTok's rise has been meteoric. With more than 3 million people a day now downloading the app, its success is down to more than just luck

An AI can detect the presence of smells and even distinguish between scents like ammonia or carbon monoxide, which could be useful for detecting hazardous odours

This image of an enormous ship under construction features in a new book and show that challenge common ideas about beauty - while the real ship may help cut carbon emissions

Doom Eternal does contain gratuitous violence, but the evidence suggests violence in video games doesn't affect people's behaviour in the real world, says Jacob Aron

Flexible displays for wearable devices can now be made using fish scales instead of plastic – and the new displays biodegrade within a month of being discarded

An artificially intelligent eco-assistant can persuade hotel guests and staff to reduce their electricity use by up to a third

In winter, the veins of leaves don’t get completely covered in frost. Mimicking this effect could be the best way to create ice-resistant surfaces

Kate Darling researches human-robot interaction. She explains why we are prone to forming emotional connections with robots and what we can learn from our relationships with pets and other animals

A spring-powered exoskeleton that minimises the amount of energy our legs lose when running could help boost human running speeds by more than 50 per cent

Always forgetting birthdays? Terrible at staying in touch? New tech promises to turn you into the best buddy ever. We put it to the test

Lab-grown ‘meat’ often uses gelatin produced in slaughterhouses to give artificial beef a meat-like texture – but substituting soya protein can achieve that without killing animals

Pandemics of the past can teach us about the current one, says John Troyer, who studies how we use technology to alter the experience of death

Join Pearse Keane to find out why the NHS is collaborating with AI company DeepMind and how deep learning could transform ophthalmology

Inside a mountain in the Arctic, Microsoft is building a backup of open-source software that it says will keep the code safe for 1000 years

Pollen has a natural tendency to adsorb mercury and forms the basis of a new class of tiny robots that speed through toxic water to purify it

An analysis of the media consumption habits of people in the US shows that fake news makes up a tiny fraction of what they watch or read every day

Is our love affair with AI really about building a new kind of deity to meet human needs no amount of rationality can fill? Max Barry's disturbing novel Providence lays out the case, says Sally Adee

Glass has an unusual atomic structure that resembles a liquid frozen in place, making it hard to predict how it will behave. DeepMind has developed an AI capable of doing so, which may also be able to predict traffic jams

The video game Resident Evil 3 was in development long before the coronavirus outbreak, but it holds up a mirror to the strange times we live in today

A program that combines artificial intelligence and geometrical modelling can create an accurate 3D model of your face from a single 20-second video

The covid-19 pandemic has many of us stuck at home. The result could completely reshape how we use the internet, writes Annalee Newitz

Businesses, individuals with land, and local governments are competing to host an underground nuclear waste facility in the UK, and receive a yearly £2.5 million incentive

Fabric with tiny vibrating motors elicits sensations associated with clouds, water and rocks on the skin and has been made into a dress that could improve emotions

Qubits are often stabilised by being supercooled, which makes quantum computer chips hard to scale up. Now they have been operated at above -272°C for the first time

A high-speed 3D printer is being tested by the US Army for producing spare steel parts near the front lines – it could also make weapons or aircraft parts

An image-editing program designed by researchers at Abode uses AI to let you quickly transform the shape of objects in images and change the lighting

Many countries are hoping to use contact-tracing apps to leave lockdown and suppress further coronavirus outbreaks, but the use of such technology has many issues

Artificial intelligence can tell whether a human or a bot is posting on Twitter based on how regularly they post and how much they reply to others, which could help identify fake accounts

The US Navy is researching how to use lasers to form plasma into 2D or 3D infrared images of aeroplanes that can distract heat-seeking missiles

An AI-powered application lets you create real-time deepfakes during video calls, making you appear to be speaking as anyone from Albert Einstein to the Mona Lisa

A cheap, lightweight smartphone-heated device can test for DNA in blood, urine and other samples in a fraction of the time it takes to test in a lab

AI can check satellite images of the ocean and distinguish between floating materials such as seaweed or plastics, which could help clean-up efforts

Bamboo is a renewable material that when microwaved becomes stronger by weight than steel or concrete – which could make it ideal for constructing buildings, cars and planes

Black paint usually absorbs heat, but a new two-layer polymer paint reflects infrared light and keeps objects 16°C cooler, which could help make buildings more energy efficient

A 3D printed grate can be used to make a smart window that blocks heat from sunlight out in the summer while letting it through in the winter, conserving energy

Psychologist Pete Etchells explores what the scientific research has to say about game violence and addiction and busts some myths

Robots made of 3D-printed muscle and rat spines could help us understand conditions like motor neurone disease and the technique may eventually be used to build prosthetic devices

In TV series Devs, a tech company has built an extremely powerful quantum computer. The show is both beautiful and captivating, says Rowan Hooper

A robot that uses artificial intelligence to find and remove weeds could eventually be used as an alternative to chemical insecticides

Can you really be addicted to your smartphone? Daria Kuss has shown that it is only a problem for a small number of people - and she knows how to help

Martha Wells's action-packed novel Network Effect puts you inside the head of a Murderbot. It raises fascinating questions you will think about for a long time, says Sally Adee

The UK government will begin trials of its coronavirus contact-tracing app this week, but what impact it will have on slowing the spread of covid-19 is unclear

In a new photography book, the home computer revolution of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s is told through nostalgic industrial-design images

Telling Lies is a game where you sift through video calls to solve a mystery. Half the time you don't know what you should be doing, but that's part of the fun, says Jacob Aron

People in lockdown are no longer trying to use technology to get their old lives back and that's a good thing, says Annalee Newitz

Four decades ago, we introduced a standard way of encoding digital sound. Its first ever upgrade could lead to new genres of music and ways of experiencing sound

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