Machine

From dog sleds to horse-drawn carts, animals have been pulling vehicles for thousands of years. Now, scientists in Tokyo have made what might be the smallest version ever, designing microscopic vehicles that can be pulled by single-celled algae.

In many fields of technology, smaller is better, and machinery is now getting so tiny it’s measured in mere atoms. Researchers at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany have now developed the world’s smallest working gear wheels.

Testing out new drugs is an extremely time-consuming process, and it can be difficult to get right. Now, a team of scientists has worked to streamline the task, creating a robotically driven experimentation system that's able to reduce the number of necessary tests by as much as 70 percent.