The concept is called “smart dust,” although the instruments are still far bigger than dust motes. More formally, it’s known as a wireless sensor network.
It works this way:
Make sensors that are very cheap and very small. They can measure anything you like, from vibration to light levels; or they can perform more complicated tasks, such [...]

The World Health Organization has thrown its weight behind growing moves to ban the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock.
A WHO report published on Wednesday concludes that a voluntary ban by Danish farmers on growth promoters in chicken and pigs cut antibiotic resistance in bacteria in the animals by over 90 per [...]

Using infrared light to photograph blood vessels in the eye sounds like the far-out technology of James Bond films, not Western cattle ranches.
Yet ranchers are using a small, hand-held computer called an OptiReader to take retinal images of their herds. The digital pictures are stored in a database with information about the animal, such as [...]

This may not be as absurd a question as it sounds. Genetic medicine is making enormous strides, and it may hold the promise — or maybe it’s the peril — of eventually making us something closer to immortal.
“Our life expectancy will be in the region of 5,000 years” in rich countries in the year [...]

A government report that urges the U.S. Postal Service to create “smart stamps” to track the identity of people who send mail is eliciting concern from privacy advocates.
The report, released last month by the President’s Commission on the U.S. Postal Service, issued numerous recommendations aimed at reforming the debt-laden agency. One recommendation is that the [...]

Copper may increase the growth of the protein clumps in the brain that are a trademark of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new US study on rabbits.
Researchers first noticed that the rabbits they use to model Alzheimer’s disease developed fewer plaques in their brains when they drank distilled water rather than tap water. These insoluble [...]