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Public-access defibrillators must be absolutely reliable, but some of them are turning out to be anything but.

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New brain-machine interfaces that exploit the plasticity of the brain may allow people to control prosthetic devices in a natural way.

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Virgin Oceanic is aiming its experimental, cutting-edge sub straight to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

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The 10 engineers in this special report have solved the problem of finding an engrossing career in technology.

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IEEE Spectrum previews the technology news of the coming year. In choosing our subjects, we considered mainly the likelihood of their figuring prominently in headlines, not whether the technologies themselves would succeed.

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Unmanned airplanes have proved their mettle over the battlefield, but they won't take over the civilian skies until they've overcome a few technical--and human--problems.

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Unix, now 40 years old, was successful because it was small and elegant--and because it had a diverse community of users contributing to it from nearly the beginning.

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Cloud computing's problems--data breaches, leaks, service outages--threaten to obscure its virtues.

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Rival architectures face off in a bid to keep Moore's Law alive.

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On the first day of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident, workers struggled mightily to prevent disaster--and ultimately failed.

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Designed to tell time for 10 millennia, the monumental clock moves from thought experiment to actual timepiece.

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With radar, even the humblest compact car will see through fog, brake on its own, and track other vehicles hundreds of meters ahead.

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Wireless technologies are about to transform health care, and not a moment too soon.

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Reconstructing Afghanistan's electrical sector has cost billions of U.S. dollars--to little avail.

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New integrated circuit devices could finally open up the electromagnetic spectrum's notoriously inaccessible terahertz band.

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Thanks to the power and connectivity of today's mobile devices, video telephony will soon be everywhere.

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Intel's latest random-number generator taps into thermal noise and churns out secure numbers that a wide range of applications can use.

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The region is a hotbed of recruiting for technical professionals--especially engineers.

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Networks of intelligent robots will transform warfare, but significant hurdles in sensing, testing, and interoperability remain.

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Some physicists are attempting to make more powerful magnets by combining two different types of magnetic materials on the nanometer scale.

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Spacecraft the size of integrated circuits could revolutionize the way we explore the solar system.

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Java's ability to run the same code on many different kinds of computers grew out of work done at the University of California, San Diego, two decades earlier.

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Gary McKinnon hacked thousands of government computers, and his lawyers say his autism is to blame.

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Exercise equipment that generates power is the latest fad, but will the economics work out?

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In this special issue, IEEE Spectrum analyzes the many dimensions and facets--financial, personal, and technological--of the epic battle for the future of the Web.

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The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., has more than 100 000 technological artifacts in its collection--including a robotic squirrel and a warehouse-sized Cold War computer.

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Amorphous oxide semiconductors promise to make flat-panel displays faster and sharper than today's silicon standby.

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New techniques help to gauge wear and tear on transistors.

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Despite this year's economic troubles--or because of them--many automakers are doubling down on technology, seeing it as the best way to gain a competitive edge.

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Markets and economy drive engineering jobs.

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Preserving the Web itself is a monumental technical challenge.

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Some biologists are trying to inject honest-to-goodness engineering into the three-decade-old discipline of genetic engineering.

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In tough times, engineers still follow their dreams to fascinating jobs.

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This month IEEE Spectrum reviews the most important innovations that came of age in the past 10 years, based on their influence, usefulness, and sheer technical coolness.

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The use of fingerprints, shoeprints, handwriting, and other forensic evidence may seem like good science--but often it's not, as it relies heavily on humans for the analysis.

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Deregulation of the U.S. electricity industry led to higher prices and even shortages, but it also promises to bring a greener grid.

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3-D displays are trying to shed their spectacles.

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Algae could make the perfect renewable fuel.

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What makes semiconductor company Marvell, and its founder, Sehat Sutardja, tick?

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Although the range of frequencies available for mobile broadband is limited, freeing more of these airwaves is tricky--but possible.

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A paternity test for source code detects illegally copied software.

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Sikorsky Aircraft's X2 is capable of vertical takeoff and landing and can also achieve high-speed flight--a tricky technical feat that stymied generations of helicopter designers.

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With several companies offering telepresence robots to act as people's proxies at the office, IEEE Spectrum sets out to determine if this is the future of work.

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There is no shortage of jobs for EEs and IT professionals in the Asia-Pacific region.

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A net-zero-energy house in Denmark demonstrates that solar-powered homes can merge high-tech elements with thoughtful design to produce the ultimate home of the future.

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Instead of storing flight data on board, aircraft should send the information in real time to the ground.

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Some companies are betting that functional magnetic resonance imaging could provide a new, high-tech form of lie detection.

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With the online game Lego Universe, the Danish company will try to translate plastic bricks into digital play.

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Ammono, a little company out of Warsaw, is beating the tech titans in a key technology of the 21st century: growing the crystals on which blue lasers are fabricated.

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Inside a cellphone clutched in a murder victim's hand may be the clues that lead to her killer.