Newspaper Consortium Seeks to Sell Cars.com for $3 Billion; Online Marketplace is Jointly Owned by Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy and Other Publishers

Newspaper Consortium Seeks to Sell Cars.com for $3 Billion

Online Marketplace is Jointly Owned by Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy and Other Publishers

WILLIAM LAUNDER, DANA MATTIOLI and MIKE SPECTOR

Updated March 9, 2014 4:48 p.m. ET

A group of newspaper publishers has put the cars.com online marketplace up for sale for as much as $3 billion, hoping to cash in on booming values for e-commerce sites, people familiar with the plans said. Read more of this post

Bioprinting: Building living tissue with a 3D printer is becoming a new business, but making whole organs for transplant remains elusive

Bioprinting: Building living tissue with a 3D printer is becoming a new business, but making whole organs for transplant remains elusive

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

IN A state-of-the-art clean room, a scientist clad in a full-body containment suit, a hair net and blue gloves is preparing some printing cartridges—filled not with ink but a viscous milky liquid. Next to her sits a computer connected to a machine that resembles a large ice-cream dispenser, except that each of its two nozzles is made of a syringe with a long needle. Once the scientist clicks on the “run program” button, the needles extrude not a vanilla or chocolate-flavoured treat, but a paste of living cells. These bioinks are deposited in precise layers on top of each other and interspersed with a gel that forms a temporary mould around the cells. Read more of this post

Stalking trolls: Intellectual property: After being blamed for stymying innovation in America, vague and overly broad patents on software and business processes could get the chop

Stalking trolls: Intellectual property: After being blamed for stymying innovation in America, vague and overly broad patents on software and business processes could get the chop

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

AT LAST, it seems, something is to be done about the dysfunctional way America’s patent system operates. Two recent developments suggest calls for patent reform are finally being heard at the highest levels. First, in 2013, defying expectations, the House of Representatives passed (by an overwhelming majority) the Innovation Act, a bill aimed squarely at neutralising so-called patent trolls. These are individuals or companies who buy up lots of patents and then use them to extract payments from unsuspecting victims. Second, the US Supreme Court agreed to rule on what is the most contentious issue of all: which inventions are actually eligible for patent protection. Read more of this post

Woven electronics: An uncommon thread; Conductive fibres: From lighter aircraft to electric knickers, flexible filaments raise a wide range of interesting possibilities

Woven electronics: An uncommon thread; Conductive fibres: From lighter aircraft to electric knickers, flexible filaments raise a wide range of interesting possibilities

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

LAS VEGAS in January is the place to spot the latest trends in consumer electronics. The one that grabbed the attention of most people at the 2014 CES show were the wearables. These are gadgets that you put on, from all sorts of spectacles with built-in cameras and screens, like Google Glass, to wrist bands and watches that can monitor your heart rate or relay text messages. There is even jewellery that can warn you of too much exposure to the desert sun. Read more of this post

Molecular communications: Researchers are looking at ways to broadcast messages using chemical rather than electrical signals

Molecular communications: Researchers are looking at ways to broadcast messages using chemical rather than electrical signals

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

HUMANS have long experimented with how best to communicate at a distance. Smoke signals and drums date back to prehistoric times. The Romans used carrier pigeons as messengers to support their conquests. Since the early 1830s, however, communication has been dominated by electrical or electromagnetic signals, from the first telegraph to the carrier waves in fibre-optic cables and the wireless networks of cellular telephones. But now a new contender is signalling its presence: molecular communication. Read more of this post

Smart labels: The 40-year-old barcode has a new, more intelligent rival that can store information, display and transmit it

Smart labels: The 40-year-old barcode has a new, more intelligent rival that can store information, display and transmit it

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

IN JUNE 1974 history was made at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, with a ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It was the first time a commercial item bearing a Universal Product Code (UPC) was scanned by a cashier at the checkout. Forty years on, what became known as a barcode has transformed the world of commerce by providing reliable product identification, tracking and pricing. Nearly everything now comes with a barcode. Read more of this post

Aerial jellyfish: Ornithopters: Flying like a bird has long captured the imagination. The latest way to do so is copied from the ocean, not the atmosphere

Aerial jellyfish: Ornithopters: Flying like a bird has long captured the imagination. The latest way to do so is copied from the ocean, not the atmosphere

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

ENGINEERS often look to the natural world for inspiration—and flight engineers, doubly so. Mankind’s desire to soar like the birds directly inspired the Wright brothers’ solution to the problem of controlling a heavier-than-air flying machine, by suggesting the way to do so was to warp the shape of the craft’s wings. More recently, designers of ornithopters (tiny, robotic flying machines lifted by flapping wings) have looked to insects for inspiration, and built systems of sensory feedback that can keep aloft designs which are essentially unstable. Read more of this post

Truffle farming: How mapping technology is being used to discover new places to grow savoury and expensive fungi

Truffle farming: How mapping technology is being used to discover new places to grow savoury and expensive fungi

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

PIGS, dogs and rakes can all be useful in the quest to discover wild truffles, but each has its drawbacks. Pigs like to gobble up the fancy fungi as much as their owners do. Dogs are costly to train. Rakes wreak havoc on the duff (leaf litter) that often covers truffle-rich soil, thus damaging the fungi’s environment. Truffles are, nevertheless, successfully being unearthed in areas not traditionally associated with their growth. Read more of this post

Can parallel lines meet: Power transmission: How to build a real supergrid by making existing electricity lines more efficient at transmitting power

Can parallel lines meet: Power transmission: How to build a real supergrid by making existing electricity lines more efficient at transmitting power

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

GERMANY has a problem. The decision, taken in 2011, to close down the country’s nuclear-power stations risks leaving parts of the country with insufficient supplies of electricity. This means power will have to be brought in from elsewhere. But to do that seems, on the face of things, to require the building of new transmission lines, which will be unpopular with those they pass by. Read more of this post