New Atlas (Aug. 27) – Researchers have developed better noise-cancelling technology that doesn’t require bulky noise-blocking headphones. The new technique developed at the U. of I.’s Coordinated Science Laboratory takes advantage of the fact that wireless signals travel a million times faster than sound waves. “Our ear device gets the sound information in advance, and has much more time to produce a better anti-noise signal,” says Romit Roy Choudhury, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. IEEE Spectrum (Sept. 5)