Even in the cutting edge world of skyscraper design, the Burj Khalifa stands apart. Officially opening in 2010, it remains the world's tallest building by a long way, and represents an amazing engineering achievement. To get the inside story on its design and construction, along with the unique challenges the project posed, we spoke with the Burj Khalifa's structural engineer, William F. Baker, a structural and civil engineering partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

• Building and Construction
• Burj Khalifa
• Interviews
• Owings & Merrill
• Skidmore
• Skyscrapers
• World's Tallest

• Chicago's iconic Willis Tower to get its first facelift
• Reach for the sky: The world's tallest skyscrapers
• One World Trade Center is big on green design
• Researchers create a 3D-printed vehicle that can power a 3D-printed home (and vice versa)
• Beijing tower reflects on energy efficiency with trapezoidal glass facade
• World's tallest building becomes world's tallest Lego building

In the history of life on Earth, there have been five mass extinction events, with the most extreme example, the Permian extinction, wiping out some 95 percent of all marine life. Now, an MIT professor has analyzed the changes that took place in the carbon cycle leading up to these five main events – as well as dozens of smaller ones – and found that the end of this century could mark the tipping point for a sixth mass extinction event.

• Anthropocene
• Carbon
• Carbon Dioxide
• Climate Change
• Earth
• Extinction
• MIT

• Were Magma pulses responsible for Earth's most devastating extinction event?
• Utterly unkillable tardigrades will live to see our Sun die
• Leopard numbers plummet in former African stronghold
• Global cheetah numbers plummet toward extinction
• Back from the dead? Sightings lure scientists in search of Tasmanian tiger
• Darwin's dilemma: Bizarre ancient animal identified through DNA

Porsche has an instantly-recognizable product on the road, but translating that to a marine vessel isn't necessarily an easy task. Having revealed renders last year, Dynamiq has turned the Porsche-inspired GTT 115 Hybrid into a reality, launching it ahead of the Monaco Yacht Show.

• Boats
• Porsche
• Superyacht

• Numarine launches its first 32-meter explorer yacht
• CRN carves out a 243-foot slice of Cloud 9 on the oceans
• Fast displacement hull makes for parsimonious hybrid superyacht
• High-powered SS18 yacht soars through the water
• Arcadia A85S cruises on diesel, floats on solar power
• Hybrid superyacht delivers splash of Porsche style for seafaring types

Cassini might have been reduced to nothing when it burned up in Saturn's atmosphere last Friday, but the spacecraft has left a legacy of readings and observations that will be pored over for years. A set of images shared by NASA offer a taste of what's to come in terms of scientific discovery, along with a little window into the moments leading up to the unmanned probe's spectacular demise.

• Cassini
• NASA
• Saturn
• Titan

• Cassini on course for destruction after final Titan flyby
• Cassini continues to "surprise and delight" on its final Saturn jaunt
• Saturn's moon Titan may have fizzy lakes
• Cassini prepares for dramatic climax to its mission
• Solid state chemistry could be clouding up Titan's bone-dry atmosphere
• Cassini is once more lord of the rings, after surviving seventh Saturn dive

The classic image of a robot is one clad in a rigid metal shell, but that's not going to be practical in situations where man and machine will need to work together. The emerging field of soft robotics is helping to make that collaboration safer, but recreating muscle is no easy task. Now, mechanical engineers from Columbia University have developed a synthetic soft muscle that's much more simple to make and run than others, and is three times stronger than the real thing.

• Artificial Muscles
• Columbia University
• Engineering
• Robots
• Soft Robotics

• Powerful artificial muscles made from ... fishing line?
• Restricting field of view to reduce motion sickness in VR
• 3D food printer designed to cook up culinary creations
• Color barrier broken: Microscope's palette nearly quintupled
• Cambits system lets users build cameras from high-tech blocks
• Microneedle painlessly monitors drug levels without the need to draw blood

A few years ago, a team of MIT scientists developed a novel way to separate blood cells using sound waves. Now the team, in conjunction with scientists from several other institutions, has taken the technology even further by demonstrating that the process can isolate exosomes from blood samples. This has the potential for a fast way to detect biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.

• Biomarkers
• Blood
• Cancer
• Microfluidic
• MIT
• Sound

• Could a blood test accurately diagnose autism?
• Sweat-sensing wristband monitors the state of your health
• Sweat-analyzing skin patch could replace blood sampling
• Researchers develop new paper-based portable lab
• Biomarker discovery points to blood test for osteoarthritis
• Ultra-sensitive biosensor could detect diseases in their earliest stages

Google is ramping up its efforts in the mobile space, with a US$1.1 billion purchase of HTC talent to play a key role in its development of smartphone hardware. The agreement sees Google bring HTC brainpower in-house to build Google products, while leaving HTC free to continue virtual reality and smartphone pursuits of its own.

• Google
• HTC
• Smartphones

• So long, Cardboard: Consumer Android VR is called Daydream, turning Android N phones into VR headsets
• Android's new Instant Apps jump straight to your phone, no installation required
• The Pixels have landed: Here are Google's flagship phones for 2016
• How the Google Pixel can eventually topple the iPhone
• The best smartphone tech coming your way in 2017
• The best Google Pixel alternatives

Ford would argue the F-150 Raptor is the roughest, toughest production truck available on (and off) the road. Shelby American would beg to differ. The new Shelby Raptor builds on the base Raptor with more power, better off-road capability and tougher looks – but you'll need to get in quickly, with a production run of just 500.

• Ford
• Off-road
• Shelby
• Truck

• Sport Trac Adrenalin – supercharged V8, All-Wheel-Drive, 6-speed auto, Sport Utility Truck
• Sebring Tribute Roadster will be the first global turnkey Shelby
• Shelby lets loose a pair of supercharged Super Snakes
• Track-only club racing Mustang joins the paddock
• Original Shelby engineers give 1965 GT350R a new lease on life
• Shelby GR-1 set for world trip

Astronomers have discovered a brand new type of object in our solar system: an active binary asteroid. That means the object, named Body 288P, is the first known hybrid of two rare types of asteroid: a binary that's made up of two rocks orbiting each other, and an active asteroid that acts more like a comet, leaving a trail of gas and dust in its wake.

• Asteroid
• Comets
• Hubble
• Max Planck Institute
• Solar System

• Astronomers spot bizarre six-tailed asteroid
• Ice found in the eternally dark craters at Ceres' poles
• NASA releases new Ceres images prior to Friday encounter
• Dawn space probe gets best look yet at Ceres
• New Dawn Ceres image outdoes Hubble
• NASA debunks asteroid strike rumors

Arnold Schwarzenegger's love affair with Hummers is well documented, with the action star-turned politician acquiring several of the gas-guzzling military vehicles for his personal collection, even converting them to run on hydrogen and biofuel. Battery specialist Kreisel Electric has now unveiled a conversion truly befitting the so-called green governor, with the man himself on hand to present the an all-electric Hummer H1 at the company's new headquarters in Austria.

• Electric Vehicles
• Hummer
• Kreisel

• Kreisel electrifies classic Porsche race car into a high-speed supercar
• Kreisel and Schwarzenegger​ reveal 483-hp, 190-mile all-electric G-Class
• Identity Crisis: Prindiville's electric Hummer
• Dual-speed supercharger for the Hummer H3
• Wild thing – the Hummer GT
• First Responder special from Hummer