As part of a national research project to develop low-cost artificial hands, the Pentagon has released a video of a robot that can change a tire — almost, The New York Times reports.
In the video, the two-armed DARPA-funded robot uses a tool to remove a tire from a car:
The goal of the program, now in its third phase, is to develop robots… read more
The use of drones by domestic U.S. law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage, blogger Glenn Greenwald writes in The Guardian.
A short summary of Greenwald’s comprehensive article:
According to patent application 20130076612, just filed by Apple, a potential smartphone design could include a full wraparound display, have no buttons.
A flexible display panel would be configured to display content at any portion of the gadget’s frame, ZDNET reports.
The use of AMOLED and a conical shape for the flexible panel could offer users “an illusion of depth perception [...] mimicking a… read more
Chilling molecules to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the temperature at which they can be manipulated to store and transmit data in quantum computers, has proven to be a difficult challenge for scientists.
At higher temperatures, molecules rocket around, bouncing into each other and exchanging energy. Any information a scientist attempted to store in such a chaotic system would quickly become gibberish.
Now,… read more
A patent-pending technology to produce nanospheres developed by a research team at North Dakota State University, Fargo, could enable advances across multiple industries, including electronics, manufacturing, and biomedical sectors.
The environmentally-friendly process produces polymer-based nanospheres (tiny microscopic particles) that are uniform in size and shape, while being low-cost and easily reproducible.
The process allows scale-up of operation to high production levels, without requiring specialized… read more
Researchers at A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore are developing a prototype wireless device that powers an implanted blood-pressure sensor, eliminating the need to recharge or replace a battery.
The microscale electronic sensor monitors blood flow through artificial blood vessels. Surgeons use these prosthetic grafts to bypass diseased or clogged blood vessels in patients experiencing restricted blood supply, for example.
Over time, however, the… read more
The next industrial revolution could be biological. Think living machines that produce energy from landfill waste, biological sensors that detect dirty water or bacterial production lines that churn out drugs.
These are just some of the applications that synthetic biology — applying engineering principles to biological parts — could make possible, New Scientist reports.
That goal is looking more likely now that, for the… read more
Stanford University bioengineers have taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology by creating the “transcriptor” — a biological transistor made from DNA and RNA.
In electronics, a transistor controls the flow of electrons along a circuit. Similarly, a transcriptor controls the flow of a specific protein, RNA polymerase, as it travels along a strand of DNA.
“Transcriptors are the… read more
An electrical engineering research team at the University of Michigan has developed a laser-powered terahertz source and detector system that transmits with 50 times more power and receives with 30 times more sensitivity than existing technologies.
This offers 1,500 times more powerful systems for imaging and sensing applications.
Low-energy terahertz radiation could potentially enable doctors to see deep into tissues without the damaging effects… read more
Stanford University researchers have designed an entirely new form of cooling structure that cools even when the sun is shining, eliminating the need for air conditioning.
Such a structure could vastly improve the daylight cooling of buildings, cars, and other structures by reflecting sunlight back into space.
“We’ve developed a new type of structure that reflects the vast majority of sunlight, while at the same… read more
In February, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, two teams presented new work aimed at building better-performing and lower-power vision systems that would help aerial robots navigate and aid them in identifying objects, IEEE Spectrum reports:
A team of scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Northwestern University has produced 3-D images and videos of a tiny platinum nanoparticle at atomic resolution that reveal new details of defects in nanomaterials that have not been seen before.
Prior to this work, scientists only had flat, two-dimensional images with which to view the arrangement of atoms.
The… read more
Humans no longer “own” their own genes.
The more than 40,000 patents on DNA molecules have allowed companies to essentially claim the entire human genome for profit, report two researchers. Their study, published March 25 in the journal Genome Medicine, raises an alarm about the loss of individual “genomic liberty.”
The research team examined two types of patented DNA sequences: long and short fragments. They discovered… read more
Hitachi has launched the self-driving Robot for Personal Intelligent Transport System (Ropits) car, developed for elderly and disabled drivers, The Guardian reports.
The vehicle is designed to roam pavements and footpaths, rather than roads, and is equipped with a plethora of sensors and guidance systems to help it navigate around bumps, potholes, and pedestrians.
A touch-screen map is linked to a… read more