The 3-D printing industry is on track to be a $3.1 billion business by 2016 and the innovations on display this week at Euromold, a manufacturing trade show, show its foundation is growing — both in revenue and in physical print size, Wired News reports.
Objet 1000
The big news out of Euromold is the new Objet 1000 3-D printer,… read more
Researchers at Rice University have found a way to kill some diseased cells, including cancer cells, and treat others at the same time. The process, activated by a pulse of laser light, leaves neighboring healthy cells untouched.
The process, which uses “tunable plasmonic nanobubbles” developed in the Rice lab of Dmitri Lapotko, shows promise to replace several difficult processes now used to treat cancer… read more
Using deceptive behavioral patterns of squirrels and birds, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed robots that are able to deceive each other.
The research is led by Professor Ronald Arkin, a Regents Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, who suggests the applications could be implemented by the military in the future.
Animal deception tactics
Squirrels gather… read more
NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil, including water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances.
The rover’s laboratory includes the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. SAM used three methods to analyze gases given off from the dusty… read more
University of Rochester engineers have developed a computer program that gauges human feelings by analyzing 12 features of speech, such as pitch and volume, to identify one of six emotions from a sound recording with 81 percent accuracy.
The program has used to develop a prototype of an app that displays either a happy or sad face after it records and analyzes the user’s voice. It… read more
A team led by Princeton‘s Associate Professor of Physics Jason Petta has developed a new method that could eventually allow engineers to build a working quantum computer consisting of millions of quantum bits (qubits).
Quantum computers take advantage of the strange behaviors of subatomic particles like electrons. By harnessing electrons as they spin, scientists could use the particles to form the basis for a… read more
A team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the Institut Pasteur, Paris has come up with a novel way to describe brain development.
The findings could lead to new drug designs for mental disorders such as autism-spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia.
In the paper, the researchers identified the hierarchical tree of two types of gene networks that determine the… read more
The human genome has been busy over the past 5,000 years. Human populations have grown exponentially, and new genetic mutations arise with each generation, says Nature News.
Humans now have a vast abundance of rare genetic variants in the protein-encoding sections of the genome.
A study published in Nature now helps to clarify when many of those rare variants arose.
Researchers used deep sequencing to locate… read more
Researchers have identified the moment in history when the genes that enabled us to think and reason evolved.
This point 500 million years ago provided our ability to learn complex skills, analyze situations and have flexibility in the way in which we think.
According to Professor Seth Grant of the University of Edinburgh, who led the research, intelligence in humans developed as the result… read more
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned that the United States is facing the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” and is increasingly vulnerable to foreign computer hackers who could disrupt the government, utility, transportation, and financial networks.
Key to protecting online operations is a high degree of “cyber security awareness,” according to human factors/ergonomics researchers Varun Dutt, Young-Suk Ahn, and Cleotilde Gonzalez.
In their Human Factors article, “… read more
To survey previously uncharted territory, a team of researchers at UW-Madison has created an “atlas” that maps more than 1,500 unique landmarks within mitochondria that could provide clues to the metabolic connections between caloric restriction and aging.
The map, as well as the techniques used to create it, could lead to a better understanding of how cell metabolism is rewired in some cancers, age-related diseases… read more
MIT scientists have designed a little device called a “milli-motein” (millimeter-sized components and a motorized design inspired by proteins, which naturally fold themselves into incredibly complex shapes) that may be a harbinger of future devices that could fold themselves up into almost any shape imaginable.
The device was conceived by Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, visiting scientist Ara… read more
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created more than 100 three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures using DNA building blocks that function like Lego bricks — a major advance from the two-dimensional (2D) structures the same team built a few months ago.
The new method is the next step toward using DNA nanotechnologies for more sophisticated applications than ever possible before,… read more
Scientists have unveiled an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before.
Many satellites are equipped to look at Earth during the day, when they can observe our planet… read more
Would it be possible to integrate biological components with advanced robotics, using biological cells to do machine-like functions and interface with an electronic nervous system — in effect, creating an autonomous, multi-cellular biohybrid robot?
Researchers Orr Yarkoni, Lynn Donlon, and Daniel Frankel, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University think so, and they’ve developed an interface to allow communication… read more