MIT is leading an ambitious new project to reinvent how robots are designed and produced.
Funded by a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the project will aim to develop a desktop technology that would make it possible for the average person to design, customize and print a specialized robot in a matter of hours.
“This research envisions a whole new way of… read more
Researchers from North Carolina State University (NC State) have developed a new way to fine-tune wireless power transfer (WPT) receivers, making the systems more efficient and functional. WPT systems hold promise for charging electric vehicles, electronic devices, and other technologies.
Researchers have previously shown that it is possible to transmit power wirelessly by using magnetic resonance, but even minor changes in how the transmitter or receiver is… read more
The world’s lightest material — with a density of 0.9 mg/cc — about 100 times lighter than Styrofoam — has been developed by a team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories, and the California Institute of Technology.
The new material, using nickel-phosphorous thin films, redefines the limits of lightweight materials because of its unique “micro-lattice” cellular architecture. The researchers were able to make a material that… read more
Astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of our deepest-ever view of the Universe called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, by combining ten years of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations taken of a patch of sky within the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full Moon — a small area of space in the… read more
DARPA has launched a program called called “Living Foundries,”designed to apply the conventions of manufacturing to living cells, Wired Danger Room reports.
DARPA has awarded seven research grants worth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, Cal Tech, and the J. Craig Venter Institute.
“Living Foundries” aspires to streamline genetic engineering for “on-demand production” of whatever bio-product suits… read more
A new telescope, the Sentinel Space Telescope, promises to provide an early-detection system that could predict a devastating asteroid impact.
It will map the approximately half-million large asteroids that populate the inner solar system. The observations could be used to identify threats decades in advance of an impending collision.
A large asteroid colliding with Earth may seem like a science fiction scenario, but there’s reason to take it… read more
A novel biomimetic strategy that delivers life-saving nanotherapeutics directly to obstructed blood vessels, dissolving blood clots before they cause serious damage or even death has been developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
This new approach enables thrombus dissolution while using only a fraction of the drug dose normally required, thereby minimizing bleeding side effects that currently limit widespread use of… read more
Scientists from Aalto University in Finland and the University of Washington have demonstrated how to create complex 3D structures at nanoscale by combining ion processing and nanolithography.
The fabrication of many objects, machines, and devices rely on the controlled deformation of metals by industrial processes such as bending, shearing, and stamping. Is this technology transferrable to nanoscale? Can we build similarly complex devices and machines with… read more
Researchers at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have created a computer program that scored up to 150 on specific portions of an IQ test: identifying patterns in pictures and number sequences.
IQ tests include progressive matrices, which test the ability to see patterns in pictures, and number sequences, which test the ability to see patterns… read more
TASER International has announced new kind of camera called AXON flex, to be worn by police officers.
The half-ounce unit is about the size of a cigar stub and clips on to a collar or sunglasses of an officer. It can record two hours of video during a shift. The information is transferred by a docking station to a local machine, and eventually stored… read more
The Internet has been in an uproar since the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was rushed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday (CISPA primer here).
Summary of the situation: “Insanity: CISPA Just Got Way Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote.” CISPA now heads to the Senate but President Obama has already threatened to veto the bill, citing its flaws,… read more
A new assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm has concluded for the first time, with “moderate confidence,” that North Korea has learned how to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile, according to The New York Times Thursday.
But late Thursday, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., released a statement saying that the assessment did not represent a consensus of… read more
A robot remotely controlled by a low-wage foreign worker could soon compete with some U.S. workers, suggests MIT doctoral student in information technology Matt Beane in Technology Review.
Companies now produce and sell robots that allow users to navigate through a remote working environment, interacting by means of a computer screen.
The next wave promises much more capability per dollar. DARPA recently issued a robotic challenge involving… read more
Mathematicians plan to launch a series of free open-access journals that will host their peer-reviewed articles on the preprint server arXiv, Nature News reports. The project was publicly revealed yesterday in a blog post by Tim Gowers, a Fields Medal winner and mathematician at the University of Cambridge, UK.
The initiative, called the Episciences Project, hopes to show that researchers can organize the… read more
One year after public uproar forced them to pause, researchers who study H5N1 avian influenza by designing new, extra-virulent strains are set to resume their work, Wired Science reports.
In a letter published Jan. 23 in the journals Nature and Science, 40 virologists, including leaders of the most high-profile experiments, declared that their voluntary moratorium is now over.
Other experts say concerns about the… read more