Graphene’s unique properties make it a potentially ideal membrane for water filtration or desalination. but the process of making it into ultrathin membranes creates leaky defects. So MIT engineers and associates have devised a two-step process to repair these leaks.
As shown in the illustration (top left) graphene is fabricated on a copper surface — a process that can create intrinsic defects in graphene. After lifting the graphene and… read more
McGill University researchers have devised a new technique to produce long, custom-designed DNA strands to build nanoscale structures to deliver drugs to targets within the body or take electronic miniaturization to a new level.
Researchers have been assembling and experimenting with DNA structures or “DNA origami” for years, as KurzweilAI has reported. But as these applications continue to develop, they require increasingly large and complex strands of… read more
Biologist Miriam Barlow of the University of California, Merced, and mathematician Kristina Crona of American University of Washington, DC have found a way to return bacteria to a pre-resistant state to help doctors deal with the growing problem of resistant bacteria. In research published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, they show how to verify treatment options for a family of 15 antibiotics used to fight… read more
Good news on the serious threat of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens, which are rampant in hospitals and elsewhere: the Alphamer, a “molecular homing beacon,” has been invented by Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis, PhD, who previously invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a widely used lab technique for diagnostic tests, sequencing DNA, and other applications.
This entirely novel approach tags bacteria with a molecular “homing beacon” that attracts… read more
Haven you ever wondered what goes on in a monkey’s mind when it’s making a decision? We haven’t either. But for Stanford University neuroscientists, doing exactly that could help design better prostheses (such as artificial arms) controlled by a user’s brain.
For example, when should the artificial arm move? Instantly, or only after the user is absolutely certain of a decision (as indicated by neural signals) to avoid a… read more
Scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a novel type of pluripotent stem cell that develops into a tissue type that is based on the stem cell’s region, or location, in a developing embryo.
Pluripotent stem cells are cells that are capable of differentiating (developing) in the embryo into any of the three germ layers: endoderm (interior stomach lining, gastrointestinal tract, the lungs), mesoderm… read more
Stereotypes related to gender and appearance that burden women in the real world could follow them into virtual ones, according to Penn State researchers.
In a study of how people interacted with avatars in an online game, women received less help from fellow players than men when they operated an unattractive avatar and when they used a male avatar, said T. Franklin Waddell, a doctoral candidate in mass… read more
Oculus VR announced today (May 6) that the Oculus Rift VR headset will be shipping to consumers in Q1 2016, with pre-orders later this year.
“The Rift delivers on the dream of consumer VR with compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality,” Oculus VR said in the blog post. “It’s a system designed by a team of extremely… read more
A centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones, and other devices has been developed by researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.
Applications could include drones that can deliver packages to a specific spot on a consumer’s porch, precise collision-avoidance systems on cars (via vehicle-to-vehicle communications), and a globally referenced… read more
A bio-inspired prototype “soft robot” material with greater dexterity and mobility than conventional hard robots has been created by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering.
“In biology, directed movement involves some form of shape changes, such as the expansion and contraction of muscles,” said Anna C. Balazs, PhD, the Swanson School’s Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum… read more
Non-professionals may someday be able to create high-quality video panoramas using multiple cameras with the help of an algorithm developed by a team of Disney researchers.
Their method smooths out the blurring, ghosting and other distortions that routinely occur when video feeds from unstructured camera arrays are combined to create a single panoramic video. The algorithm corrects for the apparent difference in position of an object caused… read more
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and Honeywell International have developed a new ion trap architecture (using ions trapped inside a vacuum chamber and manipulated with lasers) that could increase the density of qubits in future quantum computers.
The GTRI/Honeywell approach uses new microfabrication techniques that allow more electrodes to fit onto the chip. The design borrows ideas… read more
University of Houston (UH) scientists have created an optical lens that you can directly attach over an inexpensive smartphone camera lens to amplify images 120 times with an imaging resolution of 1 micrometer for just one cent (to create the lens in a lab), according to Wei-Chuan Shih, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH.
The new lens could also have clinical applications,… read more
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) are reporting exciting results in the field of cancer immunology.
Positive results from a clinical trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine show that the combination of the immunotherapy drugs ipilimumab (Yervoy™) and nivolumab (Opdivo™) produced significantly better outcomes than ipilimumab alone in patients with advanced melanoma.
A second piece in the same… read more
Whitehead Institute scientists have developed a method to detect tumors by real-time imaging of the immune system using positron emission tomography (PET). The new method replaces blood draws and invasive biopsies. It’s a potential breakthrough in diagnostics and monitoring the efficacy of cancer therapies.
An example of such a therapy is a new way to get the entire immune system to attack cancer, which KurzweilAI recently reported.… read more