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3D printing: the desktop drugstore

Printers that create artificial limbs, cheap drugs, and replacement organs could radically change medicine in poorer countries.
September 27, 2012

makerbot

A small Indian village is perhaps the last place you would expect to see the future of manufacturing, but in the Maharashtra region, there are plans to create one of the hottest pieces of technology around, BBC Future reports.

“Learning while doing” is the philosophy behind an educational project in Pabal called the Vigyan Ashram — part of a worldwide project called FabLab, set up… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Nanotech/Materials Science | Social/Ethical/Legal

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How to remotely control cockroach cyborgs

Send in the WiFi-controlled cockroaches! (Minority Report alert)
September 27, 2012

remote_control_cockroach

A technique to remotely control cockroaches has been developed by Dr. Alper Bozkurt, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of North Carolina State University.

Bozkurt, co-author of a paper on the work, wanted to see if he could create a wireless biological interface with cockroaches, “which are robust and able to infiltrate small spaces.”

In a scene right of Minority Report, Bozkurt… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Electronics

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At last: a low-cost, professional-grade light-based 3D printer

September 27, 2012

form1

Formlabs’ new Form 1 3D printer could bring professional-grade 3-D prints to the home workshop.

Desktop 3-D printing has largely been the domain of extrusion-based machines like MakerBot’s Replicator and homebrew RepRap designs.

These lag behind the capabilities of pricier, professional stereolithography devices, where UV light cures incredibly thin layers of resin to create objects on par with manufactured goods.

Developing this type of printer at a… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Making old muscles young again

September 27, 2012

Muscular tissue (credit: Polarlys/Wikimedia Commons)

Researchers at King’s College London, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified a key factor responsible for declining muscle repair during aging, and discovered how to halt the process in mice with a common drug.

The finding provides clues as to how muscles lose mass with age, which can result in weakness that affects mobility and may cause falls.

The study looked at stem… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech

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Nanoscale technologies to cut DNA sequencing costs

National Human Genome Research Institute makes grants totalling $19 million
September 26, 2012

dna sequencing costs


Grants of almost $19 million will help to develop technologies to dramatically reduce the cost of DNA sequencing, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has announced.

During the past decade, DNA sequencing costs have fallen dramatically (see www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts), fueled by tools, technologies and process improvements developed by genomics researchers. In 2004, NHGRI… read more

Topics: Biotech | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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Hundreds of biochemical analyses on a single device

September 26, 2012

Design drawing of the k-MITOMI microfluidic device. Blue and grey lines represent flow and control channels, The four separately addressable “button” control channels (BF1 to BF4) are highlighted in red, cyan, green, and yellow. (Credit: Marcel Geertza/PNAS)

Scientists at EPFL and the University of Geneva have developed a microfluidic device smaller than a domino that can simultaneously measure up to 768 biomolecular interactions.

Inside our cells, molecules are constantly binding and separating from one another. It’s this game of constant flux that drives gene expression asides essentially every other biological process.

Understanding the specific details of how these interactions take place… read more

Topics: Biotech | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Biolab on a chip

September 26, 2012

Manipulating_microscopic_magnetic_beads_at_MIT

MIT researchers figured out a way to get instant blood tests.

If you throw a ball underwater, you’ll find that the smaller it is, the faster it moves: A larger cross-section greatly increases the water’s resistance. The researchers plan to use this basic principle, on a microscopic scale, to carry out biomedical tests that could eventually lead to fast, compact and versatile medical-testing devices.

The balls used here… read more

Topics: Biotech | Electronics | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Low-cost precise navigation without GPS

September 26, 2012

glass blowing

DARPA has made progress in developing less expensive fabrication methods for inertial sensors and is making them orders of magnitude smaller and less expensive than the large, expensive gyroscopes used today.

Military missions of all types need extremely accurate navigation techniques to keep people and equipment on target. The Military relies on GPS or, when GPS is unavailable, precise sensors for navigation.

But these sensors,… read more

Topics: Electronics | Nanotech/Materials Science | Survival/Defense

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Augmented-reality ‘virtual dressing room’ patent issued

September 26, 2012

Augmented-Reality-Commerce_Zugaras-Vision_02

The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Zugara a patent on the company’s augmented reality social commerce platform, The Webcam Social Shopper (WSS).

The patent, #8,275,590, relates to the simulation of trying on one or more virtual-wearable items within a video feed, using gestural controls to navigate through the interfaces, and taking pictures to share with your friends,… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social Networking/Web/Education | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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Deepest-ever view of the Universe

Looking at 5500 galaxies as they were 13.2 billion years ago
September 26, 2012

hubble_extreme_deep_field

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

Topics: Physics/Cosmology | Space

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Beam yourself to work in a remote-controlled body

September 26, 2012

beam-robot

To make it more practical for engineers and others living in cheaper places to telecommute to work, Suitable Technologies (a Willow Garage spinoff) has developed a roving telepresence system that is more practical and less awkward to use than previous systems, says founder Scott Hassan, Technology Review reports.

The $16,000 Beam Remote Presence telepresence system, now available, can save on the expense and time of long-haul travel and allows remote workers to be… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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DNA barcode provides virtually unlimited color patterns for tagging molecules and cells

New technology could launch biomedical imaging to next level
September 25, 2012

DNA Barcode Nanotube

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created a new kind of barcode (colored fluorescent biomarkers) that could come in an almost limitless array of styles — with the potential to enable scientists to gather vastly more vital information, at one given time, than ever before.

The new method harnesses the natural ability of DNA to self-assemble.

“We… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Toyota unveils helpful Human Support Robot

September 25, 2012

toyota-helper-robot-7

Toyota has unveiled a new assistant robot alled the Human Support Robot (HSR),  designed to help the disabled live more independently, Gizmag reports.

The HSR can be controlled using a simple graphical user interface via tablet. It can also wear a tablet atop its head, which would allow caregivers and family members to communicate with the robot’s owner over Skype or other services.

Unlike recent telepresence robots,… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Human Enhancement | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Did life crash to Earth from space on slow-moving rocks?

September 25, 2012

Transfer of meteoroids between two planetary systems embedded in a star cluster using quasi-parabolic orbits of minimal energy. a meteoroid weakly<br /> escaping from a planetary system, and its subsequent weak capture by a neighboring planetary system in<br /> the stellar cluster. (Credit: Edward Belbrunoa et al.)

Microorganisms that crashed to Earth embedded in the fragments of distant planets might have been the sprouts of life on Earth, according to new research from Princeton University, the University of Arizona, and the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) in Spain.

The researchers report in the journal Astrobiology that under certain conditions there is a high probability that life came to Earth — or spread from Earth to… read more

Topics: Environment/Climate | Space

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A space-time crystal clock that will last forever

Berkeley Lab researchers propose a way to build the first space-time crystal
September 25, 2012

Zhang-space-time-crystal

Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe — a four-dimensional “space-time crystal” with periodic structure in time as well as space.

With such a 4D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective way to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles, the “many-body problem” of physics. A space-time crystal… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Physics/Cosmology | Quantum

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