Researchers at the University of Leeds are using the feet of tree frogs as a model for a tiny robot designed to crawl inside patients’ bodies during keyhole surgery.
It is designed to move across the internal abdominal wall of a patient, allowing surgeons to see what they are doing on a real-time video feed.
The tree frog’s feet provide a solution to the… read more
DARPA researchers have demonstrated a new five-micron-pixel long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera that could make this class of camera smaller and less expensive. (A micron is a millionth of a meter.)
The military uses LWIR (also know as “far IR”) cameras as thermal imagers to detect humans at night. These cameras are usually mounted on vehicles as they are too large to be carried by a… read more
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have invented a “nanosponge” capable of safely removing a broad class of dangerous toxins from the bloodstream — including toxins produced by MRSA, E. coli, poisonous snakes and bees.
These nanosponges, thus far studied in mice, can neutralize “pore-forming toxins,” which destroy cells by poking holes in their cell membranes. Unlike other anti-toxin platforms that need to… read more
At a time when sequencing the genome is becoming democratized, questions have arisen about the interpretation of these data and their secure storage. Sophia Genetics, an EPFL Science Park start-up, specializes in this area.
Complete sequencing of the genome will soon enable personalized treatments. Moreover, new prescription drugs based on genetic markers are coming on the market. Given the drastic reduction in the… read more
A new commercial U.S. rocket soared into the Virginia sky Sunday (April 21) on a debut flight that paves the way for eventual cargo flights to the International Space Station for NASA, Space.com reports.
The private Antares rocket, built by Orbital Sciences, is a two-stage booster designed to launch tons of supplies to the International Space Station aboard a new unmanned cargo ship called Cygnus.… read more
Major academic medical centers in New York and around the country are spending and recruiting heavily in what has become an arms race within the war on cancer.
The investments are based on the belief that the medical establishment is moving toward the routine sequencing of every patient’s genome in the quest for “precision medicine,” a course for prevention and treatment based on the special, even unique characteristics of… read more
Osaka University researchers have developed a text-display algorithm that places the current message on the darkest region in view at any given moment and in a readable color, making wearable displays like Google Glass more usable, New Scientist reports.
This is done using the headset’s camera, which plots a constantly changing heat map of viable on-screen reading locations. The algorithm can also split up a message into two… read more
Bigelow Aerospace and NASA say they’ve agreed to look at ways for private ventures to contribute to human exploration missions, perhaps including construction of a moon base, but not asteroids and Mars, NBC News Cosmic Log reports.
The Moon ranks high among the targets that Bigelow Aerospace has in mind. The Nevada-based company has been working on moonbase concepts for years, including a… read more
The future of health care could be found in a tiny, paper-thin skin patch that collects vital information.
The Bio-patch sensor developed by KTH Royal Institute of Technology researchers is inexpensive, versatile, and comfortable to wear. It measures bioelectrical signals through the skin when applied to different parts of the body.
“On the chest it provides electrocardiography (ECG), on the skull it measures brainwaves… read more
The Google Fiber team is in Provo, Utah, where Mayor John Curtis announced that Google intends to make Provo its third Google Fiber City (after Kansas City and Austin), Google Fiber Blog reports.
Google has signed an agreement to purchase iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city, upgrade the network to gigabit technology, and finish network construction so that every home along the existing… read more
At a robotics industry event organized by business blog Xconomy in Menlo Park last week, people working on better industrial robots claimed their robotics technology will actually boost the U.S. economy and create more jobs, even if some jobs do disappear forever, MIT Technology Review reports.
“We’re replacing jobs that people don’t want to do and really shouldn’t be doing,” said Aldo Zini, whose company… read more
Researchers from Florida International University (FIU)’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine have developed a revolutionary technique that can deliver and fully release the anti-HIV drug AZTTP into the brain.
Madhavan Nair, professor and chair, and Sakhrat Khizroev, professor and vice chair of the HWCOM’s Department of Immunology, used magneto-electric nanoparticles (MENs) to cross the blood-brain barrier and send a significantly increased level… read more
New microbatteries developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, out-power even the best supercapacitors and could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics.
“This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” said William P. King, the Bliss Professor of mechanical science and engineering. “A battery can [now] deliver far more power than anybody ever thought.… read more
Astronomers using a world-wide collection of telescopes have discovered the most prolific star factory in the Universe, surprisingly in a galaxy so distant that they see as it was when the Universe was only six percent of its current age.
The galaxy, dubbed HFLS3, 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, is producing the equivalent of nearly 3,000 Suns per year, a rate more than 2,000 times that of… read more
Australian engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have demonstrated a quantum bit based on the nucleus of a single atom in silicon, promising dramatic improvements for data processing in ultra-powerful quantum computers of the future.
Quantum bits, or qubits, are the building blocks of quantum computers, which will offer enormous advantages for searching expansive databases, cracking modern encryption, and modelling atomic-scale systems… read more