May 2013
25 posts
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Robot Déjà Vu
by Michael Keller
The builders of UC Berkeley’s cockroach-inspired STAR robot have strapped a camera onto the little machine to see the world from its angle.
Engineers at the university’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab have designed the little transformer robot to “adapt its stiffness, height, and leg-to-surface contact angle.” At full speed, it can run at 5.2 meters or...
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Nanotech Coating Prevents Stains and Contamination
by Inside Science TV
University of Michigan researchers have created a nanotech coating that repels liquids—even caustic acids and solvents. The material can shield textiles to create stain- and chemical-resistant garments, and can reduce drag on ships.
When applied, the coating creates a webbed surface that is up to 99 percent air. It is a mixture of rubbery plastic polydimethylsiloxane...
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Installing the Spire Atop One World Trade
by Txchnologist Staff
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey released this dizziness-inducing video of construction workers installing the final section of spire atop One World Trade Center. Some seriously brave ironworkers erected the final piece of the building on May 10. “Using a crane located high above street level, ironworkers lifted the final two pieces off a temporary work...
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New Software Predicts Power Outages From Storms
by Charles Q. Choi
Researchers have developed software to predict where blackouts are most likely to happen when storms hit, which could help authorities cut the amount of time people are in the dark after disasters like Hurricane Sandy.
Sandy wreaked havoc in 2012, causing as much as nearly $50 billion in damage, making it the second-costliest hurricane to hit the United States. At its peak,...
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Makers With 3-D Printers Build Prosthetic Hands...
by Michael Keller
In the video below, MakerBot Industries, the 3-D printer manufacturer based in Brooklyn, N.Y., shares the story of Richard Van As and Ivan Owen. The two create articulated prosthetic hands for those suffering from a disfiguring congenital disorder.
They are using a donated MakerBot Replicator 2 3-D printer to quickly build major parts of the device out of thermoplastics....
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LEDs May Be Local Food Movement’s Best Friend in...
by Michael Keller
The harvest season seems to whiz by every year in northern latitudes. Just as the time comes to sink a fork into early spring’s peppery locally grown lettuce and asparagus, the market’s crates are already brimming with winter squash. And the juicy tomatoes that yesterday took a quick ride from a nearby farm start logging thousands of miles from farm to table.
Unfortunately,...
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Data as Art
by Txchnologist Staff
PBS web series Off Book has produced a short, compelling video called “The Art of Data Visualization,” which showcases powerful presentations of complex data. Nuances in such information might be lost without displaying it visually.
“Humans have a powerful capacity to process visual information, skills that date far back in our evolutionary...
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Going Against the Flow: Green Tech, Sensors and...
by Rebecca Ruiz
By the numbers, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy is hard to fathom. The so-called super storm swept through eight states, killing 159 people and causing $70 billion in damage.
From power outages to flooded streets, the hurricane exposed alarming weaknesses in the infrastructure of Eastern Seaboard cities. Now, Climate Central, an independent research and journalism...
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Visualizing Meteorites
by Txchnologist Staff
Add another one to the list of data visualizations that make science engaging and fun.
Data visualization designer Carlo Zapponi has created an alluring website called Bolid.es showing meteorites that have either been found on the ground or seen falling to Earth. The main draw of the site, as seen in the picture above, puts into motion the fraction of heavenly bodies...
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Seahorse Inspires Innovative Hybrid Robot Design
by Michael Keller
More and more, nature is becoming the wellspring from which engineers working on efficient robotic locomotion drink. Those creating machine flight are mimicking the action of bats, birds and insects. To overcome terrestrial obstacles, they are developing mechanical horses and canines. For the sea, they’re working on robotic jellyfish, rays and others.
One inspiration for...
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Terahertz Scanner Lets Smartphones See Through...
by Inside Science TV
UT Dallas electrical engineers have designed an imaging chip that could let mobile phones peer through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects.
Researchers led by Kenneth O, director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and an electrical engineering professor, are using new microchip technology to see into the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum,...
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Huge Solar Outburst Captured by Fleet of...
by Michael Keller
NASA’s fleet of spacecraft observing the sun have sent back fascinating and beautiful video from the most recent coronal mass ejection, when a massive burst of matter and magnetic fields shoot out from the star into space.
Four spacecraft recorded the eruption in the extreme ultraviolet band of the electromagnetic spectrum over the course of 2.5 hours. The space agency...
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Robot Rover To Explore Greenland Ice Sheet
by Michael Keller
NASA’s newest robotic rover won’t be taking a long trip through space to explore a distant planet’s surface. Instead, the 800-lb. solar-powered instrument will be investigating a frontier much closer to home.
The Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, or Grover, will study how snow accumulates on the ice sheet...
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Insect Eyes Inspire High-Tech Camera Optics
by Charles Q. Choi
Robots these days often take their inspiration from nature. Now cameras mimicking bug eyes that can look in many directions simultaneously can be made en masse, researchers say. These novel devices, each possessing hundreds of microscopic lenses, could find use as surveillance cameras on flying droids or in minimally invasive surgical operations.
The compound eyes of insects...
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Solar-Powered Plane Starts Flight Across America
by Michael Keller
The pioneering Swiss project to build an airplane that operates entirely on sunlight began an epic leg of the journey this morning. Pilot Bertrand Piccard took off at 6:12 a.m. PST from Moffett Airfield near San Francisco. He is expected to land in Phoenix sometime after midnight.
The Solar Impulse aircraft’s wingspan is as long as a Boeing 747 but it weighs only about...
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RoboBee Maneuvers and Hovers Like a Flying Insect
by Rachel Nuwer
The buzzing sound coming from one Harvard lab isn’t a fly infestation but rather a tiny, insect-like robot. The approximately penny-sized robot dubbed RoboBee mimics the aerial prowess of houseflies, one of the most agile fliers on Earth. And like a fly, RoboBee features two independently flapping wings that allow it to hover or perform basic controlled flight maneuvers.
“This...
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by Txchnologist Staff
Using a high-speed camera capturing 10,000 frames per second, GE Global Research scientists recorded the details of water droplets dancing on superhydrophobic surfaces the company is developing.
Such water repellant coatings could be used to protect wind turbine blades, airplane wings and for other applications. See the full video here.
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Internet and Communication Tech Investment Needed...
by Michael Keller
Policies in some developing countries are creating obstacles to the benefits they could realize from advancing Internet and communications technologies (ICT), a new report finds.
A failure by these governments to implement strategies to foster broadband communication is helping maintain the digital divide between developed and emerging nations, authors of the 2013 Global...
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Making Wind Power Predictable
by Txchnologist Staff
Wind power has just become a smarter alternative.
GE is hooking up sensor-laden turbines to the Industrial Internet and batteries, creating an intelligent power-harvesting system that can store energy when the breeze picks up and release it when the gale goes still.
The company’s “brilliant” 2.5-120 wind turbine’s technology package harnesses the power of...
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Citizen Scientists See Space as New Frontier
by Rebecca Ruiz
Space has never been accessible to the average hobbyist. It was instead the realm of elite astronauts and billionaires.
Edward Wright is on a mission to change that. As the project manager for Citizens in Space, an initiative of the nonprofit United States Rocket Academy, Wright is looking to recruit both amateur scientists and astronauts to participate in a commercial space...
April 2013
42 posts
7 tags
NextGen Aircraft Engine Boom Drives New Plant...
by Txchnologist Staff
Analysts say the global aircraft fleet will double in the next two decades to 40,000 planes. Next-generation aircraft need the most advanced engines on the market. That projected growth has spurred GE Aviation to open two new advanced manufacturing plants this week—a composite factory in Ellisville, Miss., and a “super-alloy” plant in Auburn, Ala.
The facilities,...
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Smart Roadways Could Improve Safety And Commute...
by Inside Science TV
Virginia Tech researchers are testing new road technologies that enable cars to interact with one another. The say that vehicles in constant communication with one another will be able to suggest route changes to avoid accidents, construction and congestion, and coordinate with each other, signal lights and lane markers for efficient, safe travel.
A fleet of test vehicles...
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U.S. Maglev Train Development Stymied by Little...
by Jim Motavalli
The seemingly magical magnetic-levitation (maglev) train, cruising at ultra-high speeds a few inches above the track rather than on it, is capable of hitting 250 to 300 mph because there’s no friction. They use electro- and permanent magnets to induce currents in the guideway, creating an air cushion that the cars ride on. The technology is expensive, and high costs have killed...
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New View of Mysterious Hurricane at Saturn's North...
by Michael Keller
NASA has released a new video showing the giant hurricane spinning inside the strange hexagonal shape at Saturn’s north pole.
The agency says the storm’s eye is 1,250 miles wide, about 20 times the average eye size of Earth’s hurricanes. Its outer clouds are traveling at 330 mph. The stationary hexagonal wave shape, which could fit two Earths side by side,...
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Will Genetically Engineered Glowing Plants Curb...
by Lina Zeldovich
Trees that grow and glow may one day replace street lamps, cutting down on electricity use and CO2 emissions, according to a group of synthetic biologists. The biohackers at Singularity University in Moffett Field, Calif., plan to crossbreed a plant and bioluminescent bacteria. If successful, their result will be a fully viable herb that can emit light.
“We are going to...
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by Michael Keller
Happy Birthday, John James Audubon! The famous student and painter of birds was born on April 26, 1785. In celebration of his great work, and of the conservation movement he helped inspire, we present a few examples of his illustrations.
All of these images come from his seminal work The Birds of America, printed in a series from 1827 to 1838. These drawings come courtesy of...
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Camphor Tree Helps Bacteria Make Biofuel...
by Michael Keller
Scientists working to make exact chemical copies of fossil fuels from living microbes say they have scored a major victory in the lab. Merging genes from the camphor tree, soil- and gut-dwelling bacteria, and a microorganism that is lethal to insects, researchers have produced molecular replicas of petroleum-based fuels.
The team, composed of researchers from Exeter...
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Advanced Gesture Control Opens for Outside...
by Txchnologist Staff
The future is nigh for immersive human-computer interaction with a newly released coding toolkit.
Oblong, an information visualization company thinking beyond touch and mouse to interact with computers, has opened up its core platform to developers. The company says its platform, called Greenhouse, lets developers merge spatially aware input devices like the Kinect,...
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Learning to Love the Machine: People Show Empathy...
by Rachel Nuwer
The Flaming Lips sing about a robot named Unit 3000-21 that is able to duplicate emotion and seems to be “something more than a machine” to the people it comes into contact with. As it warms, blinks and hums, it begins inspiring a “synthetic kind of love” in its human keepers.
As it turns out, The Flaming Lips’ lyrics may someday apply to reality. For now, at least, humans can...
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Smart Machines Building Efficient Hospitals
by Txchnologist Staff
Hospitals are getting smarter as more and more machines start talking to each other. When sensor-mounted hospital beds can tell asset management software where they are, it means resources are available when patients need them.
GE Healthcare’s AgileTrac patient-tracking solution delivers a real-time view of how hospital resources are working, at any point in time,...
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Radioactive Metal Hitches Ride on Bacteria to...
by Charles Q. Choi
Researchers looking for a novel strategy to fight pancreatic cancer say they have found that radioactive bacteria can attack and kill diseased cells without harming healthy tissue.
With a five-year survival rate of only 4 percent, pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The National Cancer Institute predicts more than 45,000 new cases of pancreatic...
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A Gold Standard To Treat Serious Groundwater...
by Michael Keller
For those working to clean up some of the worst water pollutants on Earth, gold and palladium might be getting considerably more precious.
Rice University researchers have been working with the metals for a decade to figure out a way to efficiently destroy complex chemical pollutants. They have announced that the fruit of their labor is a technology called PGClear that they...
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Parasitic Spiny-Headed Worms Inspire Replacement...
by Rachel Nuwer
Jeffrey Karp is an animal lover, but this fondness did not lead to any affinity for Pomphorhynchus laevis, a blood-sucking parasite that resembles a fat earthworm with a small cactus sticking out of one end. Karp, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was searching for ideas from the animal kingdom to solve human medical challenges when he stumbled upon...
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Cold Plasma Kills Pathogens Inside Sealed Food...
by Michael Keller
Researchers have found a new way to kill harmful microbes inside packaged food and beverages at room temperature. The process, which creates ionized gas called plasma inside a sealed package by introducing an electrical current, was shown to inactivate bacteria in less than a minute.
The Purdue University research team, led by food science professor Kevin Keener, found that...
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Agent of Good: Connected Hospitals
Txchnologist Staff
GE is deploying brilliant machines to hospitals to connect patients to software and staff. It’s the hospital of tomorrow coming to communities around the globe today where computers and smart tools talk to each other millions of times a second. The result reduces patient wait times and helps healthcare workers increase hospital efficiency.
We all know Agent Smith, an...
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Head-Tracking System Lets Joggers Read On The...
by Michael Keller
Would-be exercisers who get bored by the very idea of hopping on the treadmill are about to lose an excuse.
A Purdue University engineer has developed a system that steadies text so treadmill joggers can read while sweating through the miles.
ReadingMate counteracts the bobbing motion of a runner’s head by adjusting text on a monitor so that it appears still, said Ji...
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Company Uses Nanotech To Put Hydrogen in the Palm...
by Lina Zeldovich
When Cella Energy CEO Stephen Voller demos little squares of white fluffy material, he isn’t holding cotton swabs from a local pharmacy. Neither is he tossing a handful of cereal when he showcases tiny white pellets that look like Cheerios dipped in sugar. The materials he presents are complex nanoparticle compounds, which may hold the answer to the long-pursued challenge of...
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Finding Place By Knowing Time
by Michael Keller
It might seem counterintuitive, but knowing exactly where your feet are on the ground means asking, “What time is it?”
Whether it was early seafarers estimating time by observing celestial bodies or modern autonomous vehicles receiving data from overhead satellites, time has always been at the core of navigation.
The surprising connection between time and place is the theme...
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Researchers Produce Working Bioengineered Kidney
by Charles Q. Choi
Researchers have created implantable bioengineered kidneys made of living cells that have allowed rats to clean their blood and generate urine.
Their ultimate goal is to make new organs for patients suffering from kidney disease by using their own cells.
Kidneys filter wastes and liquids from the blood, and disorders afflicting them can be fatal. The most severe form of...
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Scientists Inject Sunlight Into Natural Gas For...
by Michael Keller
Government researchers have figured out how to add sunlight into natural gas to boost its potency.
Using a concentrating solar collector to inject the sun’s power into natural gas, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) scientists can now convert the standard fossil fuel into higher-energy syngas.
They say the system lets power plants use about 20 percent less...
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Worst Enemy In Battle Against Traumatic Brain...
by Michael Keller
Medical researchers looking for what might cause the long-term brain damage seen in athletes playing contact sports have uncovered an unexpected possibility—the players’ own immune systems.
Investigating a group of 67 football players, the researchers from the University of Rochester and the Cleveland Clinic found that jarring head hits create openings in the gate that...
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Tiny Lab-On-Chip Analyzes DNA In One Hour
by Txchnologist Staff
Japanese and Belgian researchers have developed a lab on a chip that can complete a DNA test within an hour, according to a report by DigInfo.tv. The advance is a significant improvement over the week it can currently take for a laboratory to conduct the same test.
Using a drop of blood mixed with a chemical, the chip automates sample processing to identify DNA sequence...
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Could Brain Scans Find Would-Be Criminals Before...
by Charles Q. Choi
Is there a way to predict who is most likely to commit a crime in the future, and if so, what should the authorities do about it? In work that seems like science fiction, researchers have found that brain scans could help detect which convicts might get arrested for new crimes once they leave prison.
Forecasting crimes before they happen might seem to echo the film...
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A Vote for Open Innovation: Quirky Inventors Get...
by Txchnologist Staff
Ever since Samuel Hopkins received the first U.S. patent for making potash in 1790, inventors and companies have used patents as shield and sword to protect their ideas. Not anymore. Channeling the lean startup vibe, GE has invited innovators to turn swords into gadgets.
For the first time in the company’s history, GE will open thousands of patents to a community of...
