November 22nd, 2009

The surgeons of tomorrow: Miniaturized robots that go inside you

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 4:28 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Robotics

Tags: Bot, Robots, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

Before the advent of laparoscopic or keyhole surgery in the 70’s, operations such as a stomach bypass or gall bladder removal required large incisions and long periods for recovery. The next chapter further minimizes the invasiveness of surgical procedures via robots that are millimeters in size that infiltrate our bodies through the ears, eyes and lungs, to take tissue samples, deliver drugs, or install medical devices.

Brad Nelson, a roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EHT) in Zurich, recently told New Scientist; “It’s not impossible to think of this happening in five years. I’m convinced it’s going to get there.”

Hurdles to overcome include the development of new mechanisms for propulsion and power supply on a miniature scale, which are also prerequisites to the loftier idea of nanoscale medical robots swimming in our bloodstream.

Read the rest of this entry »

November 12th, 2009

Top three Star Trek-style holodeck experiences

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 12:24 am

Categories: Computers & Internet, Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature, Space & Aerospace

Tags: User Interaction, 3D, Pixel, StarCAVE, Audio System, Tech Spec, Projectors, Virtual Reality, Hardware, Components

Surround 3D TV is making its way to your living room. To get a sense of what it may look and sound like, look no further than the cutting edge of virtual reality taking shape at academic research centers outfitted with world class data visualization facilities. In this post, we’ll take a look at three (ok, four) of the most remarkable scientific visualization technologies.

Allosphere: University of California, Santa Barbara

The AlloSphere is a spherical space in which immersive, virtual environments allow researchers to convert large data sets into experiences of sight and sound. For example, it allows researchers to “fly” through a hydrogen atom while hearing sonified features of the wavefunction of its single electron to help describe invisible processes of nature.

The facility consists of a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story cube that’s nearly echo-free. Inside the chamber are two spherical hemispheres that are constructed of perforated aluminum designed to be optically opaque and acoustically transparent. A 7-foot-wide bridge runs across the center, supporting the users. High-resolution video projectors can project images across the entire inner surface enabling seamless stereo-optic 3D projection.

The Allosphere has more than 500 audio components that hang suspended in rings just outside the aluminum shell and are connected to multiple Gigabit Ethernet LAN fibers that lead to a server farm consisting of seven Hewlett Packard 9400 workstations (as of April 2009).

Read the rest of this entry »

November 8th, 2009

Laser-powered 'space elevator' wins $900,000 NASA prize

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 9:29 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Space & Aerospace

Tags: NASA, Elevator, Laser, Cable, Network Technology, Aerospace & Defense, Telecommunications, Personal Technology, Networking, Manufacturing

LaserMotive, a Seattle-area company specializing in laser power beaming, has claimed a $900,000 prize with their photovoltaic-powered machine that has climbed nearly 3,000 feet (1 km) at an average speed greater than 2 meters per second, or just over four minutes.

With a payload in tote, the robot climbed a long cable suspended from a helicopter to test ideas that can potentially lead to the realization of space elevators.

The accomplishment took place on the first day of the Power Beaming competition in the 2010 Space Elevator Games at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in California’s Mojave Desert.

While the LaserMotive team fell short of reaching NASA’s top-level prize of up to $2 million for climbing the entire length of the cable in three minutes or less (about five meters per second), they still hold bragging rights as the first in the 3-year history of NASA’s space elevator contest to climb a 2,953-foot-long ribbon.

Here is a video of one of LaserMotive’s attempts:

The company doesn’t have plans to use the technology to access space via an elevator climbing a cable, but rather to develop a business based on the idea of beaming power. In fact, the prize will serve as seed money to develop technology and system prototypes for use in aerospace and other industries. For instance, it can potentially be used to provide power to remote areas of military bases or to operate electrically powered unmanned aircraft for extended periods.

Here are additional sources covering the story:

CBS News.com, SmartPlanet, The 2009 Space Elevator Games Blog, PhysOrg.com

November 3rd, 2009

Biodegradable silk electronics to improve implants

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 7:27 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Engineering & Innovation, Science & Nature

Tags: Electrode, Silk, Electronics, Telecom & Utilities, Chris Jablonski

Building on advancements in foldable ultra-thin flexible circuits, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Tufts University have developed electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body by incorporating silk.

Technology Review reports that the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk.

(Credit: Rogers/Omenetto via Technology Review)

Typically, implanted electronics are encased to protect them from the body, but these new electronics don’t need such protection. The silk allows for the electronics to conform to biological tissue as it melts away over time.  And the thin silicon circuits left behind don’t cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

The image on the left depicts the implantable device. It consists of a clear silk film, about one centimeter squared, with six silicon transistors on its surface. The device can be implanted in mice like the one in this image and the silk degrades over time. It causes no harm to the animal. (The orange liquid on the hair is a disinfectant used during the surgery.)

Here is how the article describes how the devices are made:

To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface.

Read the rest of this entry »

November 1st, 2009

Wave disk engines to make hybrid vehicles cheaper, more efficient

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:23 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation

Tags: Disk, Engine, Backups, Chris Jablonski

Researchers from Michigan State University and the Warsaw Institute of Technology are developing a wave disk engine and electricity generator that promises to be five times more efficient than traditional auto engines in electricity production, 20% lighter, and 30% cheaper to manufacture.

Possible technical realization of the wave-disk engine idea (Credit: Piechna, et al)

The new hyper-efficient engine is about the size of a large cooking pot, and could replace current backup generator technology of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, according to Green Car Congress.

The idea may not be far-fetched as the team, led by Norbert Müller, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, has recently been awarded $2.5 million from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program to begin work on a vehicle-size wave disc engine/generator that could be ready in two years.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 25th, 2009

Carbon nanotubes: Great for agriculture, but for humans?

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:10 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags: Agriculture, Nanotube, Carbon Nanotube, Health Care, Seed, Nanotechnology, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

In what can eventually kick up a firestorm similar to the genetically modified food controversy, the emerging field of “nano-agriculture” is making headlines.  It involves the use of nano-particles — wisps 1/50,000th the width of a human hair — in agriculture and could have beneficial affects for crops, say scientists.

Tomato seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes (right) sprouted and grew faster than unexposed seeds. (Credit: The American Chemical Society)

University of Arkansas researchers report that tomato seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) germinated faster and grew into larger, heavier seedlings than other seeds. That growth-enhancing effect could be a boon for biomass production for plant-based biofuels and other agricultural products, they suggest.

Considerable scientific research is underway to use nanoparticles — wisps 1/50,000th the width of a human hair — in agriculture. The goals of “nano-agriculture” include improving the productivity of plants for food, fuel, and other uses.

The scientists report the first evidence that CNTs penetrate the thick outer coating of seeds, and support water uptake inside seeds, a process which can affect seed germination and growth of tomato seedlings.The nanotube-exposed seeds sprouted up to two times faster than control seeds and the seedlings weighed more than twice as much as the untreated plants.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 19th, 2009

'Scaffolding' to regenerate lost or damaged bones and tissues, even stop age clock

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:47 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine

Tags: Body, Bone, Fiber, Network Technology, Networking, Chris Jablonski

Implantable organ and tissue “scaffolds” are currently in the spotlight for regenerative medicine, and may allow for the replacement of most body parts that flounder with age within 30-50 years, according to a report from BBC.

That means future centenarians born today could have a “physical” age of 50 at a calendar age of 100.

A “scaffolding” technique developed at Leeds University allows for transplantable tissues, and eventually organs, that the body can make its own. Once the scaffold has been transplanted, the body takes over and repopulates it with cells without any fear of rejection - the main reason why normal transplants wear out and fail .

Using this technique, a research team at Leeds has managed to make fully functioning heart valves, which involves taking a healthy donor heart valve - from a human or a suitable animal, such as a pig - and gently stripping away its cells using a cocktail of enzymes and detergents. The inert scaffold left can be transplanted into the patient, writes the BBC.  According to Eileen Ingha, a professor at the university’s Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, trials in animals and on 40 patients in Brazil have shown promising results.

Across the continent, another approach to scaffolding is underway at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. There, professor Meital Zilberman has developed an artificial biologically active scaffold made from soluble fibers, which may help humans replace lost or missing bone.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 15th, 2009

Computers have speed limit as unbreakable as speed of light, say physicists

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:31 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Engineering & Innovation

Tags: Physicist, Speed, Computer, Moore, Productivity, Chris Jablonski

A pair of physicists have shown that if processors continue to accelerate in accordance to Moore’s Law, we’ll hit the wall of faster processing in roughly 75 years.

The curtain will eventually come down for silicon in today’s manufacturing methods once engineers can no longer further shrink transistors and the copper wires that connect them. Processor fabrication using new technologies such as imprint lithography, graphene, and quantum computing will continue to yield faster and smaller chips. Nonetheless, those advanced techniques only stave off the absolute ceiling for speed, no matter how small the components get, according to professors Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.  As Inside Science reports, the two have slapped a speed limit on computing. Read the rest of this entry »

October 13th, 2009

Resilient cockroach-inspired robot survives large falls, dashes off

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:12 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Science & Nature

Tags: IEEE Spectrum, Robots, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

IEEE Spectrum writes of a small resilient robot created by Paul Birkmeyer and Prof. Ronald Fearing at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley.

Aptly called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod), the six-legged insect-inspired robot can reach speeds of 1.5 meters per second and is flexible/strong enough to be dropped from a height of 28 meters without breaking. A single DC motor powers the legs and a small servomotor to slightly deform the robot’s body, allowing it to make turns.

DASH was created using a fabrication process called smart composite microstructures, or SCM. Developed by UC Berkeley researchers, the process is quick, inexpensive, and purpose-built for the design challenges of microrobots.

SCM allows for complicated, functional folded structures that move using elastic deformation rather than through the use of traditional mechanical elements like pin joints or bearings. It integrates large flexible joints, created by a laser micro-machining and lamination, with novel actuators. The result is a robot made up of composite materials that can not only withstand a drop from a tall building, but also immediately dash off, undamaged.

DASH is but one of several ongoing projects underway at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. For instance, check out the synthetic gecko adhesive which cleans itself during use, as the natural gecko does. Or the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) Project, an effort to develop a 25 mm (wingtip-to-wingtip) device capable of sustained autonomous flight.

Among the goals of the researchers is to; “Harness features of animal manipulation, locomotion, sensing, actuation, mechanics, dynamics, and control strategies to radically improve millirobot capabilities.”

October 10th, 2009

Researchers replicate butterfly wings on a nano-scale

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:18 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags: Technique, Butterfly, Researcher, Replica, Productivity, Chris Jablonski

A cross-national team of researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano-scale.

The new bio-material could be used to make optical devices, such as optical diffusers for solar panels or coverings that maximize solar cell light absorption.

Researchers from the State University of Pennsylvania and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Spain developed a fabrication technique to develop wings at the nano-scale level that could replicate the optical responses of butterfly wings. The replicas contain light emitting properties similar to those of insects, mimicking the colors, iridescence (the ability to change colors depending on the angle) and the metallic appearance which is visible with a changing viewing angle. Read the rest of this entry »