Georgia Tech has the answer Researchers at Georgia Tech have built a tablet-based system that lets people control a fleet of robots with just the swipe of a finger.
when someone swipes the Apple ipad to drag the light across the floor, the robots follow.
If, however, the person puts two fingers in different locations on the tablet the machines split into teams
and start the warmprocess again. warmrobots have already been tested by a number of organizations, from the U s. military, to oceanographers.
Georgia Tech says that its algorithm for controlling large teams of robots could be used in areas such as manufacturing, agriculture,
or a million robots by individually programming each one where to go, said Magnus Egerstedt, Schlumberger Professor in Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer engineering, in a statement. nstead,
the operator controls an area that needs to be explored. Then the robots work together to determine the best ways to accomplish the job. eorgia Tech says that its robotic algorithm is flexible enough to let robots hange their minds."
"In a demonstration of the system, each robot is constantly measuring how much light is in its local eighborhood. hen there too much light in a robot area,
farmers could send machines into their fields to inspect the crops, said Georgia Tech doctoral candidate Yancy Diaz-Mercado,
in the statement. orkers on manufacturing floors could direct robots to one side of the warehouse to collect items,
if the need changes. eorgia Tech study is supported by the Air force Office of Scientific research e
search-and-rescue missions and environmental monitoring, researchers say. More than 1, 200 species of animals have evolved the ability to walk on water.
insects called water striders are small enough for their weight to be supported almost entirely by the surface tension of water the same phenomenon that makes water droplets bead up.
a roboticist at Seoul National University and Harvard university, told Live Science. Now, scientists have solved the mystery of how these insects accomplish these amazing leaps,
director of the Biorobotics Laboratory at Seoul National University, told Live Science.""Natural organisms give a lot of inspiration to engineers."
the scientists found that the maximum force the water striders'legs exerted was always just below the maximum force that water's surface tension could withstand.
thereby maximizing the surface tension the legs experienced. Next, the scientists developed lightweight robots made of glass-fiber-reinforced composite materials that,
in total, weighed only 0. 002 ounces a little more than the weight of three adult houseflies.
but also carry electronics, sensors and batteries.""This would be an extremely difficult task, since the weight of the body has to be really lightweight for it to jump on water,
#A breakthrough in cloak technology just caught the attention of the Defense department Researchers from the University of California-San diego have created a breakthrough invisibility cloak that has caught the attention of the Defense department due to its ability to hide objects from the naked eye.
and is preparing to submit a proposal detailing their cloaking technology, reports the Army Times.
which allows the invisibility shield to be lighter and cheaper than any other cloaking technology currently under development.
UCSD Professor Boubacar Kante and his colleagues created a"dielectric metasurface cloak"which uses an ultra-thin
Both teflon and ceramic is abundant, making it easy and inexpensive to produce. The combination of this very thin material, its nonmetallic properties,
the UCSD cloak works by manipulating electromagnetic waves, such as visible light or radio waves. Because it can scatter these waves,
This would allow the military to use the material in a variety of different applications.
The military is interested in the breakthrough because it is"basically what the military's looking for"in a cloaking solution,
says Kayla Matola, research analyst from Homeland defense & Security Information Analysis Center. It's lightweight, cheap,
and convoy vehicles from enemy radar r
#Facebook's first satellite will beam Internet to rural Africa starting in 2016 With the exception of a select few locations,
most of Africa is is beyond the range of traditional fixed and mobile terrestrial network connections.
As result, only about 20 percent of the population is able to connect to the Internet.
Facebook hopes to change those statistics with a new project in its Internet. org initiative.
As part of this program, Facebook is partnering with French satellite communications provider Eutelsat to beam an Internet connection to remote parts of Africa."
"I'm excited to announce our first project to deliver Internet from space, "wrote Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook posting.
Facebook is working with Eutelsat to provide Internet access to sub-Saharan portions of Africa via Eutelsat's new AMOS-6 geostationary satellite,
which will cover West, East and Southern Africa. Amazingly, the satellite will deliver affordable broadband Internet using off-the-shelf consumer equipment for connectivity
--so it'll be easy and cheap to build more of these satellites in the future. Eutelsat is setting up a new company in London to oversee its African broadband business
while Facebook will work locally in Africa to deliver Internet service to rural communities. The satellite-based service is expected to go online in mid-2016.
The African satellite project is part of Facebook's broader Internet. org initiative which debuted in 2013.
Through Internet. org, Facebook wants to connect the world by providing internet access to developing countries worldwide.
Internet. org was criticized highly for providing access only to Facebook and a handful of other web sites and services instead of the full, open internet.
Internet. org responded to critics by recently expanding its service to include any sites that meet Facebook's development criteria a
When deploying a AUVS (autonomous underwater vehicles), much of engineer time is spent writing scripts or low-level commands in order to direct a robot to carry out a plan of mission.
The MIT has developed a new programming approach that in enabling the robots to perform high-level decision-making to figure out how to achieve these goals.
The new programming approaches developed by MIT engineer enables robots perform high-level decision-making to figure out how to achieve these goals.
Using the system devised by the university team, the robot will then set out on a mission,
or reconfigure the hardware to get over a failure, on the fly. Principal developer Brian Williams stated that hese vehicles might arrange their own missions,
and adapt, execute, and re-plan them alone, without any human support, By giving robots control of higher-level decision-making would free engineers to have confidence overall strategy.
he added during a report appeared within the university Technology Review n
#Heroin, painkiller addictions go hand-in-hand Heroin use has increased a staggering 63 percent over the last 10 years in the United Statesn increase made all the worse by the growing abuse of prescription opioids such as oxycodone (Percocet
and prescription opioid epidemic the Obama administration announced recently a new $13. 4 million program to curb access to both.
The program will target illegal trafficking of the drugs in areas that have been particularly hard hit by the epidemic
Before moving to street-level trafficking, many prescription opioid addicts first try to obtain the drugs through pharmacies.
assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Texas A&m University. f someone becomes addicted, they can walk into a safe,
clean store and use their insurance to purchase them, unlike street drugs. oth prescription opioid and heroin addiction is growing significantly among the affluent and people with private insurance,
two groups that historically have had relatively low rates of abuse, the CDC Vital Signs report says.
Most states have a prescription drug monitoring database that allows doctors and pharmacists to see if an individual is going to multiple doctors
or pharmacies seeking prescriptions. he law says we have a corresponding responsibility to make sure that medications are used for legitimate medical purposes,
says Watzak. harmacists are trained to recognize red flags and if we have concerns we can call the physician
including exaggerating or inventing symptoms, doctor and pharmacy shopping, and forgery. When a pharmacist suspects a patient is addicted to prescription opioids
and heroin use is directly related to other public health issues, including the increasing rate of HIV infections and car accidents.
This is particularly troubling as these issues put the patient at an increased likelihood of needing a legitimate prescription for opioids to aid in the recovery from a planned procedure
or more, says Nate Lewis, a chemistry professor at Caltech and scientific director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP).
The design, described in the journal Energy and Environmental science, consists of three main components: two electrodesne photoanode and one photocathodend a membrane.
Semiconductors such as silicon or gallium arsenide absorb light efficiently and are used therefore in solar panels. However, these materials also oxidize
(or rust) on the surface when exposed to water, so cannot be used to directly generate fuel.
Previous work in Lewis laboratory led to a major advance in the design. The work showed that adding a nanometers-thick layer of titanium dioxide (Tio2) material found in white paint
and many toothpastes and sunscreensnto the electrodes could prevent them from corroding while still allowing light
and electrons to pass through. The new system uses such a 62.5-nanometer-thick Tio2 layer to effectively prevent corrosion
and improve the stability of a gallium arsenideased photoelectrode. CHEAP CATALYST Another key advance is the use of active, inexpensive catalysts for fuel production.
The photoanode requires a catalyst to drive the essential water-splitting reaction. Rare and expensive metals such as platinum can serve as effective catalysts,
but in its work the team discovered that it could create a much cheaper, active catalyst by adding a 2-nanometer-thick layer of nickel to the surface of the Tio2.
This catalyst is among the most active known catalysts for splitting water molecules into oxygen, protons,
and electrons and is a key to the device high efficiency. The photoanode was grown onto a photocathode
which also contains a highly active, inexpensive, nickel-molybdenum catalyst, to create a fully integrated single material that serves as a complete solar-driven, water-splitting system.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
says Keith Schwab, a Caltech professor of physics and applied physics, who led the study published in Science. ut we know that even at the quantum ground state, at zero-temperature, very small amplitude fluctuationsr noiseemain.
The plate is coupled to a superconducting electrical circuit as the plate vibrates at a rate of 3. 5 million times per second.
The plate is coupled to a superconducting electrical circuit as the plate vibrates at a rate of 3. 5 million times per second.
Instead, the residual energyuantum noiseemained. his energy is part of the quantum description of natureou just can get it out,
Coauthors Aashish Clerk from Mcgill University and Florian Marquardt from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light proposed a novel method to control the quantum noise,
Schwab explains. e showed that we can actually make the fluctuations of one of the variables smallert the expense of making the quantum fluctuations of the other variable larger. hat is called
Kip Thorne a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech and others wrote papers saying that these pulsars should be emitting gravity waves that are nearly perfectly periodic,
techniques on a gram-scale object to reduce quantum noise in detectors, thus increasing the sensitivity to pick up on those gravity waves,
In order to do that, the current device would have to be scaled up. ur work aims to detect quantum mechanics at bigger and bigger scales, and one day
and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter supported the work d
#How to build millions of tiny microscopes all at once A new optical device made of silicon anopillarscould lead to advanced microscopes, displays, sensors,
and cameras that can be mass-produced using the same techniques used to manufacture computer microchips. urrently,
optical systems are made one component at a time, and the components are assembled often manually, says Andrei Faraon,
an assistant professor of applied physics and materials science at Caltech. ut this new technology is very similar to the one used to print semiconductor chips onto silicon wafers,
Seen under a scanning electron microscope the new metasurfaces that the team created resemble a cut forest where only the stumps remain.
Each silicon stump, or pillar, has an elliptical cross section, and by carefully varying the diameters of each pillar
Light is an electromagnetic field, and the field of single-color, or monochromatic light oscillates at all points in space with the same frequency but varying relative delays, or phases.
Polarization refers to the trajectory of the oscillations of the electromagnetic field at each point in space.
Manipulating the polarization of light is essential for the operation of advanced microscopes, cameras, and displays;
the control of polarization also enables simple gadgets such as 3-D glasses and polarized sunglasses. sing our metasurfaces,
a senior researcher at Caltech and first author of the study published in Nature Nanotechnology. e can take any incoming light
#quid teethplastic self-heals with water Scientists derived the genetic code of squid ring teeth to develop a polymer that self-heals with a single drop of water.
The material potentially could extend the life of medical implants, fiber-optic cables, and other hard-to-repair objects,
researchers say. hat unique about this plastic is the ability to stick itself back together with a drop of water,
professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State. here are other materials that are self-healing,
the researchers used biotechnology to create the proteins in bacteria. The polymer can then either be molded using heat
or cast by solvent evaporation. The two-part material is a copolymer consisting of an amorphous segment that is soft and a more structured molecular architecture.
The structured portion consists of strands of amino acids connected by hydrogen bonds to form a twisted and/or pleated sheet.
This part also provides strength for the polymer, but the amorphous segment provides the self-healing.
Healing wounds The researchers created a dog-bone shaped sample of the polymer and then cut it in half.
saving time and money. aybe someday we could apply this approach to healing of wounds or other applications,
Other researchers from Penn State and from Carnegie mellon University and the Max Planck Institute at Stuttgart, Germany contributed to the paper.
and the Office of Naval Research supported this work f
#Device shrinks cost and size of lab tests A new device could make it much cheaper and easier to perform lab tests on blood and fluid for disorders like HIV and Lyme disease.
The tiny lab-on-a-chip device requires 90 percent less sample fluid than conventional tests. great deal of research has been hindered
because in many cases one is not able to extract enough fluid, says Mehdi Ghodbane, a former Phd student at Rutgers who now works at Glaxosmithkline.
The device also requires one-tenth of the chemicals used in a conventional multiplex immunoassay
Ghodbane and six Rutgers researchers recently described the new technology in a paper published in Lab on a Chip. he results are as sensitive and accurate as the standard benchtop assay,
says Martin Yarmush, professor of biomedical engineering at Rutgers and Ghodbane adviser. Until now, animal research on central nervous system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and Parkinson disease, has been limited
because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform conventional assays. ith our technology, researchers will be able to perform large-scale controlled studies with comparable accuracy to conventional assays,
The discovery could also lead to more comprehensive research on autoimmune joint diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis through animal studies.
The team has combined several capabilities for the first time in the device theye dubbed LISA-on-a-chip (for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.
The National institutes of health, the National Science Foundation, the New jersey Commission on Brain injury Research, and Corning, Inc. provided funding for the research n
#3d printed dge detectorsorts sound waves Scientists have developed a new method to differentiate very weak and short sound waves from longer ones.
and gynecologists use ultrasound images to study fetuses in the womb. Material testing procedures that regularly check for fissures in rail tracks or aircraft support structures also rely on ultrasound.
To understand just how the new acoustic edge detector works it is important to know that sound waves are reflected off edges in a remarkable way:
and differentiates them from larger sound waves that are reflected in the ormalway. his type of measuring method delivers similar results to the edge detection filter in an image-processing software,
which allows the outline of prominent photo objects to be identified with the click of the mouse,
explains Chiara Daraio, professor of mechanics and materials at ETH Zurich. A new polymer structure, developed
and produced with 3d printing by postdoc Miguel Molerón, is central to the new method. The structure is a pipe with a square cross-section
the inside of which is divided into five adjoining resonance chambers connected via small windows. he resonance achieved by this structure intensifies the evanescent waves,
At the head of the structure, four microphones measure the transmitted sound. To create an outline image,
They attached the polymer structure with the microphones to a robot very close to the object surface,
and generate the outline image from the measured sound data. According to the scientists the new measuring method is most useful
The work is currently just a proof of concept. The method still needs to be refined before it can be applied in practice.
it would also be interesting to adapt the method for ultrasound that has shorter wavelengths. ecause the size of the polymer structure has to be adjusted to the operational wavelength,
He is aiming to improve the acoustic imaging method for potential use in biological research or medicine
A new artificial intelligence system can solve SAT geometry questions as well as the average American 11th-grade student.
This system, called Geos, uses a combination of computer vision to interpret diagrams, natural language processing to read
the computer roughly achieved an SAT score of 500 (out of 800), the average test score for 2015.
Researchers from Allen Institute for Artificial intelligence (AI2) and the University of Washington computer science and engineering department shared a paper on the findings at the 2015 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural language processing (EMNLP) in Lisbon
HOW GEOS WORKS To achieve the results, Geos solved unaltered SAT questions that it had seen never before
senior research manager for Vision at AI2 and UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. ur biggest challenge was converting the question to a computer-understandable language.
which is an important dimension of learning. Today, Geos can solve plane geometry questions; AI2 is moving to solve the full set of SAT math questions in the next three years.
all data sets and software are available for other researchers to use
#Vaccine might replace surgery for cervical cancer A genetically engineered cervical cancer vaccine performed well in a clinical trial,
offering hope that many women can one day avoid surgery that short-circuits the disease but threatens their ability to have a baby.
The vaccine eradicated high-grade precancerous cervical lesions in nearly half of women who received it, scientists report.
The goal of the trial was to find nonsurgical ways to treat precancerous lesions caused by human papillomavirus (HPV),
which is the most common form of sexually transmitted infection and can lead to cervical cancer,
according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Infection. very standard therapeutic option for women with these lesions destroys part of the cervix,
which is particularly relevant for women of childbearing age, who may then be at risk for preterm birth due to a weakened cervix,
says Cornelia Trimble, professor of gynecology and obstetrics, oncology, and pathology at Johns hopkins university School of medicine. vaccine able to cure precancerous lesions could eventually be one way women can avoid surgery that is invasive
and can also harm their fertility. The cervix is the lower part of a woman uterus.
Despite dramatic progress in recent decades, about 12,000 women still develop cervical cancer in the United states each year, and about 4
000 die. High-grade cervical lesions occur most often in women 40 or younger. Because the lesions can progress to cancer,
they are removed today usually by surgery, freezing, or laser treatment. The procedures remove the precancerous areas in about 80 percent of women.
Less troublesome low-grade lesions usually are monitored just. They pose less of a cancer risk and usually regress on their own.
CLEARS OUT THE VIRUS If a vaccine is approved eventually for use, the slow development of cervical cancer would leave an opening for patients to try it. t typically takes about 10
or more years for precancerous cells to become cancer, so there is a window of opportunity to intervene with nonsurgical approaches,
Trimble says. The new study, published online in the journal the Lancet, involved a vaccine developed by University of Pennsylvania scientist David Weiner that is engineered to teach immune system cells to recognize precancerous and cancerous cells.
Between 2011 and 2013, the scientists recruited 167 women, 18 to 55, with newly diagnosed, high-grade precancerous cervical lesions.
The women were assigned randomly to receive either three doses of the vaccine over a 12-week period or saline injections.
Of 114 who received at least one vaccine dose 55 (48.2 percent) had regression of their precancerous lesions,
meaning they disappeared or converted to low-grade lesions, compared with 12 of 40 (30 percent) who received saline.
The regression rate was closer to 50 percent in 107 women who received all three vaccine doses. n many of these women,
the vaccine not only made their lesions disappear, but it also cleared the virus from their cervix,
Trimble says. n most unvaccinated patients whose lesions went away, the virus was still present,
and many still had low-grade lesions. Clearance of the virus is a ignificant bonus she says,
because lingering HPV is a major risk factor for recurrence of cervical lesions. In biopsy samples, patients whose lesions completely regressed after vaccination had more immune T cells in the tissue. t important that T cells capable of recognizing HPV stay in the cervix
and fight off any recurrence of the infection, Trimble says. She is also studying other types of vaccines to prevent high-grade cervical lesions from developing into cancer.
The injection vaccine is made by Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc, . which funded the clinical trial and whose employees coauthored the report with Trimble.
Trimble received an unrestricted grant from Inovio but has no other financial or consulting arrangements with the company a
#wiss Army knifehelps turn algae into biofuel Scientists have figured out a way to streamline the molecular machinery that turns cyanobacterialso known as blue-green algaento biofuels.
They fabricated a synthetic protein that not only improves the assembly of the carbon-fixing factory of cyanobacteria,
but also provides a proof of concept for a device that might improve plant photosynthesis. he multifunctional protein wee built can be compared to a Swiss Army knife,
says Raul Gonzalez-Esquer, a doctoral researcher at Michigan State university. rom known, existing parts, wee built a new protein that does several essential functions.
Gonzalez-Esquer worked with Cheryl Kerfeld professor of structural bioengineering, who studies bacterial microcompartments (BMCS), to build the protein.
BMCS are self-assembling cellular organs that perform myriad metabolic functions, and, in a sense, are molecular factories with many different pieces of machinery.
The scientists modernized the actoryby updating the carboxysome, a particularly complex BMC that requires a series of interactions involving at least six gene products.
The result is a metabolic core that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere and converts it into sugar.
To streamline the process, the scientists created a hybrid protein in cyanobacteria, organisms that have many potential uses for making green chemicals or biofuels.
The new protein described in the current issue of Plant Cell, replaces four gene products,
yet still supports photosynthesis. Reducing the number of genes needed to build carboxysomes should facilitate the transfer of carboxysomes into plants.
The installation should help plantsability to fix carbon dioxide. Improving their capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere makes it a win-win,
Gonzalez-Esquer says. t comparable to making coffee. Rather than getting an oven to roast the coffee beans,
a grinder to process them, and a brewing machine, wee built a single coffeemaker where it all happens in one place.
The new tool takes raw material and produces the finished product with a smaller investment. This proof of concept also shows that BMCS can be broken down to the sum of their parts,
ones that can be exchanged. Since they are responsible for many diverse metabolic functions, BMCS have enormous potential for bioengineering,
Kerfeld says. ee showed that we can greatly simplify the construction of these factories. We can now potentially redesign other naturally occurring factories
or dream up new ones for metabolic processes we like to install in bacteria. This altered cyanobacterial species won be taking over any pondsr the worldnytime soon.
While the improved organisms excel at photosynthesis in a lab setting, theye ill-prepared to compete with other bacteria.
much less dominate, in the natural environment. t
#Heat makes 3d printed box fold itself up Scientists are using a new 4d technology to create complex self-folding structures.
The researchers used smart shape-memory polymers (SMPS) with the ability to remember one shape
Printing multiple materials with different dynamic mechanical properties in prescribed patterns throughout the 3d object enables the ability to create objects that change shape in a controlled sequence over time.
The technology could be used to create 3d structures that sequentially fold themselves from components that had been rolled flat
or light in a way that is precisely timed to create space structures, deployable medical devices, robots, toys, and range of other structures.
ALLOVER TEMPERATURE The research creates self-folding structures from 3d printed patterns containing varying amounts of different smart shape-memory polymers.
allows the resulting flat components to have varying temporal response to the same stimuli. Earlier methods required application of differential heating at specific locations in the flat structure to stimulate the shape changes. revious efforts to create sequential shape changing components involved placing multiple heaters
a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. his earlier approach essentially requires controlling the heat applied throughout the component in both space
FROM FLAT SHEET TO 3d BOX The team demonstrated the approach with a series of examples including a mechanism that can be switched from a flat strip into a locked configuration as one end controllably bends and threads itself through a keyhole.
These examples all require the precise control of the folding sequence of different parts of the structure to avoid collisions of the components during folding. e have exploited the ability to 3d-print smart polymers
a professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design who is also the director of the SUTD Digital Manufacturing
and Design Centre. e are now extending this concept of digital SMPS to enable printing of SMPS with dynamic mechanical properties that vary continuously in 3d space.
which were made from varying ratios of two different commercially available shape-memory polymers. A simplified reduced-order model was developed also to rapidly
TRANSFORMER DRONES? The research team envisions a broad range of applications for their technology. For example, an unpiloted air vehicle might change shape from one designed for a cruise mission to one designed for a dive.
Also possible would be designed 3d components to fold flat or be rolled up into tubes so they could be transported easily,
The US Air force Office of Scientific research, the US National Science Foundation, and the Singapore National Research Foundation through the SUTD DMAND Centre funded the work.
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