#Harvard Engineers Create a 3d printed Autonomous Robot Using a 3d printer, Harvard engineers have developed one of the first soft robots that moves autonomously.
and challenging to make autonomous because most motors, pumps, batteries, sensors, and microcontrollers are rigid.
But what if you could combine the autonomy and speed of a rigid robot with the adaptability and resiliency of a soft robot
because of 3-D printing, is relatively cheap and fast. The robot body transitions from soft to hard, reducing the stress where the rigid electronic components join the body
and increasing the robot resiliency. The body monolithic design created in one continuous print job,
senior author Robert J. Wood, Charles river Professor of Engineering and Applied sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) and core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
our soft robots typically have some rigid components things like batteries and control electronics. This robot is a demonstration of a method to integrate the rigid components with the body of the soft robot through a gradient of material properties
a soft plungerlike body with three pneumatic legs and the rigid core module, containing power
and protected by a semisoft shield created with a 3-D printer. The design builds from previous work of co-author and chemist George Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard.
To initiate movement, the robot inflates its pneumatic legs to tilt its body in the direction it wants to go.
first author of the paper and a graduate student AT SEAS. he robot stiffness gradient allows it to withstand the impact of dozens of landings
The robot jumping ability and soft body would come in handy in harsh and unpredictable environments or disaster situations
This new design demonstrates the potential of 3-D printing in soft robotics. Traditional methods of fabrication custom molds and multistep assembly are costly and slow.
The ever-increasing variety of materials compatible with 3-D printers is allowing engineers to prototype new designs faster.
and 3-D printing is adding to the repertoire of things we can do in a really practical way,
The co-first author of the paper is Michael Tolley of the University of California
Bobak Mosadegh of Weill Cornell Medical College; and, as noted, Whitesides of Harvard and the Wyss Institute.
Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for this work in 1969. This quark model also allows the existence of other quark composite states,
These have been named Pc (4450)+ and Pc (4380), +the former being clearly visible as a peak in the data,
with the latter being required to describe the data fully. enefiting from the large data set provided by the LHC,
and the excellent precision of our detector, we have examined all possibilities for these signals, and conclude that they can only be explained by pentaquark states says LHCB physicist Tomasz Skwarnicki of Syracuse University. ore precisely the states must be formed of two up quarks,
one down quark, one charm quark and one anti-charm quark. Earlier experiments that have searched for pentaquarks have proved inconclusive.
Where the LHCB experiment differs is that it has been able to look for pentaquarks from many perspectives,
said LHCB physicist Liming Zhang of Tsinghua University, r they could be loosely bound in a sort of meson-baryon molecule, in
The new data that LHCB will collect in LHC run 2 will allow progress to be made on these questions.
#Yale Researchers Successfully Treat Eczema with Rheumatoid arthritis Drug A team of scientists at Yale university used a rheumatoid arthritis drug to successfully treated patients with moderate to severe eczema.
The same rheumatoid arthritis drug (tofacitinib citrate) has shown recently to reverse two other disfiguring skin conditions, vitiligo and alopecia areata.
The research findings are published early online in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Eczema (atopic dermatitis) is a chronic condition that causes severe itching and leaves the skin red and thickened.
such as steroid creams and oral medicines, commonly fail to relieve symptoms in patients with moderate to severe eczema.
Based on current scientific models of eczema biology, assistant professor of dermatology Dr. Brett King. hypothesized that a drug approved for rheumatoid arthritis,
would interrupt the immune response that causes eczema. In the new study, King and his colleagues report that treatment with the drug led to dramatic improvement in six patients with moderate to severe eczema who had tried previously conventional therapies without success. During treatment all six
patients reported significant reduction in itch as well as improved sleep. The redness and thickening of the skin diminished
King and fellow Yale dermatologist Dr. Brittany Craiglow had shown previously that tofacitinib citrate regrows hair in patients with an autoimmune-related form of hair loss called alopecia areata.
They also published findings reporting the successful treatment of a patient with vitiligo, which can leave widespread irregular white patches all over the body.
The new study suggests that a change in the standard of care for eczema a condition for
which there is no targeted therapy may be on the horizon, say the researchers. czema affects millions of children
and adults in the United states, said King. hopeful we are entering a whole new era in treatment. he researchers note that further research is needed to confirm the treatment long-term efficacy and safety for eczema patients f
#New Technology Could Transform Solar energy Storage Chemists at UCLA have developed a new technology that is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
a UCLA professor of chemistry and one of the senior authors of the research. lants do this through photosynthesis with extremely high efficiency. n photosynthesis,
plants that are exposed to sunlight use carefully organized nanoscale structures within their cells to rapidly separate charges pulling electrons away from the positively charged molecule that is left behind,
To capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material. There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics
rather than silicon, but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
and keeps them separated for days, or even weeks. Once you make the right structure,
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. The two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
The polymer donor absorbs sunlight and passes electrons to the fullerene acceptor; the process generates electrical energy.
The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
But this arrangement makes it difficult to get current out of the cell because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti
and are lost. The UCLA technology arranges the elements more neatly like small bundles of uncooked spaghetti with precisely placed meatballs.
Some fullerene meatballs are designed to sit inside the spaghetti bundles, but others are forced to stay on the outside.
The fullerenes inside the structure take electrons from the polymers and toss them to the outside fullerene
which can effectively keep the electrons away from the polymer for weeks. hen the charges never come back together,
the system works far better, said Benjamin Schwartz, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author. his is the first time this has been shown using modern synthetic organic photovoltaic materials.
In the new system, the materials self-assemble just by being placed in close proximity. e worked really hard to design something
so we don have to work very hard, Tolbert said. The new design is also more environmentally friendly than current technology,
because the materials can assemble in water instead of more toxic organic solutions that are used widely today. nce you make the materials,
Schwartz said. o there no additional work. The researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells.
Yves Rubin, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author of the study, led the team that created the uniquely designed molecules. e don have these materials in a real device yet;
this is all in solution, he said. hen we can put them together and make a closed circuit,
Tolbert and Schwartz also are members of UCLA California Nanosystems Institute. The study other co-lead authors were UCLA graduate students Rachel Huber and Amy Ferreira.
UCLA Electron Imaging Center for Nanomachines imaged the assembled structure in a lab led by Hong Zhou.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant CHE-1112569) and by the Center for Molecularly Engineered Energy Materials,
an Energy Frontier Research center funded by the U s. Department of energy (DE-AC06-76rlo-1830. Ferreira received support from the Clean Green IGERT (grant DGE-0903720) 3
#Nanoparticles and UV LIGHT Clean up Environmental Pollutants A new study from MIT shows how nanoparticles can clean up environmental pollutants,
revealing that nanomaterials and UV LIGHT can rapchemicals for easy removal from soil and water. Many human-made pollutants in the environment resist degradation through natural processes,
and disrupt hormonal and other systems in mammals and other animals. Removing these toxic materials
which include pesticides and endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol A (BPA) with existing methods is often expensive and time-consuming.
In a new paper published this week in Nature Communications, researchers from MIT and the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil demonstrate a novel method for using nanoparticles
and ultraviolet (UV LIGHT to quickly isolate and extract a variety of contaminants from soil and water.
Ferdinand Brandl and Nicolas Bertrand, the two lead authors, are former postdocs in the laboratory of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT Koch Institute
for Integrative Cancer Research. Eliana Martins Lima, of the Federal University of Goiás, is the other co-author.
Both Brandl and Bertrand are trained as pharmacists, and describe their discovery as a happy accident:
They initially sought to develop nanoparticles that could be used to deliver drugs to cancer cells. Brandl had synthesized previously polymers that could be cleaved apart by exposure to UV LIGHT.
But he and Bertrand came to question their suitability for drug delivery, since UV LIGHT can be damaging to tissue and cells,
and doesn penetrate through the skin. When they learned that UV LIGHT was used to disinfect water in certain treatment plants,
Brandl says. hen we came up with the idea to use our particles to remove toxic chemicals, pollutants,
because we saw that the particles aggregate once you irradiate them with UV LIGHT. trap for ater-fearingpollutionthe researchers synthesized polymers from polyethylene glycol,
and approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a food additive, and polylactic acid, a biodegradable plastic used in compostable cups and glassware.
Nanoparticles made from these polymers have a hydrophobic core and a hydrophilic shell. Due to molecular-scale forces
in a solution hydrophobic pollutant molecules move toward the hydrophobic nanoparticles, and adsorb onto their surface,
where they effectively become rapped. This same phenomenon is at work when spaghetti sauce stains the surface of plastic containers,
In that case, both the plastic and the oil-based sauce are hydrophobic and interact together.
If left alone, these nanomaterials would remain suspended and dispersed evenly in water. But when exposed to UV LIGHT,
and now nrichedby the pollutants they form larger aggregates that can then be removed through filtration, sedimentation,
hormone-disrupting chemicals used to soften plastics, from wastewater; BPA, another endocrine-disrupting synthetic compound widely used in plastic bottles and other resinous consumer goods, from thermal printing paper samples;
and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carcinogenic compounds formed from incomplete combustion of fuels, from contaminated soil. The process is irreversible
and the polymers are biodegradable, minimizing the risks of leaving toxic secondary products to persist in,
say, a body of water. nce they switch to this macro situation where theye big clumps, Bertrand says,
according to the researchers, was confirming that small molecules do indeed adsorb passively onto the surface of nanoparticles. o the best of our knowledge,
it is the first time that the interactions of small molecules with preformed nanoparticles can be measured directly,
from environmental remediation to medical analysis. The polymers are synthesized at room temperature, and don need to be prepared specially to target specific compounds;
and molecules. he interactions we exploit to remove the pollutants are nonspecific, Brandl says. e can remove hormones, BPA,
and pesticides that are all present in the same sample, and we can do this in one step. nd the nanoparticleshigh surface-area-to-volume ratio means that only a small amount is needed to remove a relatively large quantity of pollutants.
The technique could thus offer potential for the cost-effective cleanup of contaminated water and soil on a wider scale. rom the applied perspective,
we showed in a system that the adsorption of small molecules on the surface of the nanoparticles can be used for extraction of any kind,
Bertrand says. t opens the door for many other applications down the line. his approach could possibly be developed further,
banned for use as a pesticide in the U s . since 1972 but still widely used in other parts of the world,
as another example of a persistent pollutant that could potentially be remediated using these nanomaterials. nd for analytical applications where you don need as much volume to purify or concentrate,
offering the example of a cheap testing kit for urine analysis of medical patients. The study also suggests the broader potential for adapting nanoscale drug-delivery techniques developed for use in environmental remediation. hat we can apply some of the highly sophisticated,
high-precision tools developed for the pharmaceutical industry, and now look at the use of these technologies in broader terms,
says Frank Gu, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and an expert in nanoengineering for health care and medical applications. hen you think about field deployment,
that far down the road, but this paper offers a really exciting opportunity to crack a problem that is persistently present,
who was involved not in the research. f you take the normal conventional civil engineering or chemical engineering approach to treating it, it just won touch it.
anoparticles with photoinduced precipitation for the extraction of pollutants from water and soil, Nature Communications 6, Article number:
A multidisciplinary team at Yale, led by Yale Cancer Center members, has defined a subgroup of genetic mutations that are present in a significant number of melanoma skin cancer cases.
Their findings shed light on an important mutation in this deadly disease, and may lead to more targeted anticancer therapies.
The study is published in Nature Genetics. The role of mutations in numerous genes and genomic changes in the development of melanoma a skin cancer with over 70
000 new cases reported in the United states each year is established well and continues to be the focus of intense research.
Yet in approximately 30%of melanoma cases the genetic abnormalities are unclear. To deepen understanding of melanoma mutations,
the Yale team conducted a comprehensive analysis using whole-exome sequencing of more than 200 melanoma samples from patients with the disease.
The multidisciplinary team drawing on their expertise in genetics, cancer, computational biology, pharmacology, and other disciplines also tested the response of tumor cells with specific mutations to anticancer drugs.
The researchers confirmed that a gene known as NF1 is a ajor playerin the development of skin cancer. he key finding is that roughly 45%of melanomas that do not harbor the known BRAF or NRAS mutations display loss of NF1 function,
which leads to activation of the same cancer-causing pathway, said Dr. Michael Krauthammer, associate professor of pathology and the study corresponding author.
Additionally, researchers observed that melanoma patients with the NF1 mutation were had older and a greater number of mutations in the tumors.
These include mutations in the same pathway, collectively known as RASOPATHY genes. Yet mutations in NF1 are not sufficient to cause skin cancer,
said Ruth Halaban, senior research scientist in dermatology, a member of Yale Cancer Center, and lead author of the study. oss of NF1 requires more accompanying changes to make a tumor,
she explained. ur study identified changes in about 100 genes that are present only in the malignant cells
and are likely to be causative. This panel of genes can now be used in precision medicine to diagnose malignant lesions
and can be applied to personalized cancer treatment. By testing the response of the melanoma samples to two cancer drugs,
the researchers also determined that, in addition to loss of NF1, multiple factors need to be tested to predict the response to the drugs. t opens the door to more research,
said Halaban, who is also principal investigator at Yale SPORE in Skin cancer. Other Yale authors include Yong Kong
Antonella Bacchiocchi, Perry Evans, Natapol Pornputtapong, en Wu, James P. Mccusker, Shuangge Ma, Elaine Cheng, Robert Straub, Merdan Serin, Dr
. arcus W. Bosenberg, Dr. Stephan Ariyan, Dr. Deepak Narayan, Dr. Mario Sznol, Dr. Harriet M. Kluger, Shrikant Mane, Joseph Schlessinger,
and Dr. Richard P. Lifton. The study was supported by the Yale SPORE in Skin cancer, funded by the National Cancer Institute, U s. National institutes of health, under award number 1 P50 CA121974;
the Melanoma Research Alliance; Gilead sciences, Inc.;the Howard hughes medical institute; the Department of Dermatology; and the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Publication: Michael Krauthammer, et al, xome sequencing identifies recurrent mutations in NF1 and RASOPATHY genes in sun-exposed melanomas, Nature Genetics, 2015;
doi: 10.1038/ng. 3361 Source: Ziba Kashef, Yale Universit
#First Direct evidence of the Formation Process of Brown dwarfs Using the Very Large Array, an international team of astronomers has discovered jets of material ejected by still-forming young brown dwarfs,
revealing the first direct evidence that brown dwarfs are produced by a scaled-down version of the same process that produces stars.
The astronomers studied a sample of still-forming brown dwarfs in a star-forming region some 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus,
and found that four of them have the type of jets emitted by more-massive stars during their formation.
The jets were detected by radio observations with the VLA. The scientists also observed the brown dwarfs with the Spitzer
and Herschel space telescopes to confirm their status as very young objects. his is the first time that such jets have been found coming from brown dwarfs at such an early stage of their formation,
and shows that they form in a way similar to that of stars, said Oscar Morata, of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. hese are the lowest-mass objects that seem to form the same way as stars,
he added. Brown dwarfs are less massive than stars, but more massive than giant planets such as Jupiter.
and pressures at their cores necessary to trigger the thermonuclear reactions that power ormalstars. Theorists suggested in the 1960s that such objects should exist
#How 3g technology is improving HIV patient care in Kenya Kenya has an extensive population that infected with HIV and until very recently,
Council Lead Partner Qualcomm is helping to change that. Pick 100 Kenyans at random, and odds are at least six of them are infected with HIV.
Kenya has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world at least 10 times that of most countries.
Kenya offers free Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) at clinics throughout the country, but the problem has been a lack of access.
A connection that saves lives Qualcomm is changing that by providing something that you won find in a typical medical bag:
3g wireless technology. And it appears to be working. ART treatment is very laborious with a tremendous administrative burden.
Clinics have to track their drugs, generate tedious reports to get new supplies and deliver those reports to central facilities.
Before Qualcomm stepped in, all of that work was done manually on paper. If a report was lost or delayed,
the clinic wouldn get the drugs it needed to treat its patients. The 3g technology has allowed clinics to computerize much of their administrative work,
streamlining the submission process and saving time. The time needed to prepare three monthly reports dropped from 11.6 hours to less than half an hour.
The time it takes to deliver those reports to the central management agency dropped from eight hours to five minutes.
clinic staff can now spend more time with patients. That alone has a dramatic impact on care,
since patients need close supervision to ensure they are taking their medications on schedule. 3g technology is making a difference People in developed countries may think that 3g is outdated technology for smartphones,
And the project in Kenya is just one of those that Qualcomm has been involved with to bring wireless services to remote communities around the world.
Its effort is called Qualcomm Wireless Reach and so far has touched 40 countries through more than 100 projects.
Projects run the gamut from health care and public safety to education and entrepreneurship. A project in India is helping to educate migrant children.
Sesame street and other children programming is delivered on mobile devices to young children. A third-party study found children in the program showed significant gains in comprehension, language and word knowledge.
Business classes are delivered wirelessly to tablets, which also let women in the program communicate with mentors.
A partnership involving Council Lead Partner Mastercard, however, hopes to change that. Mastercard is partnering with Masabi to completely eliminate the need for cash
or even advance planning when using transit. Masabi is known for its comprehensive mobile ticketing platform already in use by 22 transit agencies worldwide.
The partnership with Mastercard will make it even easier for transit customers to pay. Not only are the days of fumbling around for cash over
riders may not even have to pull out their credit cards. A transit overhaul in Athens The first city to benefit from the partnership is Athens, Greece,
which has a busy transit system used by 1 million people each day, but does not have a user friendly reputation.
A travel website article that provides step-by-step instructions for using the buses there is longer than most blog posts.
While the travel article points out a number of challenges, the issue of payment is one of the biggest.
Sometimes you can buy tickets at a kiosk other times you have to buy from a driver.
You have to pay in cash. You have to have exact change, so it wise to have a variety of coins with you at all times.
The Mastercard/Masabi partnership allows riders to buy their tickets with a quick tap on their smartphone.
The solution incorporates Mastercard Masterpass, which allows people to store digital wallets securely on their mobile devices.
Credit card and other payment information can be stored in the digital wallet allowing people to pay without needing to swipe
or manually enter their credit card information. Reducing lines through convenience There is no doubt that contactless cards are fast.
A transaction can technically be completed in as little as 300 milliseconds. But they have their limits. With rare exception, the contactless cards are tied to one particular transit system.
With the Mastercard/Masabi partnership, the smartphone is the common platform. The rechargeable contactless cards used by many transit systems also create two lines:
one to get on the bus, subway or train and another at a kiosk to pay for their pass or put more funds on the card.
Travelers who use the new Athens payment system can skip the latter; their smartphone is the kiosk.
So far, the partners have announced only their joint work in Athens. On its own, Masabi serves the United kingdom National Rail,
and the transit systems in Boston and San diego, among others m
#IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is back: Could your city use some pro bono problem solvers?
Here something you don't see every day a giant company doing pro bono consulting engagements (each valued at USD $500,
000) to improve the lives of citizens in cities around the world. But Council Lead Partner IBM has been doing just that with its Smarter Cities Challenge for the past four years.
So far it has supplied brain power to help 116 municipalities solve tough challenges. As you'll read below,
IBM is continuing the grant program this year and is now accepting applications from local governments.
That means some lucky cities are going to win the chance to have experts help them tackle a critical issue.
That's the idea behind IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge competitive grant program that has in the last four years helped 116 municipalities around the world solve critical local challenges.
How it works After intense preparation, six-person IBM pro bono consulting teams spend three weeks in the winning region analyzing all available data about a critical issue of the municipality's choosing for example
and not-for-profit communities. In doing so, they gather diverse perspectives about the causes and potential solutions to the challenge at hand.
At the conclusion, IBM presents comprehensive recommendations for improving the delivery of services to citizens.
Past winners have seen results IBM notes that many of its past grant recipients have implemented their Smarter Cities Challenge recommendations
Nanjing, China implemented a social media program that engaged more than two-million people for the 2014 Youth Olympic games.
Syracuse, New york analyzes data to identify homes and neighborhoods that need revitalization. The effort has yielded a 69%increase in collection of delinquent property taxes and fees.
A program that works"We're extending IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge for one simple reason:
It works,"said Jennifer Crozier, IBM vice president of Global Citizenship Initiatives.""City leaders from around the world have told us how IBM's advice has helped them re-imagine how they can use data
and analytics to help them solve complex problems. We're told that IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is that rare program that brings people together
and gets long-term results --and we're proud of that. We invite mayors and regional leaders to apply with their toughest problems
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