#A camera has successfully been powered using spare Wi-fi signals Researchers in the US have tweaked a regular Wi-fi router
and made it capable of continuously powering a battery-free surveillance camera. Even better, their work didn interfere with the router's data transfer speeds.
The breakthrough could help researchers overcome one of the main challenges when it comes to the development of new technology-including the Internet of things,
which aims to put a chip inside all our household appliances and bring them online: how do we keep everything powered up without lots of cords?
Researchers have known long that the electromagnetic waves broadcast by Wi-fi routers could be harnessed for energy as well as sending information,
A team from the University of Washington in the US has accomplished now this by simply changing the way a router broadcasts.
and sensors is hugely significant, "writes MIT's Technology Review.""Powi-Fi could be the enabling technology that finally brings the Internet of things to life."
"In the past, scientists have never been able to harness enough Wi-fi signals to power anything of much use.
when they attached a simple antenna to a temperature sensor in order to see how much power they could get from a nearby router.
They found that the resulting voltages produced by the Wi-fi signals were never high enough to cross the operating threshold of around 300 millivolts.
But they often came close. The problem, they realised, was that Wi-fi routers don continuously blast out electromagnetic waves,
they send them out on a single channel in bursts. But by programming a router to broadcast noise across a range of Wi-fi channels even
when it wasn't transmitting information, they were able to pump out enough signals that their antenna could then use to provide continuous power to electronic devices.
Using their prototype, the team managed to show for the first time that they could not only run battery-free temperature
and camera sensors using Wi-fi signals from a distance of six and five metres respectively,
they also proved that they could charge a range of coin-cell batteries at distances of up to nine metres.
They then took their system into six metropolitan homes to show that the setup worked in real life
and didn interfere with data transfer speeds. The results are published over at arxiv. org. The question that needs to be answered now is how these routers interfere with other signals in the area. aving a router next door that is blasting out signals on three Wi-fi channels might not be everybody idea of neighbourly behaviour,
writes MIT Technology Review. t is worth pointing out, however, that if this kind of interference turns out to be a problem for current routers,
it is one that could be solved in future generations. The next step is further testing on these routers under a range of different conditions to make sure they really can help to provide us with regular power for our devices
while we browse the Internet. And if that the case, then it could seriously change the way we power up our homes.
We can wait u
#Computer solves 120-year-old biology problem that had stumped scientists Can computer software invent scientific theories and ideas as well as crunch numbers?
That's the suggestion being put forward by Michael Levin and Daniel Lobo, two computer scientists at Tufts University, Massachusetts in the US,
who have programmed a computer to come up with its own scientific hypothesis on one of biology's most well-known mysteries.
The mystery in question: how the genes of a sliced-up flatworm regenerate into new organisms.
"And why that happens could be key to developing everything from regenerative medicines to designing self-repairing robots."
"The computer program created by Levin and Lobo was designed to repeat real-life studies over and over again, making small tweaks each time.
Essentially, the computer was guessing how a worm's genes connect together, and simulating a new theory each time
-if the end results were closer to data obtained in the real world, it took another step in that direction;
After three days, the software came up with a core genetic network code that matched all of the hundreds of actual experiments in its database.
but the actual software took years to put together. A customised computer language was required before the software could handle the available data,
and of course all that data had to be collected and collated from the various scientific research projects that have taken place down the years.
Only with the right raw materials in place could the program draw its conclusions.""The invention of models to explain what nature is doing is the most creative thing scientists do...
where functional data exist but the underlying mechanism is hard to guess.""Levin and Lobo's work has been published in the journal PLOS Computational biology,
and the pair believe the same kind of reverse-engineering approach can be used in many other areas of science,
Next up, the computer scientists are tackling the question of metastasis: how cancer begins to spread through the body o
#Engineers have created a computer that operates on water droplets Researchers in the US have built a fully functioning computer that runs like clockwork-but instead of electrons,
it operates using the movement of tiny magnetised water droplets. The ultimate goal is to use the machine to precisely control
the same way that regular computers manipulate information. Although this new water-based computer could theoretically do everything a normal computer can thanks to its universal logic gates,
it much slower than the devices we currently use. But the team has far bigger plans in mind for their invention-revolutionising the way we process
"We already have digital computers to process information Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control
and bioengineer at Stanford university, said in a press release.""Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed
but physical matter is manipulated algorithmically as well. We have made just this possible at the mesoscale 10 microns to 1 millimetre.
In this work, we finally demonstrate a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control, "he added. Prakash first came up with the idea for the computer nearly a decade ago,
but although it was easy enough to work out how to control water droplets-by infusing them with magnetic nanoparticles
and moving them around a maze of iron bars-finding a way to synchronise these movements proved challenging.
In regular computers this is the role of the clock, which perfectly times every single movement within the system,
But then they came up with the idea of a rotating magnetic field. very time the field flips,
drawing the magnetised droplets in a new, predetermined direction, like slot cars on a track,
And it carries information using the absence of presence of water droplets as the 1s and 0s of its binary code."
we've demonstrated that we can make all the universal logic gates used in electronics, simply by changing the layout of the bars on the chip,
"said co-researcher Georgios Katsikis.""The actual design space in our platform is incredibly rich.
The current chips are about half the size of a postage stamp, and the droplets are smaller than poppy seeds,
Theye hoping this will allow them to perform reactions that are done currently in bulk in test tubes with their computer-essentially,
and play around with the design to help take it to the next level. e are trying to bring the same kind of exponential scale up because of computation we saw in the digital world into the physical world,
#Injectable electronics now exist that could one day help treat paralysis It sounds like something taken straight from a science-fiction movie,
a group of international researchers led by Professor Charles Lieber of Harvard university have developed a method for injecting nanoscale electronic scaffolds into animal bodies.
Once connected to electronic devices, these meshes can be used to monitor neural activity and even stimulate tissue and neurons.
and his colleagues could lead to new ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases and paralysis, as well as mapping out the brain in greater detail than ever before.
"This opens up a completely new frontier where we can explore the interface between electronic structures and biology.""
but no one has addressed this issue-the electronics/cellular interface-at the level at which biology works,"adds Lieber.
His work has just been published in Nature Nanotechnology. Once injected, the miniature scaffolding is able to unfurl itself
and melds with the existing brain tissue-the neurons apparently look at the new mesh as a friendly support rather than something alien to the body.
The team says the next step in the research is to try the same technique with larger meshes and more sensors.
Credit: Lieber Research Group, Harvard Universitythe group of scientists Lieber has brought together are trying to solve a longstanding neuroscience mystery:
director of the Neuro technology Centre at Columbia University in New york, told Nature. com. At this stage not everyone is confident the new procedure can be applied safely to human beings, however.
Jens Schouenborg, who is head of the Neuronano Research Centre at Lund University in Sweden,
Schouenborg is also working on his own gelatin-based'needle'for delivering electrodes into the brain a
#These tiny plastic chips can deliver therapeutic genes into cells A graduate student is developing a cost-effective new method of delivering desirable genes into human cells using a tiny plastic chip.
and extend the reach of new cancer-killing immunotherapy treatments, which currently rely on viral vectors and cost around $5, 000-$10, 000 a pop.
which is being developed by engineering Phd student Ryan Pawell from the University of New south wales (UNSW) in Australia,
which can deliver biological materials to cells. This allows the cells to be reprogrammed, and essentially recreates a fully functioning laboratory on a piece of plastic the size of a postage stamp. y overall goal is to use technology to reduce the cost of healthcare
and to make it accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford it, Pawell told Sciencealert.
Lab-on-a-chip devices are already being used around the world to help provide on-the-spot diagnoses for diseases such as HIV and Ebola,
and reprogram them to have a therapeutic effect. his process could substantially bring down the cost of gene therapy,
and turning on genes inside them to activate them against certain tumours or diseases, before then inserting these cells back into the patient.
it has far fewer side effects than traditional therapies, and early trials show that they may also be far more effective-with studies so far proving immunotherapy is successful against aggressive forms of melanoma and glioblastoma.
But the problem is, in order to turn on genes against the desired disease, scientists need to deliver DNA into the patient cells,
and right now our best way of doing this is to use viral vectors, which are expensive,
but by tweaking his the lab-on-a-chip technology, he predicts hel be able to do the same thing for a substantially reduced cost.
Manufacturing these therapies by viral vectors requires industrial-sized manufacturing plants and costs tens of millions of dollars but it only enables the treatment of thousands of patients per year.
However, these microfluidic devices can be manufactured at scales of more than a million devices per year. It still early days,
and Pawell is currently validating that his chips can accurately and safely deliver DNA into human cells,
Even better, theye also been able to show that the therapeutic cells their lab-on-a-chip creates are highly viable
And in the meantime, find out more about the technique behind Pawell lab-on-a-chip device in this UNSW video from last year:
otherwise as a result of a bone transplant. The drug hasn been tested on people just yet, but the team are now working on developing it for human use within the next three years,
and improve survival outcomes after surgery and injury.""We are excited very,"lead researcher Sanford Markowitz,
an oncologist from Case Western Reserve University in the US, said in a press release.""We have developed a drug that acts like a vitamin for tissue stem cells,
or are about to undergo bone marrow transplants or liver surgery but in the future they hope to see
whether it could more broadly speed up the repair of tissues around the body.""The drug heals damage in multiple tissues,
which suggests to us that it may have applications in treating many diseases, "said Markowitz. The drug,
which goes by the un-catchy name of W033291 works by enabling a natural molecule in the body known as prostaglandin E2, or PGE2.
In fact, mice given SW033291 recovered normal blood counts after bone marrow transplants six days faster than mice that weren treated.
The drug also almost completely healed mice with ulcers in their colon, and helped mice that had had parts of their liver removed regrow the tissue nearly twice as fast as the control group.
Most impressively, the team tested out the drug on mice that had received lethal doses of radiation before being given a partial bone marrow transplant.
#A new smartphone attachment could save you a trip to the eye doctor You might think nothing of a trip to the optometrist,
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of visual impairments suffered worldwide could be prevented
The D-EYE is a lens that clips onto the back of a smartphone (right now it works with the iphone 5
and the Samsung S4 and S5). It's noninvasive, simple to set up, and requires no power to run,
which is sent back to a specialist over the web. Thanks to the innovative mounting bumper, eye lens
you can essentially carry an optometrist's fundus camera around in your back pocket.""Conduct routine eye examinations and retinal screenings anywhere for possible detection of a variety of disorders, including the leading causes of blindness-cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration,
"the inventors explain on the project's official site. The gadget has been developed by ophthalmologist Andrea Russo together with and Italian tech development firm Si14 Spa.
Once the link between doctor and patient is established, doctors are able to remotely control the device to choose where in the eye to look,
as well as set and review patient files. It provides a comprehensive view of the inside of the eyeball (including the retina
optic disc, macula, fovea and posterior pole. As Digital Trends reports, the D-EYE uses a combination of beam splitters
and levers created using the smartphone's LED flash camera lens and autofocus. It can compensate between-10d myopia (nearsightedness) to+10d hyperopia (farsightedness.
At the moment the lens costs#400 (AUD$800) with the bumper attachment selling individually for#40 (AUD$80),
while the app is free to download. There are also plans for a cloud service to support the gadget
and to store the scans it takes. D-EYE isn't the only company looking to bring remote ophthalmic equipment into your own home.
Blink is a startup that packs an ophthalmoscope into a briefcase that is brought to your home whenever's convenient by a qualified technician.
He or she can then set up the equipment, show you how to use it, and get the results back to a professional optometrist-the idea is that the expert eye doctor can see more patients more quickly without leaving the office or waiting for appointments.
Blink only operates in New york right now, but as with D-EYE the aim is to refine the technology
and get it into the hands of people who can't make it to the optometrist clinic-that could be
because they have a disability of some kind or because they live a long way from the nearest healthcare centre e
#This origami-style battery could double the life of wearable gadgets If you own a smartwatch
-or indeed a smartphone-then you'll know that battery performance on modern-day gadgets isn't quite
what it could be. With these devices so central to our daily lives, scientists from all over the world are working on smaller, better-performing batteries,
and a team of engineers from Arizona State university in the US and Jinan University in China is the latest to show off their progress.
The innovation here isn't so much the material used in the batteries-it's the same lithium-ion compound that makes up the smartphone batteries of today-but the way in
which it's put together. Based on origami and kirigami (where paper is folded cut as well as), this new battery style can be extended
and retracted like a car antenna, even while it's powering a device. That means the stretchable battery can go places where normal batteries can't go,
like the band of your smartwatch or inside a very thin section of a robot.
The batteries that the researchers have created can stretch and expand to more than 150 percent of their compacted size,
and that's a big deal in an industry where electronics are becoming more versatile and wearable.
As there are so many advantages to this kind of flexibility scientists have spent many years trying to work on batteries that can be folded in this way,
but packs created from previous attempts at the technology would often break or tear when folded.
The batteries produced by the team from the US and China overcome this problem by placing carefully calculated soft creases at various points along the battery's body.
The inventors say that these batteries could double the life of a smartwatch between charges, for example,
by being fitted into the band. What's more, the manufacturing process is reasonably straightforward. There is a tradeoff though-the shape of these batteries means they can't hold as much charge as a comparable rectangular one."
"When you ask a battery to be flexible like this, you give up some of the energy you can store in a given volume.
But if you're a designer trying to make the thinnest watch face possible, who knows?
The aesthetics might make that tradeoff worth it,"Princeton university energy storage engineer Daniel Steingart, who wasn't involved in this particular research,
told Popular Mechanics. It won't break any records for battery life, then, but it could add some invaluable extra power where normal batteries are unable to go
-and that means these new kirigami batteries have a lot of potential for the years to come e
#Microsoft is building a drone army to catch mosquitoes and stop epidemics One potential use for drones that you might not have thought about is preventing the spread of disease.
Microsoft has launched just an initiative called Project Premonition, with the aim of detecting viruses before they infect a significant number of people using a fleet of Unmanned aerial vehicles (or UAVS).
In remote areas where dengue fever or malaria can take hold, the impact of drone technology and number of saved lives could be huge.
The key is in catching mosquitoes and analysing the diseases they're carrying:""The mosquito is the most dangerous animal on the planet,
because it carries so many pathogens,"Microsoft researcher Ethan Jackson, who is leading Project Premonition, told Allison Linn over on the company's blog."
"What we want to do is to be able to catch that mosquito efficiently, at scale and at low cost."
"Right now, scientists attempt to do this by using traps hung from trees that must be collected by hand.
But Microsoft's new plan could greatly speed up this process and make it a lot cheaper, by sending out portable drones that are able to cover far more distance
and come back to base with bigger samples. This would allow scientists to not only monitor the spread of known diseases carried by mosquitoes,
but also detect emerging viruses and epidemics before they begin to spread. To do this, they're developing software that will be able to quickly
and accurately process genetic data collected by their mosquito-hunting UAV fleet, giving researchers a better idea of the viruses that are out there
and how they're spreading. It all sounds a little far fetched, but Microsoft carried out a feasibility study in Grenada in the Caribbean in March,
and presented its findings at the Microsoft Innovation Techfair in WASHINGTON DC last week. The company now says it's working with academic partners across multiple disciplines to make Project Premonition a reality within the next five years.
Getting advance warning of a potential epidemic is crucial in stopping or limiting it. Vaccines and health clinics can be up and running earlier
and any necessary travelling restrictions can be put in place before the situation worsens.""The ability to predict an epidemic would be huge,"Douglas Norris,
a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health in Maryland, told Linn.
As part of his work, Norris often finds himself working in remote areas using mosquito traps that haven't changed much since the 1950s or 60s.
They use expensive batteries and chemicals that are difficult to source, and indiscriminately collect plenty other bugs besides mosquitoes-there's huge room for improvement in terms of the technology and its efficiency,
and that's where Project Premonition comes in. In order for the scheme to be a success
the drones will need to operate semi-autonomously as well as being directed by a human pilot: having the ability to navigate environments on their own ensures they can travel greater distances and cover more land.
All that extra functionality requires more research and programming of course, but the Project Premonition team is optimistic about its chances.
Mirosoft is also developing these mosquito traps, which will be attached to the drones: What's more, thanks to the latest advancements in molecular biology
and genetic sequencing, samples can be processed faster and more cheaply than ever-they can even spot viruses that haven't been classified yet.
By developing cloud databases and algorithms to store all of this data, the researchers behind Project Premonition hope to build a robust system capable of spotting dangers to humans and wildlife alike in the future u
#Autonomous robot arms are going to 3d-print a bridge in Amsterdam From low-cost housing to lifesaving implants,
3d printing technology is having a growing influence on our lives, and the latest innovation to be announced is sized a full 3d printed bridge.
Industry experts MX3D are planning to create a steel bridge in Amsterdam in The netherlands using independent robot arms.
These arms will start on one side of the river and cross over to the other bank building the structure as they go.
Software studio Autodesk and construction firm Heijmans are two of the partners working with MX3D on the eye-catching project
which is scheduled to start in September once a final location has been chosen. The robotic 3d printers are going to construct their own supports as they go,
heating the metal to 1, 500 degrees Celsius (2, 732 Fahrenheit) before melding it into place.
The site is set to be a tourist attraction even before it's completed, with a visitor centre in the pipeline that will provide running updates on the bridge's process."
"What distinguishes our technology from traditional 3d printing methods is that we work according to the'printing outside the box'principle,
"MX3D Chief Technology Officer Tim Geurtjens says on the project site.""By printing with 6-axis industrial robots, we are limited no longer to a square box in
which everything happens. Printing a functional, life-size bridge is of course the ideal way to showcase the endless possibilities of this technique."
"The printing arms have been through several iterations to get them ready for the task: MX3D engineers say they've seen machines explode,
get clogged up and lose their bearings along the way, but now the final version of the hardware is ready to launch into action.
A small-scale test run has taken already place, producing a bridge a few feet across that could take the weight of a human being.
The style of the bridge has been sketched out by Dutch designer and artist Joris Laarman.""I strongly believe in the future of digital production and local production, in'the new craft,
'"he says.""This bridge will show how 3d printing finally enters the world of large-scale, functional objects and sustainable materials while allowing unprecedented freedom of form.
The symbolism of the bridge is a beautiful metaphor to connect the technology of the future with the old city,
in a way that brings out the best of both worlds.""The project isn't just showcasing the novelty value of 3d printing,
because the technology could eventually have a practical use too-in areas where natural disasters have occurred
or local infrastructure has been destroyed, a self-contained bridge-printing robot could prove invaluable in connecting communities together again.
In the meantime, keep your eyes on MX3D's new bridge in Amsterdam, because you'll be seeing a lot more of this technology in the years to come e
#Researchers have worked out how to mind control cockroaches Engineering students in China have worked out how to control live cockroaches using a brain-to-brain interface technique,
essentially creating tiny biological robots that perform the will of their human masters. Using the interface,
the researchers have managed to guide a living cockroach along S-shaped and Z-shaped paths using their minds.
Presenting their research in video form at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's annual conference,
the team of students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University describe how they fitted one of their team members with a bluetooth electroencephalogram (EEG) headset.
The researcher then thought about guiding himself through the S-or Z-shaped pathway and these brain waves were translated then into electrical impulses
which were sent wirelessly to an electronic backpack receiver attached to the cockroach. The electrical impulses then stimulated the antennae nerves of the cockroach through a microelectrode implanted into the animal's head.
Through this nerve, the electrical impulses controlled its behaviour and created what the students call a"machine animal".
"They've illustrated this process below: A team at the University of Texas created similar mind-controlled cockroaches a few months ago,
with the aim of using cockroaches to explore disaster zones. The students from Shanghai believe their cockroaches could also be used to help map out complex terrains,
and also highlights how close we're getting to a world like the one James cameron dreamed up in Avatar,
where we can control other animals-albeit it simple ones-with our minds. In a press release the students explain that their research"extended the traditional brain-computer interface technology
and tentatively attempted the avatar brain-brain communication"."The video on their research, which you can see below,
won second prize in the conference's student video competition. The team is are now planning to upgrade the control mode
so that several cockroaches can be controlled by seven different humans at the same time. And we don't know whether to be impressed or terrified.
if a mind-controlled cockroach army got into the wrong hands..
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