In one of our previous articles we described OmniTouch – a prototype of a wearable multitouch system that turns any surface into interface for information interaction. Researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have played with that idea and created WorldKit – a system able to create these touch-based interfaces and enable information interaction in… »

Collaboration in an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Northwestern University and Temple University led to development of a robot inspired by sea turtle hatchlings. Named FlipperBot, the robot is being developed for better understanding of principles that govern movement using flippers – thus leading to more efficient robots that… »

As we reported in one of our previous articles, Organovo came up with a bio-printer able to print human tissue and organs in 3D. They recently attended 2013 Experimental Biology conference in Boston, Massachusetts, where they presented the company’s in vitro three-dimensional liver generated by Organovo’s NovoGen bioprinting platform. The tissues are highly reproducible and… »

When blossoms and leaves wane and turn black, it is usually too late to fight off the disease which attacks the plant. Fire blight is a plant disease which strikes fruit trees such as apple and pear trees. Clearing the affected trees was often the only chance left before it takes over the entire orchard…. »

The SSC GmbH conducts extensive research since the beginning of 2008 to the development of processes and systems through to large-scale cultivation of microalgae. The technology was tested at a pilot plant in Hamburg Reitbrook back in 2008in collaboration with various colleges and universities in North Germany as part of the interdisciplinary R&D project TERM… »

Inspired by the ability of pine cones to close their scales when wet and open them again once they have dried out, a group of researchers at ETH Zurich devised a new method to produce a variety of composite materials that are able to change their shape to a pre-programmed shape after being influence by… »

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed an inexpensive tactile sensor for robotic hands that is sensitive enough to turn a brute machine into a dexterous manipulator. Named TakkTile, the sensor is intended to put what is currently being developed in laboratories within the grasp of commercial inventors, teachers,… »

Inspired by a fish parasitic worm, a group of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) devised a way to close surgical wounds that appears better than anything currently available for clinical use. Once perfected, the invention could be used as replacement for staples and sutures used in the operating room, as well as to… »