A team of researchers from Rice University discovered they could transform a sheet of graphite oxide (GO) into a functional supercapacitor by writing patterns into it with a laser. By writing patterns of RGO into thin sheets of GO, the Rice researchers effectively turned them into free-standing supercapacitors with the ability to store and release… »

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a glove with a special fingertip which employs stochastic resonance in order to improve the wearer’s sense of touch and motor performance. The technology could be used to assist individuals whose jobs require high-precision manual dexterity or those with medical conditions that reduce their sense of… »

Japan has a growing number of elderly in need of nursing care and an urgent need for new approaches used to assist care-giving personnel. Researchers at RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries (TRI) are developing a robot which performs one of the most exhausting tasks for such personnel – lifting a patient from a futon at… »

Researchers from the Hasegawa Group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology are developing a robot capable to think, learn and take on tasks it hasn’t tried before. By using Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network (SOINN), the robot can think in a way similar to humans, because it can make educated guesses and decisions based on its… »

Hotchkiss Residence is a beautiful example of architecture created in the northwest modernist tradition of Belluschi and Storrs. Located near the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, the house is carefully sited and designed to take full advantage of the impressive surrounding views. Hotchkiss Residence has a contemporary, yet warm design, and it features various examples… »

The EU funded R&D project named Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport (HAVEit) is set to develop research concepts and technologies for highly automated driving. The system would enable drivers to choose if they would like to take over driving responsibilities, merely receive “assistance” from the vehicle, or if they would like the vehicle to… »

Engineers at the University of Southampton have designed and flown a 3D printed aircraft named Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft (SULSA). SULSA is an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) whose entire structure has been printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by… »

A group of researchers from the University of Oxford is developing small aerial vehicles with flapping wings inspired by those found on insects. The researchers envision that their insect-size vehicles will be suitable for many different purposes ranging from helping in emergency situations considered too dangerous for people to enter, to covert military surveillance missions…. »