More than 3,500 years ago, civilizations in Asia and the Middle East used boiled rose madder roots to color fabrics in vivid colors such as orange, red and pink. Rose madder roots owe this ability to an organic compound in them named purpurin. Aside being a natural plant dye, purpurin could be used to power… »
North American porcupine upper parts are covered with thousands of sharp, barbed hollow spines (quills), which are used for defense. The ability of these quills to easily penetrate tissues are often hard to remove once lodged in flesh intrigued an international group of researchers, and their investigation might inspire development of medical needles that easily… »
While most of us can easily manipulate with everyday objects around us and place them at a desired place by using a series of judgments requiring vision, stability and careful movement, creating a robot able to perform a similar task is a bit of a challenge. A DARPA-funded research led to a hovering unmanned aerial… »
If a ship is anchored for longer periods of time, local algae, shells and barnacles colonize its hull and cause biofouling. Biofouling causes large economic losses since its growth on water vehicle hulls causes corrosion as well as higher fuel consumption. While some research groups develop surfaces which deny the initial formation, a group of… »
Researchers at Wake Forest University have managed to achieve a significant improvement of lighting based on field-induced polymer electroluminescent (FIPEL) technology. According to its developers, FIPEL lighting provides flicker-free soft white light and it is a shatterproof alternative for large-scale lighting with double efficiency of compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs and on par efficiency of LED… »
An interdisciplinary team of researchers consisting out of civil and environmental engineers, mathematicians, biomedical engineers and musical composers from MIT, Tuffs University and Boston University, cooperated in order to develop a novel method that can be used to synthesize new variants on silk’s natural structure as well as for making further improvements in the synthetic… »
Biologists at UC San Diego have genetically engineered marine algae to produce five different kinds of industrially important enzymes in fresh water, and they claim that the same process could be used to enhance the yield of petroleum-like compounds from algae grown in salt water. This approach would allow biofuel production in the ocean or… »
The printing of 3D tissue has taken a major step forward with the creation of a novel hybrid printer that simplifies the process of creating implantable cartilage. Researchers from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine were able to use this technology in order to create cartilage constructs that could eventually be used to replace… »
