These days, we normally use sensors to measure whether these components are strained beyond capacity, and it requires a lot of effort to install them into the component parts or glue them onto their surface, and even install networks of sensors with various sensibility. Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Material Research… »
Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for amputees. Funded by a Department of Defense initiative dedicated to audacious challenges and intense time schedules, the SMU engineers from Neurophotonics Research Center will develop two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves. Successful completion of the fiber optic… »
A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels. By overcoming technical hurdles to producing plastics that are translucent, malleable and able to conduct electricity, the researchers have opened the door to broader use of the materials in a wide range of electrical… »
Physicists Morgan Kjølerbakken and Vibeke Jahr were working on sonar technology when they came up with the idea for what they call a super-microphone while they were at the University of Oslo, Norway. Kjølerbakken and Jahr have now patented the device, dubbed it AudioScope, and founded a company Squarehead Technology where they commercialized their idea…. »
Physicists at Rutgers University have discovered that energy-carrying particles generated by packets of light can travel on the order of a thousand times farther in organic (carbon-based) semiconductors than scientists previously observed. This boosts scientists’ hopes that less expensive plastic solar cells based on this budding technology may one day overtake silicon solar cells in… »
The Nokia Research Center in Cambridge was set up in 2007 as a partnership with the University of Cambridge. Soon after it was established, the Morph Concept was unveiled, to help build a picture of where the research at the labs was heading. They recently demoed three different strands of their research and those are… »
One of the problems with harvesting sunlight is that sunlight leads to a gradual degradation of many systems developed to harness it. But plants have adopted an interesting strategy to address this issue by constantly breaking down their light-capturing molecules and reassembling them from scratch, thus renewing the basic structures that capture the sun’s energy… »
Researchers at the University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC) are demonstrating that plants from Earth could be grown hydroponically (without soil) on the moon or Mars, setting the table for astronauts who would find potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables awaiting their arrival. The technology shows a great potential for application on… »
