Tag: physical sciences
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Simple 3-D Graphene Construction Process Devised
17 October 2014. Materials scientists at Kyoto University in Japan developed a new process that simplifies the building of three-dimension structures with graphene, a light, strong, conductive material with many industrial and commercial applications. Franklin Kim and Jianli Zou from Kyoto’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences published their findings yesterday in the journal Nature Communications…
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New Coating Material Stops Blood Clots, Bacterial Films
13 October 2014. Engineers and medical researchers at Harvard University developed a material to coat tubes in medical devices that repels blood, preventing clots from forming and reducing the need for blood-thinning drugs. The new material from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and collaborators at affiliated labs and hospitals is described in an…
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Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm Given Long-Term Test
9 October 2014. Biomedical engineers in Sweden developed and tested for 18 months a prosthetic device connected to a man’s amputated arm that provides electrical signaling with his mind and body. The team of biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate Max Ortiz-Catalan and professor Bo Håkansson from Chalmers University of Technology and orthopedist Rickard Brånemark of Sahlgrenska…
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Google Glass Captioning Developed for Hearing Impaired
3 October 2014. Computer scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta designed a system that converts speech from conversation partners to text, displayed on Google Glass systems worn by people with hearing difficulties. Google Glass is a wearable miniature computer that displays data on eyeglasses worn by the user. The software is a creation…
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Solar Water-Splitting System Produces Hydrogen for Energy
26 September 2014. Engineers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland designed a solar energy system made of inexpensive and abundant materials that efficiently splits water into hydrogen and oxygen for producing electricity. The team from the lab of EPFL’s Michael Grätzel, with colleagues from Singapore and Korea, published its findings in today’s…
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Small Business Grant Funds Point-of-Care Sickle Cell Test
22 September 2014. A Cambridge, Massachusetts diagnostics company received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to develop a simple point-of-care test for sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder affecting a large percentage of people of African origin. The $225,000 grant from National Institutes of Health’s SBIR program to Daktari Diagnostics will support development…
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3-D, Open-Source Syringe Pump Cuts Research Lab Costs
18 September 2014. Engineers at Michigan Technological University in Houghton produced a syringe pump, a common but often expensive piece of lab equipment, with three-dimensional printing that drastically cuts the cost of the device. The team led by Michigan Tech’s Joshua Pearce published its findings yesterday in the journal PLoS One, and makes the pump’s…
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Synthetic Platelet-Like Particles Developed, Tested
8 September 2014. Biomedical engineers and medical researchers designed and tested in the lab a new type of synthetic particle that acts like natural blood platelets to help heal bleeding. The team from Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University medical school, both in Atlanta, published its findings yesterday in the journal Nature Materials (paid…
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Humanoid Robots Help Children with Autism Learn Interaction
29 August 2014. Engineers and computer scientists at University of Southern California in Los Angeles show how commercial humanoid robots can help children with autism spectrum disorder learn basic social behavior. The team from the lab of Maja Mataric´, director of USC’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center, presented its findings earlier this week at the IEEE…
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Smartphone App Screens Infants for Jaundice
27 August 2014. Computer scientists and medical researchers at University of Washington in Seattle are developing a system that lets physicians or parents with a smartphone screen newborn infants for jaundice. The system is described in a paper to be presented on 16 September at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp…