Most robotic parts used today are rigid, have a limited range of motion and don't really look lifelike. Inspired by both nature and biology, a scientist from Florida Atlantic University has designed a novel robotic finger that looks and feels like the real thing.
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These findings, reported today, Friday 9th October, in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomechanics, offer a new insight into how animals respond to different terrain, and how robots can learn from them.
The researchers, based at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA, and Northwestern University, Evanston, USA, developed a test-bed to test the performance of different animals and a hexapedal robot over loose ground.
The fishing port of Ondarroa, the Deba marina, the estuary at Gernika (beside the discharge stream of the waste water treatment plant) and the industrial ports of Pasaia and Santurtzi are the scenarios where the research was carried out between May and June 2012. The fish chosen for the study was the thicklip grey mullet (Chelonlabrosus).
Working with gut stem cells from humans and mice, scientists from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the University of Pittsburgh have successfully grown healthy intestine atop a 3-D scaffold made of a substance used in surgical sutures.
In a further step that takes their work well beyond proof of concept, researchers report their laboratory-created intestine successfully regenerated gut tissue in the colons of dogs with missing gut lining.
In by far the majority of cancer cases, the doctor can quickly identify the source of the disease, for example cancer of the liver, lungs, etc. However, in about one in 20 cases, the doctor can confirm that the patient has cancer -- but cannot find the source. These patients then face the prospect of a long wait with numerous diagnostic tests and attempts to locate the origin of the cancer before starting any treatment.
Burning a candle could be all it takes to make an inexpensive but powerful electric car battery, according to new research published in Electrochimica Acta. The research reveals that candle soot could be used to power the kind of lithium ion battery used in plug-in hybrid electric cars.
The authors of the study, from the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad, India, say their discovery opens up the possibilities to use carbon in more powerful batteries, driving down the costs of portable power.
ONTARIO, OR - Sweetpotato, a warm-season root crop grown across the world, needs heat and humidity to flourish. In the United States, commercial sweetpotato production occurs predominantly in the southeastern states and California, while production farther north is limited. Recently, Oregon State University researchers discovered cultural practices that could help to increase sweetpotato production in the semiarid Pacific Northwest.
This news release is available in Japanese.
Thousands more people would take part in bowel cancer screening if the kit included extras, such as gloves and "poo catchers", according to a Cancer Research UK study published today (Wednesday) in Biomed Research International*.
The London study looked at how to increase the number of people who take part in the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme (BCSP)**, with fewer than six in ten 60 to 74 year olds in England returning the kit.
A new study shows that iron-bearing rocks that formed at the ocean floor 3.2 billion years ago carry unmistakable evidence of oxygen. The only logical source for that oxygen is the earliest known example of photosynthesis by living organisms, say University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientists.
Every year, $400 billion in federal and state funds are distributed to state, county and local communities for infrastructure, public safety, community development and social services. When it comes to determining how the money is distributed, accurate data are paramount. Those looking for data and analytical reports often turn to the American Community Survey (ACS) from the U.S. Census, which provides data such as unemployment, median household income, and housing prices for multi-year periods.
McMaster Engineering researchers Emily Cranston and Igor Zhitomirsky are turning trees into energy storage devices capable of powering everything from a smart watch to a hybrid car.
The scientists are using cellulose, an organic compound found in plants, bacteria, algae and trees, to build more efficient and longer-lasting energy storage devices or supercapacitors. This development paves the way toward the production of lightweight, flexible, and high-power electronics, such as wearable devices, portable power supplies and hybrid and electric vehicles.
Oxford, October 6, 2015 - A blend of two polymers can be used to boost the efficiency of LEDs (light-emitting diodes), according to a research study published in the journal Applied Materials Today. Richard Friend of the Cavendish Laboratory, at the University of Cambridge and colleagues, have blended poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (F8) and a poly(para-phenylenevinylene) (PPV) copolymer known as Super Yellow (SY) and used cesium carbonate in their LED's negative electrode to minimize quenching and give them ultrahigh efficiency devices.
The drug ceritinib (trade name: Zykadia) has been approved since May 2015 for the treatment of adults with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It is an option when certain changes in the cancer cells (anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive) stimulate tumour growth and patients have already been pretreated with crizotinib.
Physicists have wondered in recent years if they could control how atoms interact using light. Now they know that they can, by demonstrating games of quantum billiards with unusual new rules.
In an article published in the Oct. 5 issue of Physical Review Letters, a team of University of Chicago physicists explains how to tune a laser to make atoms attract or repel each other in an exotic state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.