China Daily – Foxconn Technology Group plans to use 1 million robots to replace simple working employees over a three-year span, China Business News reported on Monday, citing tycoon Terry Guo, who owns Foxconn. They expect to have 300,000 robots in 2012. The robots will be used simple assembly line procedures Foxconn is the largest …
Quick test for HIV: This microfluidics chip can detect syphilis and HIV in just 15 minutes from one microliter of blood. Credit: Curtis Chin, Columbia University A simple microfluidics chip could improve health care in poor countries by making rapid diagnostic testing a reality. Developed by Samual Sia and collaborators at Columbia University, the system …
Diagram shows the idealized arrangement of a vat of molten salt used to store solar heat, located at the base of a gently-sloping hillside that could be covered with an array of steerable mirrors all guided to focus sunlight down onto the vat. Image: Courtesy of Alexander Slocum et al. MIT team designs concentrated solar …
Capillary action: The transparent circle in the center of this image is a nanomaterial designed to mimic the protein VEGF. Here, it has enhanced the growth of blood vessels in the membrane from a chicken egg after three days. Credit: Matthew Webber MIT Technology Review – A synthetic material may help to repair tissue after …
Electronic circuitry composed of nanowires can now be fitted to a surface of almost any shape on an object made of virtually any material, using a new approach to fabrication and transfer of nanowire electronics developed by Stanford researchers. Stanford researchers have developed a new method of attaching nanowire electronics to the surface of virtually …
The lab of Rice chemist James Tour lab has created thin films that could revolutionize touch-screen displays, solar panels and LED lighting. Flexible, see-through video screens may be the “killer app” that finally puts graphene — the highly touted single-atom-thick form of carbon — into the commercial spotlight once and for all, Tour said. Combined …
Schematics of CO2 laser-patterning of free-standing hydrated GO films to fabricate RGO–GO–RGO devices with in-plane and sandwich geometries. Turning graphite oxide (GO) into full-fledged supercapacitors turns out to be simple. But until a laboratory at Rice University figured out how, it was anything but obvious. Rice Professor Pulickel Ajayan and his team discovered they could …
NBF wrote about KLD Energy and their electric motor with a nano-crystalline core back in 2009. KLD Energy Technologies Inc. signed a deal to supply motor systems for a new line of electric scooters in Malaysia. KLD expects to manufacture at least 40,000 kits in the first year. The scooters are being developed as part …
Duke electrical engineers have developed a man-made material that they say literally allows them to manipulate light at will. They say that the results of their latest proof-of-concept experiments could lead to the replacement of electrical components with those based on optical technologies, which should allow for faster and more efficient transmission of information, much …
The SFG-500 gasifier developed by Siemens Fuel Gasification Technology in Freiberg. Siemens Energy has received an order from China to deliver eight coal gasifiers. The units, with a thermal rating of 500 megawatts each, are for a coal gasification plant in Yili City in Xinjiang province. The plant converts locally mined subbituminous coal into synthetic …
Small ground-based transmitters that mimic GPS satellites help receivers find their position with high accuracy. A new location technology accurate to a few centimeters will refine those services and unlock another wave of novel ideas, claims Australian company Locata. The company’s technology can work alongside GPS to provide superaccurate positioning or fill in the gaps …