HAL, which stands for “hybrid assistive limb,” is a kind of wearable robot or motorized exoskeleton. Tsukuba University engineering professor Yoshiyuki Sankai developed HAL to help its operator perform tasks that a normal human would not be strong enough to perform otherwise, according to the web page of Mr. Sankai’s venture company Cyberdyne. A link …
The first complex organ, the bladder, has been rebuilt in seven patients from living tissue cultivated in the lab. Over the past decade, researchers began fashioning better scaffold-like platforms that hold growing cells and dissolve inside the body. The study of stem cells, which can mature into all the body’s other tissues, has also supercharged …
ESA’s Near-Earth Object deflecting mission Don Quijote, three teams of European industries are now carrying out studies on how to prevent disasterous impacts from space Don Quijote is a NEO deflection test mission based entirely on conventional spacecraft technologies. It would comprise two spacecraft – one of them (Hidalgo) impacting an asteroid at a very …
In their proof-of-principle experiment, Wong’s group attached titanium dioxide nanoparticles to the end of a conventional AFM probe and used it to photocatalytically oxidize selected sites on a thin film of photoreactive dye — a model for understanding photocatalysis in solar cells In the experiment, oxidized and unaffected areas of the dye were often separated …
Living off the grid is not crazy. It costs about $23000 for a 2000 sf home More on living off the grid Solar power is not crazy.Solar power is near a tipping point. It it gets to $1 per watt for installed panels it should takeoff without subsidies. Right now the best values are at …
Nanodots are being used to successfully pin the magnetic field in superconducting wire. This allows for more stable current flow and better retention of performance over longer wire. The performance necessary for many applications appears possible using this technique There are still many hurdles but this appears to be a path to success. The performance …
Notes for classes in 2004 on space related topics
The Fermi paradox is if the universe contains many technologically advanced civilizations, combined with our lack of observational evidence to support that view, seems to be inconsistent. Either this assumption is incorrect (and technologically advanced intelligent life is much rarer than we believe), our current observations are incomplete (and we simply have not detected them …
Nanospheres that are 200 nanometers in diameter, roughly the size of a virus, are used so they won’t trigger an immune response in the body. They are also biocompatible so they can be readily absorbed by the cells. It’s the structure of the nanospheres that makes drug delivery possible. The spheres have thousands of parallel …
Researchers have achieved success in reversing paralysis in rats using hydrogels which had stem cells mixed in and the material placed into the space of the spinal cord gap. Hydrogels resemble the soft tissue that surrounds a human spinal cord as it develops in the womb. The researchers estimate gel-based spinal cord repair clinical trials …
The Korean team’s continuously shorted fuel-cell muscle incorporated a shape-memory wire coated with nanoparticles of platinum catalyst. This type of muscle converted the chemical energy of the fuel into thermal energy, which caused actuation. The fuel-cell muscle’s work capability was 100 times that of skeletal muscle They also created a cantilever-based nanotube fuel-cell muscle, the …