For the first time, scientists have altered natural bioelectrical communication among cells to directly specify the type of new organ to be created at a particular location within a vertebrate organism. Using genetic manipulation of membrane voltage in Xenopus (frog) embryos, biologists at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences were able to cause tadpoles …
Wired – MIT and the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) are in year one of a four-year research contract. They are showing off stunning results that are expected to produce the fastest, most agile robot ever. He’s called FastRunner, and he’ll zip along at 10 times the speed of a standard mobile …
Aviation Weeks lists 16 technologies in an Imagining the Future special. Orbitec is working on vortex and electric propulsion, heating vortex plasmas with microwaves [and] using water vapor as propellant. They are working on rocket engines whose thrust chambers are made entirely of electromagnetism, whose nozzles are magnetic lines of force and whose exhaust is …
Salk Institute researchers have built artificially enhanced bacteria capable of producing new kinds of synthetic chemicals. A strain of genetically enhanced bacteria developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies may pave the way for new synthetic drugs and new ways of manufacturing medicines and biofuels, according to a paper published September 18 …
A large population of king crabs in Palmer Deep on the west Antarctic Peninsula shelf and potential invasive impacts Lithodid crabs (and other skeleton-crushing predators) may have been excluded from cold Antarctic continental shelf waters for more than 14 million years. The west Antarctic Peninsula shelf is warming rapidly and has been hypothesized to be …
Jeff Bezos is CEO of Amazon and investor in Blue Origin Rocket and General Fusion. Blue Origin had a crash of a test rocket Three months ago, we successfully flew our second test vehicle in a short hop mission, and then last week we lost the vehicle during a developmental test at Mach 1.2 and …
Venture Beat covered the closing ceremonies of the third summer session of the Singularity University. Matternet is the most technologically ambitious. What is The Matternet? Autonomous, electric, aerial vehicles. In the first phase, it utilizes small-scale electric vehicles deployed with vertical take-off and landing capability, limited payload-bearing capacity and range. In the longer term, we …
Stem cell researchers in Hong Kong and the United States are trying to grow spare parts for the human heart that may be ready for tests on people within five years. (H/T Fightaging) Scientists have already made basic heart muscle from stem cells, but the Hong Kong-led team wants to refine it so it can …
Sales of smartphones will exceed 420 million devices in 2011, accounting for nearly 28 percent of the entire global handset market. With the introduction of more affordable “entry-level” smartphones, IMS Research predicts that annual sales will surpass one billion devices by the end of 2016, accounting for one of every two mobile handsets sold. Apple …
Luminescence from solutions of small semiconductor clusters (‘quantum dots’) of different sizes. By simply changing the size of the dots, we can change the colour of light they absorb or give out – so we can match the dots to the part of the solar spectrum we want to collect. (credit: Nanoco Technologies Ltd). Professor …
Structure and manipulation: A NV (nitrogen vacancy) centre in the diamond lattice including the electronic spin (red) and the nuclear spin (blue). b, Electron–nuclear spin level diagram for the NV centre in the vicinity of the avoided level crossing. UCSB Physicists were able to coax the fragile quantum information contained within a single electron in …