Reinforced microfibers for soft hydrogels are a breakthrough for printed cartilage for 3D printed body parts

QUT biofabrication team has made a major breakthrough by 3D printing mechanically reinforced, tissue engineered constructs for the regeneration of body parts. In an article published in Nature Communications, the biomedical engineers outlined how they had reinforced soft hydrogels via a 3D printed scaffold. Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher, from QUT’s Institute of Health and Biomedical …

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DARPA N-ZERO “Asleep-Yet-Aware” Electronics Could lower power usage of Remote Wireless Sensors by 1000 times

DARPA wants to make sensors phenomenally more efficient in how they draw power when not actually sensing something of interest. The goal is to use less than 10 nanowatts (nW) during the sensor’s asleep-yet-aware phase—an energy drawdown roughly equivalent to the self-discharge (battery discharge during storage) of a typical watch battery, and at least 1,000 …

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NASA projects to boost oxygen recovery from 50% to over 75% efficient for better life support systems

NASA has selected four partners to develop game changing technologies with the potential to increase the oxygen recovery rate aboard human spacecraft to at least 75 percent while achieving high reliability. These oxygen recovery and recycling technologies will drive exploration and enable our human journey to Mars and beyond. “Improving oxygen recovery while achieving high …

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Comcast will offer 2 Gigabit internet service to about 18 million subscribers by end of 2015

Comcast announced it will offer residential multi-gigabit broadband service to more than 1.5 million customers in Atlanta starting next month. Gigabit Pro is a symmetrical, 2 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) service that will be delivered via a fiber-to-the-home solution. Service will be offered broadly across the Atlanta metro area and will be the fastest residential Internet speed …

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DARPA wants modular, specialized, cheaper and drop in upgradable swarm cloud of drones, missiles and mothership airplanes

DARPA’s System of Systems (SoS) Integration Technology and Experimentation (SoSITE) program aims to develop and demonstrate concepts for maintaining air superiority through novel SoS architectures–combinations of aircraft, weapons, sensors and mission systems–that distribute air warfare capabilities across a large number of interoperable manned and unmanned platforms. The vision is to integrate new technologies and airborne …

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General expectation that Tesla Motors non-car product will be home battery charging system

CEO Elon Musk’s mysterious tweet a teaser about a new non-car product offering from Tesla Motors that will be announced with great fanfare April 30. Major new Tesla product line — not a car — will be unveiled at our Hawthorne Design Studio on Thurs 8pm, April 30 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 30, 2015 …

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Low dose radiation is not harmful and the US will finally take about seven years to actually figure out the effects

After about 70 years of assuming that low dose radiation was harmful, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and National Academy of Sciences have been directed to work together to assess the current status of US and international research on low-dose radiation and to formulate a long-term research agenda under a bill approved by the …

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‘Direct writing’ of diamond patterns from graphite a potential technological leap

A new technique uses a pulsing laser to create synthetic nanodiamond films and patterns from graphite, with potential applications from biosensors to computer chips. “The biggest advantage is that you can selectively deposit nanodiamond on rigid surfaces without the high temperatures and pressures normally needed to produce synthetic diamond,” said Gary Cheng, an associate professor …

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Check out the new look and comment system for Nextbigfuture at the Mirrornbf

There is a new look for Nextbigfuture at a mirror site. (mirrornbf.blogspot.com) and a new SolidOpinion comment system. Please take a look and let us know if changes or improvements should be made. Timeline * Gather and implement community feedback about the mirror site with site redesign * Begin Disqus export * move redesign to …

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Carnival of Space 375

Carnival of Space 375 is up at BrownSpaceman Suspected Black Hole Unmasked as Ultraluminous Pulsar ‘Frankenstein’ Moon: Tidal Forces From Uranus May Have Contributed to Miranda’s Bizarre Appearance Nextbigfuture – Dana Andrews looks at a minimum transit speed of 2 percent of the speed of light (fifty years per light year) for an interstellar generation …

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Graphene chips are close to significant commercialization

A research team from the University of Texas and German nanotechnology company Aixtron have worked out a way to make wafer-scale graphene measuring between 100 and 300mm. The research offers the prospect of integrating carbon-based graphene, which is just one atom thick, with silicon on a semi-industrial scale. Until now, graphene has proved difficult to …

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