With modular components and an easy-to-use 3D interface, this interactive design pipeline enables anyone to create their own customized robotic hand. MIT researchers have created an interactive design pipeline that streamlines and simplifies the process of crafting a customized robotic hand with tactile sensors. Typically, a robotics expert may spend months manually designing a custom manipulator, largely through trial-and-error. Each iteration could require new parts that must be designed and tested from scratch. By contrast, this new pipeline doesn’t require…
Study shows unexpected negative impact by CO2 on important plankton group. While calcifying organisms like oysters and corals have difficulty forming their shells and skeletons in more acidic seawater, diatoms have been considered less susceptible to the effects of ocean acidification – a chemical change triggered by the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2). The globally widespread tiny diatoms use silica, a compound of silicon, oxygen and hydrogen, as a building material for their shells. That diatoms are nevertheless under threat…
Smaller than a flea, robot can walk, bend, twist, turn and jump. Northwestern University engineers have developed the smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot — and it comes in the form of a tiny, adorable peekytoe crab. Just a half-millimeter wide, the tiny crabs can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump. The researchers also developed millimeter-sized robots resembling inchworms, crickets and beetles. Although the research is exploratory at this point, the researchers believe their technology might bring the field closer…
Carnegie Mellon Roboticists go off road to compile dataset likely largest for off-road environments. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University took an all-terrain vehicle on wild rides through tall grass, loose gravel and mud to gather data about how the ATV interacted with a challenging, off-road environment. They drove the heavily instrumented ATV aggressively at speeds up to 30 miles an hour. They slid through turns, took it up and down hills, and even got it stuck in the mud —…
Giving off a comfortable glow, candles set the ambiance for a special dinner or just a quiet evening at home. However, some lighting alternatives, such as electronic candles, give off unwanted blue wavelengths that interfere with the body’s circadian rhythm. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Electronic Materials have fabricated an improved bendable organic LED that releases candlelight-like light for flexible lighting and smart displays that people can comfortably use at night. Previously, Jwo-Huei Jou and other researchers developed organic…
Smart devices are supposed to make our everyday lives easier. At the same time, however, they are a gateway for passive eavesdropping. To prevent possible surveillance of the movement profile within one’s home, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Cologne University of Applied Sciences have developed a novel system for protecting privacy in wireless communication. The method, based on the technology of intelligent reflective…
For the first time TU Graz’s Institute of Theoretical Computer Science and Intel Labs demonstrated experimentally that a large neural network can process sequences such as sentences while consuming four to sixteen times less energy while running on neuromorphic hardware than non-neuromorphic hardware. The new research based on Intel Labs’ Loihi neuromorphic research chip that draws on insights from neuroscience to create chips that function similar to those in the biological brain. The research was funded by The Human Brain…
Machine learning, meaning the ability to recognize important patterns in data sets and to generate solutions with the help of algorithms, is a research field of rapidly growing importance. In physics, chemistry and biology with complex molecular structures, classical machine learning is reaching its limits. In order to better understand and use molecular data, new models must be developed. This is what the DFG’s Priority Program “Use and Development of Machine Learning for Molecular Applications – Molecular Machine Learning” aims…
As robots increasingly join people on the factory floor, in warehouses and elsewhere on the job, dividing up who will do which tasks grows in complexity and importance. People are better suited for some tasks, robots for others. And in some cases, it is advantageous to spend time teaching a robot to do a task now and reap the benefits later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute (RI) have developed an algorithmic planner that helps delegate tasks to humans and robots….
A CSIC research team has revealed that this insect’s saliva contains enzymes able to set off polyethylene degradation in a short space of time. A team of CSIC researchers has discovered that wax worm saliva degrades plastic; a discovery with numerous applications for treating or recycling plastic waste. Back in 2017, the team discovered that this worm species (the lepidopteran Galleria mellonella) is able to break down plastic (polyethylene), and now they have discovered just how it does this: its…
A high-fidelity iToffoli gate … Berkeley Lab team demonstrates a three-qubit native quantum gate with high fidelity. High-fidelity quantum logic gates applied to quantum bits (qubits) are the basic building blocks of programmable quantum circuits. Researchers at the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) conducted the first experimental demonstration of a three-qubit high-fidelity iToffoli native gate in a superconducting quantum information processor and in a single step. Noisy intermediate-scale quantum processors typically support one- or…
Researchers from the group of Eva van Rooij used advanced sequencing technology to better understand the heart disease arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, in which heart muscle tissue is replaced by fat cells. Using explanted human hearts, they found regions in which heart muscle was actively degenerated and identified a new gene, ZBTB11, that drives heart muscle cell degradation. The results were published in Cardiovascular Research on 17 May 2022. Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a familial heart disease in which heart muscle tissue is replaced…
… protecting eyes from viral infections. The cornea – the transparent protective outer layer of the eye critical to helping us see – produces a delicate and limited immune response to fight infections without damaging our vision, according to a ground-breaking new study from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute). Published today in Cell Reports, the study has shown long-living memory T cells that patrol and fight viral infections are present in the cornea, upending current…
LMU scientists have shown that small aggregates function as temporary RNA repositories, which are regulated by neural activity. Cells constantly have to adapt the level of activity of certain genes to specific requirements. This applies particularly to neurons, where synapses have to be repeatedly re-formed, re-wired, and restructured. For these processes – without which learning and remembering, for example, would not be possible – messenger molecules (mRNAs) deliver protein blueprints to the right place at the right time. In regulating…
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have boosted the sensitivity of their atomic radio receiver a hundredfold by enclosing the small glass cylinder of cesium atoms inside what looks like custom copper “headphones.” The structure — a square overhead loop connecting two square panels — increases the incoming radio signal, or electric field, applied to the gaseous atoms in the flask (known as a vapor cell) between the panels. This enhancement enables the radio receiver to…
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for extracting hydrogen gas from liquid carriers which is faster, less expensive and more energy efficient than previous approaches. “Hydrogen is widely viewed as a sustainable energy source for transportation, but there are some technical obstacles that need to be overcome before it can be viewed as a practical alternative to existing technologies,” says Milad Abolhasani, corresponding author of a paper on the new technique and an associate professor…
Feedback
