Certainly one of the more intriguing things on display at this year's Paris Air Show, the Sherpa by Belgian startup Sagita aims to make the helicopter simpler, more efficient, more reliable and more affordable. The helicopter's rotors are directly driven by turbines which are themselves powered by hot air and fumes from the helicopter's power plant. Sagita claims that this makes... More »
Scientists at Aalto University and Utrecht University have created single atom contacts between gold and graphene nanoribbons. In their article published in Nature Communications, the research team demonstrates how to make electrical contacts with single chemical bonds to graphene nanoribbons. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. It is anticipated to be a... More »
Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology quantum mechanically couple atoms to glass fiber cables. Now, they have shown that their technique enables storage of quantum information over a sufficiently long period of time to realize global quantum networks based on optical fibers. Will emails be quantum encrypted in the future? Will we be able to teleport quantum states over large... More »
The Volvo Group already has extensive knowledge about electric drivetrains, but in order to become world leading in sustainable transport solutions, the Volvo Group must find even more solutions that allow the vehicles to operate on renewable energy. A great deal of this energy will be distributed as electricity. However, the challenge is about supplying the vehicle with electricity power when... More »
Unagi, the sea-going Japanese freshwater eel, harbors a fluorescent protein that could serve as the basis for a revolutionary new clinical test for bilirubin, a critical indicator of human liver function, hemolysis, and jaundice, according to researchers from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute. The discovery also sheds light on the mysterious and endangered Unagi that could contribute to its... More »
New technology under development at The Ohio State University is paving the way for low-cost electronic devices that work in direct contact with living tissue inside the body. The first planned use of the technology is a sensor that will detect the very early stages of organ transplant rejection. Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at Ohio State, explained... More »
In findings that could help overcome a major technological hurdle in the road toward smaller and more powerful electronics, an international research team involving University of Michigan engineering researchers, has shown the unique ways in which heat dissipates at the tiniest scales. A paper on the research is published in the June 13 edition of Nature. When a current passes through a material... More »
A team of researchers from the Nanoengineering Research Centre (CRNE) and the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPCn has found a way to make the manufacture of crystalline silicon materials faster and more affordable. The results of their research have recently been published in the online version of the landmark journal... More »
Small electrodes placed on or inside the brain allow patients to interact with computers or control robotic limbs simply by thinking about how to execute those actions. This technology could improve communication and daily life for a person who is paralyzed or has lost the ability to speak from a stroke or neurodegenerative disease. Now, University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that... More »
SolePower is a power-generating shoe insole for charging portable electronics like cell phones, music players, or GPS devices. Foot-powered, energy harvesting devices aren't anything new. What we're doing differently is building the device into a removable insole so it doesn't need to be embedded in a shoe. This means you can swap it between your favorite pair of sneakers and... More »
A phase 1 clinical trial for the first treatment to reset the immune system of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients showed the therapy was safe and dramatically reduced patients’ immune systems’ reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent, according to new Northwestern Medicine research. In MS, the immune system attacks and destroys myelin, the insulating layer that forms around nerves in... More »
Go to the train station to take the plane. Board on a capsule to reach the airport by rail, and then - without leaving your seat - fly to another city. The Clip-Air project, being developed at EPFL since 2009, envisions a modular aircraft consisting of a flying wing onto which it is possible to attach one, two or three capsules as required. Its concept allows us to take a glimpse at the air... More »
One of the exciting possibilities of metamaterials – engineered materials that exhibit properties not found in the natural world – is the potential to control light in ways never before possible. The novel optical properties of such materials could lead to a "perfect lens" that allows direct observation of an individual protein in a light microscope or, conversely,... More »