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Aug 2, 2014

A transistor material intended to replace silicon by 2024

Posted by in categories: engineering, materials

Kuzweil AI

USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers have developed a flexible, transparent, energy-efficient, lower-cost hybrid design that could replace silicon as the traditional transistor material used in electronic chips.

The new design, described in a paper recently published in Nature Communications, combines carbon nanotube thin-film transistors with thin-film transistors comprised of indium, gallium and zinc oxide (IGZO).

Electrical engineering professor Dr. Chongwu Zhou and USC Viterbi graduate students Haitian Chen, Yu Cao, and Jialu Zhang developed this energy-efficient circuit by integrating carbon nanotube (CNT) thin film transistors (TFT)

The inclusion of IGZO thin film transistors was necessary to provide power efficiency to increase battery life. If only carbon nanotubes had been used, the circuits would not be power-efficient.

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Aug 2, 2014

Citizen Scientists Track Bee Health and Shed Light on Colony Collapse Disorder

Posted by in categories: bees, environmental

Maureen Wise — Nation of Change
Article image

You’ve probably heard that bees—their honey, their awesome pollinating powers and their stingers—are on the decline. It’s a global problem that affects more than just the little yellow and black buzzers; it can and will interrupt the way we produce food if it continues. Bees pollinate most of the crops farmers grow worldwide, so without them, we don’t have food. Most scientists agree that pesticides, drought, habitat loss, pollution and other major environmental concerns are all contributing to colony collapse disorder. It’s a big deal and there are a lot of people working to keep bees buzzing.

A new project has set out to help understand the issue in individual colonies and bring the problem to the people called Open Source Beehives. This multi-continent partnership between Open Tech Collaborative and Fab Lab Barcelona proposes public participation through easily made backyard hives in conjunction with software that will track hive health.

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Aug 2, 2014

How a Solar-Powered Water Wheel Can Clean 50,000 Pounds of Trash Per Day

Posted by in categories: engineering, solar power, water

Brandon Baker — Nation of Change
Article image

A large wheel has been strolling the Baltimore Inner Harbor the past month, doing its best to clean the trash that has littered a city landmark and tourist attraction.

It’s called the Inner Harbor Water Wheel, and though it moves slow, it has the capability to collect 50,000 pounds of trash. The timing for John Kellett’s solar-powered creation is crucial—hands and crab nets simply can’t keep up with the growing amount of wrappers, cigarette butts, bottles and other debris carried from storm drains into the harbor.

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Aug 2, 2014

This Floating Platform Could Filter the Plastic from our Polluted Oceans

Posted by in categories: engineering, water

ArchDaily

“Plastic is an extremely durable material, taking 500 years to biodegrade, yet it’s designed to be used for an average of 5 minutes, and so it’s thrown away. Few know where this mass of junk will end up … in the oceans, killing and silently destroying everything, even us.”

Cristian Ehrmantraut has developed a prototype for a floating platform that filters the ocean and absorbs plastic. Located 4 km from the coast of , close to the center of the mega-vortex of plastic located in the South Pacific, the tetrahedral platform performs a kind of dialysis, allowing the natural environment to be recovered as well as energy and food to be produced.

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Aug 2, 2014

What Else Could Smart Contact Lenses Do?

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, bionic, biotech/medical, cyborgs

By Suzanne Jacobs — MIT Technology Review

Last week Google and Novartis announced that they’re teaming up to develop contact lenses that monitor glucose levels and automatically adjust their focus. But these could be just the start of a clever new product category. From cancer detection and drug delivery to reality augmentation and night vision, our eyes offer unique opportunities for both health monitoring and enhancement.

“Now is the time to put a little computer and a lot of miniaturized technologies in the contact lens,” says Franck Leveiller, head of research and development in the Novartis eye care division.

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Aug 2, 2014

Robot Olympics Planned for 2020 Powered by Japan’s ‘Robot Revolution’

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Written By: — Singularity Hub
robot-ping-pong-olympics 1
Japan likes robots. And while some Americans raised on a confusing sci-fi diet of Star Wars, Terminator, and iRobot are perhaps a little wary of advanced AI and robotics—Japan simply can’t wait for the “robot revolution.”

In a recent tour of Japanese robotics firms, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe declared his intention to create a government task force to study and propose strategies for tripling the size of Japan’s robotics industry to $24 billion.

And one more thing, Abe said, “In 2020, I would like to gather all of the world’s robots and aim to hold an Olympics where they compete in technical skills.”

While mere mortals compete in the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo—in a stadium somewhere nearby, the world’s most advanced robots may go head to head in events showcasing their considerable prowess (hopefully by then, right?).

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Aug 2, 2014

Brain cells can suppress appetite, study in mice shows

Posted by in category: neuroscience

— BBC News
Picture of children reaching for food
Scientists have discovered a central hub of brain cells that may put the brakes on a desire to eat, a study in mice shows.
And switching on these neurons can stop feeding immediately, according to the Nature Neurosciences report.
Researchers say the findings may one day contribute to therapies for obesity and anorexia.
Experts say this sheds light on the many complex nerve circuits involved in appetite control.

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Aug 2, 2014

Can Compounds in Young Blood Fix Aging?

Posted by in category: life extension

By Susan Young Rojahn — MIT Technology Review

Researchers and investors are already dreaming up ways to devise medical treatments based on the near-fantastical findings that the blood of young mice can rejuvenate older mice. In some cases, a single protein found circulating in the blood is sufficient to restore muscle tissue and improve brain activity.

The excitement is spurred by three newly published studies that showed that components of blood from young mice were able to repair damage and improve the function of the muscles and brains of older mice. Previous work from one of the research teams involved has also shown that a specific component of young blood can repair the damaged hearts of older mice.

Continue reading “Can Compounds in Young Blood Fix Aging?” »

Aug 2, 2014

The Game Theory of Life

Posted by in categories: DNA, genetics

By: Emily Singer — Quanta Magazine

Applying game theory to the behavior of genes provides a new view of natural selection.

In what appears to be the first study of its kind, computer scientists report that an algorithm discovered more than 50 years ago in game theory and now widely used in machine learning is mathematically identical to the equations used to describe the distribution of genes within a population of organisms. Researchers may be able to use the algorithm, which is surprisingly simple and powerful, to better understand how natural selection works and how populations maintain their genetic diversity.

By viewing evolution as a repeated game, in which individual players, in this case genes, try to find a strategy that creates the fittest population, researchers found that evolution values both diversity and fitness.

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Aug 2, 2014

Physicists Prove Surprising Rule of Threes

Posted by in category: quantum physics

By: Natalie Wolchover — Quanta Magazine

Efimov trimers.

More than 40 years after a Soviet nuclear physicist proposed an outlandish theory that trios of particles can arrange themselves in an infinite nesting-doll configuration, experimentalists have reported strong evidence that this bizarre state of matter is real.

In 1970, Vitaly Efimov was manipulating the equations of quantum mechanics in an attempt to calculate the behavior of sets of three particles, such as the protons and neutrons that populate atomic nuclei, when he discovered a law that pertained not only to nuclear ingredients but also, under the right conditions, to any trio of particles in nature.

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