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Sep 17, 2015
Making 3-D objects disappear: Researchers create ultrathin invisibility cloak
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: engineering, materials, nanotechnology
Invisibility cloaks are a staple of science fiction and fantasy, from Star Trek to Harry Potter, but don’t exist in real life, or do they? Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have devised an ultra-thin invisibility “skin” cloak that can conform to the shape of an object and conceal it from detection with visible light. Although this cloak is only microscopic in size, the principles behind the technology should enable it to be scaled-up to conceal macroscopic items as well.
Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the Berkeley researchers fashioned a “skin cloak” barely 80 nanometers in thickness, that was wrapped around a three-dimensional object about the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with multiple bumps and dents. The surface of the skin cloak was meta-engineered to reroute reflected light waves so that the object was rendered invisible to optical detection when the cloak is activated.
“This is the first time a 3D object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from visible light,” said Xiang Zhang, director of Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a world authority on metamaterials — artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature. “Our ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat. It is easy to design and implement, and is potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects.”
Sep 17, 2015
A fast cell sorter shrinks to cell phone size
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, mobile phones, neuroscience
“The current benchtop cell sorters are too expensive, too un-safe, and too high-maintenance. More importantly, they have very low biocompatibility. The cell-sorting process can reduce cell viability and functions by 30–99 percent for many fragile or sensitive cells such as neurons, stem cells, liver cells and sperm cells. We are developing an acoustic cell sorter that has the potential to address all these problems.”
Researchers describe an acoustic cell sorter capable of the kind of high sorting throughput necessary to compete with commercial fluorescence activated cell sorters.
I’ve waited YEARS for someone to finally bring this to the big or little) screen, and from everything I’ve seen so far, it looks to be one hell of an awesome miniseries. Fantastic cast, too. If you’ve never read the (quite short) novel it’s based in, by Arthur C. Clarke, do so immediately. It premiers on the SyFy channel this December.
You won’t be disappointed.
Sep 17, 2015
Japan’s Friendly Robot Is Getting a Snarky Attitude Adjustment For Americans
Posted by Bryan Gatton in category: robotics/AI
The Japanese humanoid robot Pepper, which sold out of its first 1,000 units in one minute in Japan this June, will get a personality makeover for the US market: it’ll go from cute and bubbly to snarky and sarcastic, MIT Technology Review reports.
Editor Will Knight met a Pepper unit in Boston this week, and reported back some very distinct changes in the robot’s personality designed to make it more appealing to Americans: High fives instead of bows; smartass swipes instead of songs. In the MIT report, Knight said he asked an Americanized Pepper if it’s like Terminator, to which it responded: “Do I really have to answer that?”
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Sep 16, 2015
Alzheimer’s: One Disease? « Michael Fossel
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
Another excellent blog by Dr Michael fossel PhD, md. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other related diseases could be treated potentially using telomerase.
Date posted: 25.08.2015.
Continue reading “Alzheimer’s: One Disease? « Michael Fossel” »
Sep 16, 2015
Your Body is Younger Than You Think
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: neuroscience
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/your-body-is-young…think.html
Edit: some have commented asking about neurons. Please see the article linked above and the following articles for more information. We probably should have tried to clarify the unknowns more in the image itself. Apologies.
Jolene
Sep 16, 2015
10 Crazy Discoveries That Science Can’t Explain
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: business, media & arts
Scientific discoveries that remain unexplained… (HD — 03/2015)
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