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Korean researchers have created a very realistic and capable robot hand that looks very promising. It is strong (34N of grip strength) and reasonably lightweight (1.1 kg), too. There are several videos of the hand in action, of which you can see two of them below including one where the hand uses scissors to cut some paper. You can also read the full paper for details.

Like many good projects, this one started with requirements. The team surveyed existing hands noting the positives and negatives of each design. They then listed the attributes they wanted in a new design.

The 22 cm hand has 4 fingers, a thumb, and sensors on each fingertip. Overall, there are 20 joints resulting in 15 degrees of freedom so the hand is very dexterous. The construction looks taxing with eccentric motors, ball screws, and linkages. However, the hand is self-contained and ready to mount on any robot arm.

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A team of researchers from Europe and Asia claim to have quantum entangled frozen tardigrades, microscopic animals that are extremely hardy and can withstand practically any conditions or abuse.

According to a new controversial preprint, the researchers managed the feat by placing frozen tardigrades between two capacitor plates of a superconductor circuit to form a qubit, the quantum equivalent of a bit.

Upon contact, they say, the tardigrade changed the qubit’s frequency.

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AI machine learning presents a roadmap to define new materials for any need, with implications in green energy and waste reduction.

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the vast compositional and structural tunability nanochemistry enables, serial experimental approaches to identify new materials impose insurmountable limits on discovery.

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The long-acting injectable HIV medications cabotegravir and rilpivirine, which are administered by a healthcare provider once a month, can be successfully implemented in health practises in the United States, according to a study presented at the 11th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2021). What’s more, providers and people with HIV encountered few barriers to giving or receiving the injections despite changes in health services during COVID-19.

“Over the course of a year, even with the added challenges of COVID-19, the barriers that providers and patients thought they would face turned out not to be as concerning as originally thought,” Dr Maggie Czarnogorski of ViiV Healthcare said in a press release.

In October 2020, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the injectable combination regimen, which consists of an extended-release formulation of ViiV Healthcare’s new integrase inhibitor cabotegravir (Vocabria) plus an injectable version of Janssen’s non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor rilpivirine (Rekambys, sold in pill form as Edurant). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the combination, sold in North America as Cabenuva, in January 2021.

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Summary: Neurons in the primary olfactory cortex play a role in encoding spatial maps, a new study reports.

Source: champalimaud centre for the unknown.

Smell has the power to transport us across time and space. It could be the sweet fragrance of jasmine, or the musty scent of algae. Suddenly, you are back at your childhood home, or under the burning sun of a distant shore.

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Summary: A new computational method sheds light on the intricacies of brain structure and function.

Source: Baylor College of Medicine.

To better appreciate how a complex organ such as the brain functions, scientists strive to accurately understand both its detailed cellular architecture and the intercellular communications taking place within it.

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A Rice University-led study is forcing physicists to rethink superconductivity in uranium ditelluride, an A-list material in the worldwide race to create fault-tolerant quantum computers.

Uranium ditelluride crystals are believed to host a rare “spin-triplet” form of superconductivity, but puzzling experimental results published this week in Nature have upended the leading explanation of how the could arise in the material. Neutron-scattering experiments by physicists from Rice, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of California, San Diego and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University revealed telltale signs of antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations that were coupled to superconductivity in uranium ditelluride.

Spin-triplet superconductivity has not been observed in a solid-state material, but physicists have long suspected it arises from an ordered state that is ferromagnetic. The race to find spin-triplet materials has heated up in recent years due to their potential for hosting elusive quasiparticles called Majorana fermions that could be used to make error-free quantum computers.

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Tsinghua Unigroup Co, one of China’s biggest semiconductor giants and a key server supplier to the Chinese government entities is burdened with debt default.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) yet again finds itself in the middle of a battle with the private sector and tech entrepreneurs. This time over the all-important semiconductors. Tsinghua Unigroup Co., one of China’s biggest semiconductor giants and a key server supplier to the Chinese government entities, is burdened with debt defaults and undergoing rescue process.

Without naming the CCP, Zhao is promising to stand up to Communist Party leadership. In Xi’s enterprise-hating China, a private entity doesn’t simply rise out of nowhere and take over a leading semiconductor giant. And if any entity can dare to do that, it must be having the informal backing of the Communist Party.

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