The EPFL scientists successfully tested their novel system with isolated bacteria, yeast, mouse and human cells.
Credit: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Could nanotechnology be the key to discovering extraterrestrial life? The scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) believe so.

A team at EPFL made up of Giovanni Dietler, Sandor Kasa and Giovanni Longo has developed an extremely sensitive nanosensor that can detect organisms as small as bacteria, yeast, and even cancer cells.

The scientits believe that this is a novel innovation that can be applied to the search for extraterrestrial life. Prior to this development, finding life on other plants has been dependent on chemical detection. The researchers have veered away from this idea and have decided to depend on detecting motion, seeing as it is a trait of life.

The nanosensor uses a nano-sized cantilever to detect motion. A cantilever – or simply a beam that is anchored only at one end, with the other end bearing a load – is typically used in the design of bridges and buildings, but this application takes the very same idea and implements it on a micrometer scale.

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Carbon nanotubes are exceptionally strong, but when you roll two that fit together, the engineers believe they’ve got a nanomotor.
Image: Nature

Ray Kurzweil – an author, computer scientists, inventor, futurist, and director of engineering at Google – has once been quoted saying, “In 25 years, a computer that’s the size fo your phone will be millions of times more powerful but will be the size of a blood cell.”

That prediction may be on its way to fruition with this new discovery from engineers in China and Australia.

The engineers have developed a double-walled carbon nanotube motor, which could be a huge player in future nanotechnology devices.

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A UW senior medical engineer explains how the smart helmet can aid in player safety by using sensor technology.
Credit: Andy Manis/Journal Sentinel

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are not just interested in improving technology and creating innovative design, but rather they are determined to make us rethink the way the physical and digital world interact.

These students have spent months in the University’s Internet of Things Lab, where they work to measure, monitor and control the physical world by heightening its interaction with the Internet.

The main innovation that the lab has developed is a football helmet that can detect injuries.

Cross-disciplinary teams of students have come together to develop a high-tech football helmet that has brain wave probes and a device that measures acceleration forces, which gives the ability to detect concussions on the field and directly communicate the information to medical staff.

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Vortices of bound states in the continuum. The left panel shows five bound states in the continuum in a photonic crystal slab as bright spots. The right panel shows the polarization vector field in the same region as the left panel, revealing five vortices at the locations of the bound states in the continuum. These vortices are characterized with topological charges +1 or -1.
Credit: MIT

Research out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has led to a new understanding of how to halt protons, which could lead to miniature particle accelerators and improved data transmission.

Accordingly, this new work could help explain some basic physical mechanisms.

Last year, researchers from MIT succeeded in creating a material that could trap light and stop it in its tracks. Now, the same batch of researchers have conducted more studies in order to develop a more fundamental understand of the process, which reveals that this behavior is connected to a wide range of seemingly unrelated phenomena.

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Experiments at SLAC have produced the first direct evidence that the pseudogap competes for electrons with superconductivity over a wide range of temperatures at lower hole concentrations (SC+PG). At lower temperatures and higher hole concentrations, superconductivity wins out.
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

A new study out of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory shows the “pseudogap” phase – a mysterious phase of matter – hoards electrons that might otherwise conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency.

Scientists state that this pseudogap phase competes with high-temperature superconductivity, which robs electrons that would otherwise pair up to carry current though a material.

The results of the study are a culmination of 20 years of research aimed to find out whether the pseudogap helps or hinders superconductivity.

The study shows that the pseudogap is one of the things that stands in the way of getting superconductors to work at higher temperatures for everyday uses – thus making electrical transmission, computing, and other areas less energy efficient.

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The Olympus BioScapes competition is held to celebrate the intersection of art and science.
Credit: Dr. Matthew S. Lehnert of Kent State University at Stark

We sometimes get so wrapped up in the technicality of science that we forget how beautiful it can be. Microscopy in particular provides us with the ability to see remarkable worlds that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.

The Olympus BioScapes competition is held every year to help celebrate the intersection of art and science. Scientists from around the world submit their photos and videos of microscopy work to be judged “based on the science they depict, their beauty or impact, and the technical expertise involved in capturing them.”

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While others have been able to control robotic limbs with their minds, the technique is new enough that dual-control has never been tried before.
Credit: Johns Hopkins

History was made when the first bilateral shoulder-level amputee was able to wear and simultaneously control two prosthetic limbs. The amazing part? He was able to operate the system by simply thinking about moving his limbs.

The groundbreaking event took place at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where they’ve been working to develop Modular Prosthetic Limbs as part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program over the past decade.

Les Baugh was the man who made the limbs come to life. Baugh lost both arms in an electrical accident 40 years ago and until now, did not think having two functional, mind-controlled prosthetic limbs was in the realm of possibility.

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Stanford engineers have created a four-layer prototype high-rise chip. The bottom and top layers are transistors, which are sandwiched between two layers of memory.
Credit: Max Shulaker, Stanford

Cheaper, smaller, and faster – those are the three words we’re constantly hearing when it comes to innovation and development in electronics. Now, Stanford University engineers are adding a fourth word to that mantra – taller.

The Stanford team is about to reveal how to build a high-rise chip that could vault the performance of the single-story logic and memory chips on today’s circuit cards – thereby preventing the wires connecting logic and memory from jamming.

This from Stanford University:

The Stanford approach would end these jams by building layers of logic atop layers of memory to create a tightly interconnected high-rise chip. Many thousands of nanoscale electronic “elevators” would move data between the layers much faster, using less electricity, than the bottleneck-prone wires connecting single-story logic and memory chips today.

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The skin is embedded with ultrathin, single crystalline silicone nanoribbon, which enables an array of sensors.
Credit: Kim et al./Nature Communications

We’ve talked about the advancements in prosthetic limbs in the past, but now a group of researchers out of Seoul National University are taking innovation in prosthetics one step further with this new “smart skin.”

Researchers from the Republic of Korea have developed a stretchy synthetic skin embedded with sensors, which will be able to help those with prosthetics regain their sense of touch.

This from “Stretchable silicon nanoribbon electronics for skin prosthesis” in the journal Nature Communications:

This collection of stretchable sensors and actuators facilitate highly localized mechanical and thermal skin-like perception in response to external stimuli, thus providing unique opportunities for emerging classes of prostheses and peripheral nervous system interface technologies.

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