Future Of...
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Synthetic DNA can perform logic operations such as “NAND” and give out the answer by lighting up the cell with green fluorescent protein, or GFP. Ref. 1 Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in living cells.
How to turn living cells into computers
Next, they sent the genetic instruction to the biological lab Agilent Technologies in California. Agilent constructed pieced together DNA strands made of the bases, according to Goldman and Birney's instructions. Then, the lab shipped the scientists a tiny vial.
DNA Stores MLK's Speech, Shakespeare's Sonnets
First Bionic Eye Sees Light of Day in U.S.
After years of research, the first bionic eye has seen the light of day in the United States, giving hope to the blind around the world. Developed by Second Sight Medical Products, the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System has helped more than 60 people recover partial sight, with some experiencing better results than others. Consisting of 60 electrodes implanted in the retina and glasses fitted with a special mini camera, Argus II has already won the approval of European regulators. The US Food and Drug Administration is soon expected to follow suit, making this bionic eye the world's first to become widely available.University of Michigan News Service | Super-fine sound beam could one day be an invisible scalpel
Details Published on Dec 19, 2012 Contact Nicole Casal Moore ANN ARBOR—A carbon-nanotube-coated lens that converts light to sound can focus high-pressure sound waves to finer points than ever before. The University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed the new therapeutic ultrasound approach say it could lead to an invisible knife for noninvasive surgery.
An international team of engineers, physicists, and chemists have created the first fiber-optic solar cell. These fibers are thinner than human hair, flexible, and yet they produce electricity, just like a normal solar cell. The US military is already interested in weaving these threads into clothing, to provide a wearable power source for soldiers. In essence, the research team started with optical fibers made from glass — and then, using high-pressure chemical vapor deposition, injected n-, i-, and p-type silicon into the fiber, turning it into a solar cell.
The first flexible, fiber-optic solar cell that can be woven into clothes
Scientists have created ultra-thin electronic devices that can "melt away" in the body once their job is done. A new study, published in the journal Science , details how scientists have created a tiny, fully functional electronic device capable of vanishing within their environment, like in the body or in water, once they are no longer needed or useful. There are already implants that dispense drugs or provide electrical stimulation but they do not dissolve. Follow us The latest creation is an early step in a technology that may benefit not only medicine, like enabling the development of medical implants that don't need to be surgically removed or the risk of long-term side effects, but also electronic waste disposal.
Scientists Invent Vanishing Electronics That Dissolve in the Body : Science/Tech : Medical Daily
Researchers Create First Working Qubit Based on Single Atom in Silicon
By Will Soutter This is an artist’s impression of a phosphorus atom (red sphere surrounded by electron cloud, with arrow showing the spin direction) coupled to a silicon single-electron transistor. A burst of microwaves (blue) is used to ‘write’ information on the electron spin. (credit: Tony Melov) Qubit is the fundamental data unit of future quantum computers.
LG Chem, a member of the LG conglomerate/chaebol and one of the largest chemical companies in the world, has devised a cable-type lithium-ion battery that’s just a few millimeters in diameter, and is flexible enough to be tied in knots, worn as a bracelet, or woven into textiles. The underlying chemistry of the cable-type battery is the same as the lithium-ion battery in your smartphone or laptop — there’s an anode, a lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) cathode, an electrolyte — but instead of being laminated together in layers, they’re twisted into a hollow, flexible, spring-like helix. LG Chem’s battery starts with thin strands of copper wire, which are coated with a nickel-tin (Ni-Sn) alloy to create the anode.
LG produces the first flexible cable-type lithium-ion battery
THE hottest new material in town is light, strong and conducts electricity. What's more, it's been around a long, long time. Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) , which is produced by processing wood pulp, is being hailed as the latest wonder material.
Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material - tech - 23 August 2012
Technology :: News :: June 28, 2012 :: :: Email :: Print The lithium ion battery is applied in layers, each of which is an aerosol paint, leading to possible solar-energy applications By Evelyn Lamb AEROSOL ELECTRODES: Researchers Charudatta Galande, Pulickel Ajayan and Neelam Singh display a test device for their paintable batteries, a grid of nine ceramic tiles combined with a solar cell and an LED array. Image: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University Perhaps someday you'll need to go to the store because you ran out of cathode paint.
Cover Charge: New Spray-On Battery Could Convert Any Object into an Electricity Storage Device
Neuroengineers at MIT have created a implantable fuel cell that generates electricity from the glucose present in the cerebrospinal fluid that flows around your brain and spinal cord. In theory, this fuel cell could eventually drive low-power sensors and computers that decode your brain activity to interface with prosthetic limbs. The glucose-powered fuel cell is crafted out of silicon and platinum, using standard semiconductor fabrication processes. The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen.
MIT creates glucose fuel cell to power implanted brain-computer interfaces
This 10,000-rpm, no-pulse artificial heart doesn't resemble an organic heart--and might be all the better for it By Dan Baum Posted 02.29.2012 at 12:13 pm Artificial Heart Jack Thompson Meeko the calf stood nuzzling a pile of hay. He didn’t seem to have much appetite, and he looked a little bored. Every now and then, he glanced up, as though wondering why so many people with clipboards were standing around watching him.
No Pulse: How Doctors Reinvented The Human Heart
Neal Davaraj watches as undergraduate student Weilong Li works on a next step in their quest to create an entirely artificial cell. (PhysOrg.com) -- Chemists have taken an important step in making artificial life forms from scratch. Using a novel chemical reaction, they have created self-assembling cell membranes, the structural envelopes that contain and support the reactions required for life. Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and Itay Budin, a graduate student at Harvard University, report their success in the Journal of the American Chemical Society . “One of our long term, very ambitious goals is to try to make an artificial cell, a synthetic living unit from the bottom up – to make a living organism from non-living molecules that have never been through or touched a living organism,” Devaraj said.
Envelope for an artificial cell
New technique puts chemistry breakthroughs on the fast track
Scientists can now take that "a-ha" moment to go with a method Princeton University researchers developed — and successfully tested — to speed up the chances of an unexpected yet groundbreaking chemical discovery. The researchers report this month in the journal Science a technique to accomplish "accelerated serendipity" by using robotics to perform more than 1,000 chemical reactions a day with molecules never before combined. In a single day of trials, the Princeton researchers discovered a shortcut for producing pharmaceutical-like compounds that shaves weeks off the traditional process, the researchers report.June 23rd, 2005 | Filed under: Biotech , Future , Mapping , Scary , Science , Technology , Video | 50 Comments » Garret B. Stanley’s article , published in 1999 in the Journal of Neuroscience, outlines how activity of neurons can be decoded into a reconstructed image.