With a small zap of electricity, biomedical engineers at Michigan Technological University take an underwater smart glue prototype from sticky to not in seven seconds.
Turning adhesion on and off is what makes a glue smart. It’s one thing to do this in the open air and quite another under water. Inspired by nature, catechols are synthetic compounds that mimic the wet-but-still-sticky proteins secreted by mussels and offer promise for smart adhesives that work in water. The technology could help with underwater glue, wound dressings, prosthetic attachments or even making car parts and in other manufacturing.
Bruce Lee, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan Tech, is a part of the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) and showed how to use pH to make smart underwater adhesives. Along with doctoral researcher Saleh Akram Bhuiyan, Lee developed a new method using an electrical current to turn off the adhesion of a catechol-containing material.
Many of you know the sad news that theoretical physicist & mathematician Freeman Dyson has passed away, so in celebration of his life and achievements, Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute) discusses Freeman Dyson’s influence on himself and others — How might advanced alien civilizations develop (and indeed perhaps our own)? We discuss strategies for harvesting energy — star engulfing Dyson Spheres or Swarms, black hole swallowing tungsten dyson super-swarms and other galactic megastructures, we also discuss Kardashev scale civilizations (Kardashev was another great mind who we lost recently), reversible computing, birthing ideal universes to live in, Meinong’s jungle, ‘eschatological engineering’, the aestivation hypothesis, and how all this may inform strategies for thinking about the Fermi Paradox and what this might suggest about the likelihood of our civilization avoiding oblivion. though Anders is more optimistic than some about our chances of survival…
Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford) is a seminal transhumanist thinker from way back who has contributed a vast amount of mind blowing material to futurology & philosophy in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Sandberg
Happy Future Day (march 1st) : http://future-day.org
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The Dutch shipbuilder Royal Huisman used an engineering process developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for space missions in the design of the superyacht Sea Eagle II — expected to become the largest aluminum sailing yacht in the world upon delivery to its owner this Spring.
Engineering design used by the European Space Agency was used to create the largest aluminum superyacht.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering announced today that they have introduced a new type of robotic finger with a sense of touch. Their finger can localize touch with very high precision.
Researchers have converted human stem cells into insulin-producing cells and demonstrated in mice infused with such cells that blood sugar levels can be controlled and diabetes functionally cured for nine months.
The findings, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are published online Feb. 24 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
“These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood — levels that could be fatal for a person — and when we gave the mice the insulin-secreting cells, within two weeks their blood glucose levels had returned to normal and stayed that way for many months,” said principal investigator Jeffrey R. Millman, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine and of biomedical engineering at Washington University.
QuTech has resolved a major issue on the road toward a working large-scale quantum computer. QuTech, a collaboration of TU Delft and TNO, and Intel have designed and fabricated an integrated circuit that can controlling qubits at extremely low temperatures. This paves the way for the crucial integration of qubits and their controlling electronics in the same chip. The scientists have presented their research during the ISSCC Conference in San Francisco.
Quantum computers
“This result brings us closer to a large-scale quantum computer which can solve problems that are intractable by even the most powerful supercomputers. Solutions to those problems can make a strong impact on everyday life, for instance in the fields of medicine and energy,” said team lead Fabio Sebastiano from QuTech and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.
Labs around the world are racing to develop new computing and sensing devices that operate on the principles of quantum mechanics and could offer dramatic advantages over their classical counterparts. But these technologies still face several challenges, and one of the most significant is how to deal with “noise”—random fluctuations that can eradicate the data stored in such devices.
A new approach developed by researchers at MIT could provide a significant step forward in quantum error correction. The method involves fine-tuning the system to address the kinds of noise that are the most likely, rather than casting a broad net to try to catch all possible sources of disturbance.
The analysis is described in the journal Physical Review Letters, in a paper by MIT graduate student David Layden, postdoc Mo Chen, and professor of nuclear science and engineering Paola Cappellaro.
Fuel cells turn chemicals into electricity. Now, a U of T Engineering team has adapted technology from fuel cells to do the reverse: harness electricity to make valuable chemicals from waste carbon (CO2).
“For decades, talented researchers have been developing systems that convert electricity into hydrogen and back again,” says Professor Ted Sargent (ECE), one of the senior authors of a paper published today in Science. “Our innovation builds on that legacy, but by using carbon-based molecules, we can plug directly into existing hydrocarbon infrastructure.”
In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen come together on the surface of a catalyst. The chemical reaction releases electrons, which are captured by specialized materials within the fuel cell and pumped into a circuit.
This handheld 3D printer deposits layers of skin tissue, and could one day help to heal deep wounds. Instead of waiting for skin patches to grow in a Petri dish, you apply it directly.
A team of Canadian scientists has successfully applied skin tissue to burn wounds using a handheld 3D printer. This technology may become a game-changer in the way severe burn victims are treated.
The handheld skin 3D printer, the work of scientists at the University of Toronto Engineering and Sunnybrook Hospital, was first shown back in 2018. Since then it has undergone a major redesign that improves upon the initial model’s functionality.
