“The combination of natural (leaves) and artificial (photovoltaic cell and electronic components), and the need to make these components communicate with each other, are complex engineering challenges that required us to join forces,” said Avner Rothschild, researcher at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, at Haifa, in Israel.
Again organic nature teaches technology.
A new study, inspired by water’s movement from roots to leaves in tall trees, shows that a certain kind of passive liquid flow, where liquids naturally move in response to surface atomic interactions instead of being driven by external forces like pumps, is remarkably strong. By virtually modeling the way atoms interact at a solid surface, College of Engineering and Computer Science researchers suggest that passive liquid flow could serve as a highly efficient coolant-delivery mechanism without the need for pumps. The results, published in Langmuir, also have implications for the development of new nanoscale technology.
I’m amazed no one has done this before, and there’s only one company doing it now. Microfabrica, based in Van Nuys, California, has perfected the technique of mass producing mechanical devices using the same electrodeposition technology used to make computer chips.
“We are the only high-volume production additive manufacturing platform in the market,” Microfabrica CEO Eric Miller tells me. “We use engineering grade metals to make commercially robust parts, and we’re focused on another end of the spectrum from where a lot of the 3D companies are focused, and that’s at the micro scale.”
The resulting devices are vanishingly small, and exquisitely made. How small? The company makes biopsy forceps less than a millimeter in diameter for a medical device company and timing mechanisms (i.e., clocks) that are less than half a centimeter across for a defense contractor, as well many other very small devices and precision parts.
South Korean-based company Rokit is a 3D printing manufacturer we’ve talked about on several occasions before. In February this year, they released Edison Invivo, a tissue engineering and bio-medical research 3D printer that uses a bio ink to produce cell structures in the form of organic tissue.
Now, as a constant innovator, Rokit is back with their latest and also the world first Multi-Use Hybrid Bio 3D printer — Rokit Invivo. What’s exciting is that this awesome bioprinter will be revealed very soon on 30th, September in the Digical Show held by London-based iMakr.
Electromagnetic waves created on a layer of organic molecules could provide the perfect on-chip light source for future quantum communication systems.
A team of scientists including researchers at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, has captured tiny flashes of light from an ultrathin layer of organic molecules sandwiched between two electrodes that could replace lasers and LEDs as signal sources for future miniature, ultrafast quantum computing and light-based communication systems.
To investigate electromagnetic waves called plasmons, which skim along the interface between two materials, Nikodem Tomczak from the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and colleagues collaborated with Christian A. Nijhuis from the National University of Singapore to construct a junction consisting of a layer of thiol molecules on a metal electrode and liquid gallium-indium alloy as a top electrode.
Ray Kurzweil is a futurist, a director of engineering at Google and a co-founder of the Singularity University think tank at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. He is a nonfiction author and creator of several inventions.
Kurzweil met with the Silicon Valley Business Journal to discuss how technology’s exponential progress is rapidly reshaping our future through seismic shifts in information technology and computing power, energy, nanotechnology, robotics, health and longevity.
Micro-manufacturing is perfecting quality control.
Biology is the world’s greatest manufacturing platform, according to MIT spinout Ginkgo Bioworks.
The synthetic-biology startup is re-engineering yeast to act as tiny organic “factories” that produce chemicals for the flavor, fragrance, and food industries, with aims of making products more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently than traditional methods.
The SENS Research Foundation has finally published this anticipated and important paper on mitochondrial gene transfer which has ramifications for mitochondrial diseases and more importantly one of the processes of aging. It is great to see that finally after a decade of criticism Aubrey de Grey has proven his approach is viable.
We explore the possibility of re-engineering mitochondrial genes and expressing them from the nucleus as an approach to rescue defects arising from mitochondrial DNA mutations. We have used a patient cybrid cell line with a single point mutation in the overlap region of the ATP8 and ATP6 genes of the human mitochondrial genome. These cells are null for the ATP8 protein, have significantly lowered ATP6 protein levels and no Complex V function. Nuclear expression of only the ATP8 gene with the ATP5G1 mitochondrial targeting sequence appended restored viability on Krebs cycle substrates and ATP synthesis capabilities but, failed to restore ATP hydrolysis and was insensitive to various inhibitors of oxidative phosphorylation. Co-expressing both ATP8 and ATP6 genes under similar conditions resulted in stable protein expression leading to successful integration into Complex V of the oxidative phosphorylation machinery. Tests for ATP hydrolysis / synthesis, oxygen consumption, glycolytic metabolism and viability all indicate a significant functional rescue of the mutant phenotype (including re-assembly of Complex V) following stable co-expression of ATP8 and ATP6. Thus, we report the stable allotopic expression, import and function of two mitochondria encoded genes, ATP8 and ATP6, resulting in simultaneous rescue of the loss of both mitochondrial proteins.
35 percent efficiency.
The cost of solar power is beginning to reach price parity with cheaper fossil fuel-based electricity in many parts of the world, yet the clean energy source still accounts for slightly more than 1% of the worlds electricity mix.
To boost global solar power generation, researchers must overcome some of the technological limitations that are preventing solar power from scaling up even further, which includes the inability to develop very high-efficiency solar cells solar cells capable of converting a significant amount of sunlight into usable electrical energy at very low costs.
Continue reading “New solar cell is more efficient, costs less than its counterparts” »
It’s often said that we know more about the Moon than our own oceans. But what about the oceans of other moons?
Robotic-engineering company German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) has been working on the EurEx (Europa Explorer) project, which includes conceptual plans for a robotic system capable of exploring Europa’s icy subterranean oceans.
