A team of Yokohama City University biologists has successfully created a tiny liver that functions as efficiently as a human one, NHK reported on Thursday.
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David Hanson’s best work yet.
They are getting really close to being passable for human. Now, it’s just a question of when they will stick a robot like ATLAS inside of something like this so it can walk around, talk, and look like a person. That will happen around 2020’ish..
Meet Sophia. Hanson Robotics human-like robot that may embody the androids of our future.
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Airless tires.
#Airless_tires are the next generation of tires waiting to take over the world. Recently, #Hankook_iFlex_tire underwent a series of high speed tests and that has helped us take a step closer to a future where tires without air would become a reality. It was company’s fifth attempt at launching #airless_tires into the market. Why is the company trying to do so and that too this religiously? Because of the multiple benefits that this gadget brings in comparison to the traditional tires.
#Hankook’s tire is far more energy efficient and can be recycled as well. The material that has been used by Hankook allows the company to reduce the production steps into half as compared to a conventional tire.
Another amazing female pioneer in STEM and she was a NASA chief astronomer to boot!
A former chief astronomer at NASA will discuss the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to black holes during a lecture on Thursday, March 24.
It’s the opening of the 19th Annual Dick Smyser Community Lecture Series.
It will feature Nancy Grace Roman, former chief of the NASA Astronomy and Relativity Programs in the Office of Space Science.
Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed a “cyborg heart patch” for replacing injured cardiac tissue. There has been considerable research on creating scaffolds seeded with cardiac cells, but simply delivering a bunch of cells in a neat package produces underwhelming results. The new patch developed at TAU integrates electronics alongside the cellular scaffold to both monitor and influence the activity of the cells.
The device can record intercellular electrical activity and deliver pulses to make the cardiomyocytes contract to a defined beat. Additionally, the researchers demonstrated that the electrodes within the patch can be covered with drugs to provide controlled release of medication right to the nearby heart cells.
This is certainly an impressive achievement that may herald a truly therapeutic approach for treating cardiac infarcts and other conditions of the heart.
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March 16th, 2016 
Editors Nanomedicine
Biologically powered robots may one day be used to perform surgical procedures, deliver drugs, and maybe to even make humanoid overlords for us mortals. A big step toward that was taken by researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who used light-activated muscle cells as the power source to make tiny bio-bots.
The optogenetic technique published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences relies on genetically engineered mouse muscle cells that were made to contract in response to blue light. Rings of these cells were placed around a 3D printed flexible rods of different lengths between two and seven millimeters. When light was illuminated over the mechanism, the biobots contracted and walked in a certain direction. Various lengths and configurations were tried to achieve the best walking results. Moreover, the researchers were able to change the direction of the walking bio-bot.
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Even if we don’t create a true AI for a thousand years, these algorithms, pared with our exponentially increasing computing power, could have much of the same effect on our civilization as the more traditional, AI-centric type Singularity. Very, very soon.
Replacing inefficient experimentation, UConn researchers have used machine learning to systematically scan millions of theoretical compounds for qualities that would make better materials for solar cells, fibers, and computer chips.
Led by UConn materials scientist Ramamurthy ‘Rampi’ Ramprasad, the researchers set out to determine which polymer atomic configurations make a given polymer a good electrical conductor or insulator, for example.
“There is a political meaning and objective to this mission: working together beyond national borders, beyond crises on Earth”, he told Bloomberg, adding, “We use a Russian launcher, with American contribution and it’s a European mission”.
The ESA’s ExoMars 2016 mission — carrying two Electra UHF, or ultra- high frequency, radios — launched from Kazakhstan and is expected to arrive at Mars in seven months.
This is a series of missions that’s trying to address one of the fundamental questions in science: is there life anywhere else besides the Earth? ExoMars is a two-phase mission, with the second phase to be launched in 2018.
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