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Blog – Page 17

Touch a hot plate and your hand flies back. While the response is almost instant, researchers are still working to better understand the molecular mechanisms behind these sensations of heat and pain.

Now, investigators at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo have uncovered how heat causes a critical receptor protein within cells to unfold and relay pain. This newfound activation mechanism could open up new therapeutic targets for treating pain and contribute to the development of needed alternatives to opioids.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

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For the first time, scientists have ‘photographed’ a rare plasma instability, where high-energy electron beams form into spaghetti-like filaments.

A new study, published in Physical Review Letters, outlines how a high-intensity infrared laser was used to generate filamentation instability—a phenomenon that affects applications in -based particle accelerators and fusion energy methods.

Plasma is a super-hot mixture of charged particles, such as ions and electrons, which can conduct electricity and are influenced by magnetic fields. Instabilities in plasmas can occur because the flow of particles in one direction or within a specific region can be different from the rest, causing some particles to group up into thin spaghetti-like filaments.

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We all encounter gels in daily life—from the soft, sticky substances you put in your hair to the jelly-like components in various foodstuffs. While human skin shares gel-like characteristics, it has unique qualities that are very hard to replicate. It combines high stiffness with flexibility, and it has remarkable self-healing capabilities, often healing completely within 24 hours of an injury.

Until now, artificial gels have either managed to replicate this high stiffness or natural skin’s self-healing properties, but not both. Now, a team of researchers from Aalto University and the University of Bayreuth are the first to develop a hydrogel with a unique structure that overcomes earlier limitations, opening the door to applications such as , , soft robotics sensors and artificial skin.

In the study, the researchers added exceptionally large and ultra-thin specific clay nanosheets to hydrogels, which are typically soft and squishy. The result is a highly ordered structure with densely entangled polymers between nanosheets, not only improving the mechanical properties of the hydrogel but also allowing the material to self-heal.

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A team of researchers has developed the first chip-scale titanium-doped sapphire laser—a breakthrough with applications ranging from atomic clocks to quantum computing and spectroscopic sensors.

The work was led by Hong Tang, the Llewellyn West Jones, Jr. Professor of Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics & Physics. The results are published in Nature Photonics.

When the titanium-doped laser was introduced in the 1980s, it was a major advance in the field of lasers. Critical to its success was the material used as its gain medium—that is, the material that amplifies the laser’s energy. Sapphire doped with titanium ions proved to be particularly powerful, providing a much wider laser emission bandwidth than conventional semiconductor lasers. The innovation led to fundamental discoveries and countless applications in physics, biology, and chemistry.

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Composite adhesives like epoxy resins are excellent tools for joining and filling materials including wood, metal, and concrete. But there’s one problem: once a composite sets, it’s there forever. Now there’s a better way. Researchers have developed a simple polymer that serves as a strong and stable filler that can later be dissolved. It works like a tangled ball of yarn that, when pulled, unravels into separate fibers.

A new study led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) outlines a way to engineer pseudo-bonds in materials. Instead of forming chemical bonds, which is what makes epoxies and other composites so tough, the chains of molecules entangle in a way that is fully reversible. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

“This is a brand new way of solidifying materials. We opened a new path to composites that doesn’t go with the traditional ways,” said Ting Xu, a faculty senior scientist at Berkeley Lab and one of the lead authors for the study.

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Imagine that a robot is helping you clean the dishes. You ask it to grab a soapy bowl out of the sink, but its gripper slightly misses the mark.

Using a new framework developed by MIT and NVIDIA researchers, you could correct that robot’s behavior with simple interactions. The method would allow you to point to the bowl or trace a trajectory to it on a screen, or simply give the robot’s arm a nudge in the right direction.

The work has been published on the pre-print server arXiv.

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Optoelectronics are promising devices that combine optical components, which operate leveraging light, with electronics, which leverage electrical current. Optoelectronic systems could transmit data faster than conventional electronics, thus opening new possibilities for the development of high-speed communication technology.

Despite their potential, the deployment of optoelectronics has so far been limited, in part due to reported difficulties in synchronizing optically generated signals with those of traditional electronic clocks. These signals are difficult to synchronize as optical and electronic components typically operate at different frequencies.

The frequencies of optical signals (i.e., generally hundreds of gigahertz) are generally significantly higher than those of , which range from megahertz to a few gigahertz. This mismatch in frequencies makes aligning the frequencies of the two types of components challenging, which in turn adversely impacts the reliability and efficiency of optoelectronics.

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It is estimated that about 80 million people worldwide live with a tremor. For example, those who live with Parkinson’s disease. The involuntary periodic movements sometimes strongly affect how patients are able to perform daily activities, such as drinking from a glass or writing.

Wearable soft robotic devices offer a potential solution to suppress such tremors. However, existing prototypes are not yet sophisticated enough to provide a real remedy.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), the University of Tübingen, and the University of Stuttgart under the Bionic Intelligence Tübingen Stuttgart (BITS) collaboration want to change this. The team equipped a biorobotic arm with two strands of strapped along the forearm.

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Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a pioneering prosthetic hand that can grip plush toys, water bottles, and other everyday objects like a human, carefully conforming and adjusting its grasp to avoid damaging or mishandling whatever it holds.

The system’s hybrid design is a first for robotic hands, which have typically been too rigid or too soft to replicate a human’s touch when handling objects of varying textures and materials. The innovation offers a promising solution for people with hand loss and could improve how robotic arms interact with their environment.

Details about the device appear in Science Advances.

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An international team of scientists developed augmented reality glasses with technology to receive images beamed from a projector, to resolve some of the existing limitations of such glasses, such as their weight and bulk. The team’s research is being presented at the IEEE VR conference in Saint-Malo, France, in March 2025.

Augmented reality (AR) technology, which overlays and virtual objects on an image of the real world viewed through a device’s viewfinder or , has gained traction in recent years with popular gaming apps like Pokémon Go, and real-world applications in areas including education, manufacturing, retail and health care. But the adoption of wearable AR devices has lagged over time due to their heft associated with batteries and electronic components.

AR glasses, in particular, have the potential to transform a user’s physical environment by integrating virtual elements. Despite many advances in hardware technology over the years, AR glasses remain heavy and awkward and still lack adequate computational power, battery life and brightness for optimal user experience.

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