Just as human counts are incomplete, so are animal counts. But the first worldwide compilation of animal cases is a start at understanding the extent of human-to-animal transmission, scientists say.
The researchers wanted to create robots that could pick up and sort molecules within a designated space. This makes it possible for DNA molecules to serve as the building blocks for 3D nanostructures that self-assemble in a predetermined shape. Tiny DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics.
This enabled the researchers to design a nano-robot composed of three DNA origami structures. To help it maneuver within the designated space, the robot had a “leg” with a pair of feet. An “arm” with a “hand” allowed it to carry cargo, and a third component was added to tell the hand when a specific drop-off point had been reached so it would know to release the cargo. It allows researchers to carry out the entire design truly in 3D. Earlier design tools only allowed creation in 2D, forcing researchers to map their creations into 3D.
The software helps researchers design ways to take tiny strands of DNA and combine them into complex structures with parts like rotors and hinges that can move and complete a variety of tasks, including drug delivery. The robot will also enable researchers to more precisely determine important signaling pathways for a variety of biological and pathological processes that are stimulated at the cellular level during the application of force.
Holographic teleportation could solve the many issues that 2D virtual meetings have these days. Besides, you could simply beam into work while at home.
Researchers at the University of Western Ontario recently completed the world’s first-ever international holographic teleportation.
The coronavirus pandemic pushed the digitalization of many day-to-day functions of our lives. An important one among them was meeting people. Instead of having to commute to the office or travel across the oceans for a meeting, one could simply connect via an online video call and get the work done.
Even after two years, virtual meetings haven’t been able to completely replicate the ease of an in-person meeting, something that researchers are hoping holographic teleportation can solve. A combination of hologram and teleport, the technology is fondly called holoport and allows one to instantly beam the hologram of a person to a far-off location, much like the Star Trek universe.
In the past, the city relied on complaints to identify people not following the rules, but new digital water meters installed city wide means the city doesn’t have to wait for someone to call.
The meters send water data back wirelessly. Customers can now monitor their daily and hourly water use through an app, alerting them to high usage rates or leaks.
The city though is also able to see high use rates at times when it doesn’t add up. Rates of 300-gallons per hour on a Monday, indicated someone probably had the sprinklers on, triggering a notice.
“Pamela” is an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) developed as an entrepreneurial idea at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for sampling a variety of surface water particles, from microplastic to plankton to salmon lice. The USV is a joint effort by an interdisciplinary team—Andrea Faltynkova, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Biology, and Artur Zolich, a postdoc at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics.
Faltynkova studies microplastics in the ocean. Microplastics are bits of plastic smaller than 5 mm, which is roughly the size of the end of a pencil. While researchers know that microplastics can have negative effects on marine or freshwater organisms, there’s less known about how they affect human health. But studying microplastics is a challenge because of the nature of the substance itself, she says.
“Microplastics are so heterogeneous. It’s a very large, diverse group of particles. Not only that but they are very unevenly distributed. Microplastic is not like other dissolved pollutants that can be detected even in small quantities of water or soil. If you go and you take a liter from the sea, and there’s no plastic in it, can you conclude that there is no plastic in the sea?” she asked.
The challenge: The building and construction sector is responsible for a big chunk of global carbon emissions. A lot of those emissions come from the production of cement, which is the second most consumed material on the planet behind water.
Cement produces emissions in two main ways. One is through the chemical reactions that occur while sintering limestone and other materials to make “clinker,” a key component of cement. The other comes from using fossil fuels to heat up kilns to very high temperatures.
Cement production releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gasses, and particulate emissions into the atmosphere. But it results in the world’s most widely used building material: concrete. Cheap, familiar, and reliable, concrete will likely remain the construction industry’s preferred material for years to come.
A widely discussed application of social robots that has so far been rarely tested in real-world settings is their use as bartenders in cafés, cocktail bars and restaurants. While many roboticists have been trying to develop systems that can effectively prepare drinks and serve them, so far very few have focused on artificially reproducing the social aspect of bartending.
Researchers at University of Naples Federico II in Italy have recently developed a new interactive robotic system called BRILLO, which is specifically designed for bartending. In a recent paper published in UMAP ‘22 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, they introduced a new approach that could allow their robot to have personalized interactions with regular customers.
“The bartending scenario is an extremely challenging one to tackle using robots, yet it is also very interesting from a research point of view,” Prof. Silvia Rossi, one of the researchers who carried out the study and the scientific coordinator of the project, told TechXplore. “In fact, this scenario combines the complexity of efficiently manipulating objects to make drinks with the need to interact with the users. Interestingly, however, all current applications of robotics for bartending scenarios ignore the interaction part entirely.”
Do more pores in a sieve allow more liquid to flow through it? As material scientists have uncovered, this seemingly simple question may have an unexpected answer at the nanoscale—and it could have important implications in the development of water filtration, energy storage and hydrogen production.
Researchers from UNSW Sydney, University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), GANIL (France) and Toyota Technological Institute (Japan) experimenting with Graphene Oxide (GO) membranes have discovered the opposite can occur at the nanoscopic level. The research, published in Nano Letters, shows the chemical environment of the sieve and the surface tension of the liquid play a surprisingly important role in permeability.
The researchers observed that a density of pores doesn’t necessarily lead to higher water permeability—in other words, having more tiny holes doesn’t always allow water to flow through at the nanoscale. The study, supported by the European Union and Humboldt Research Foundation funding, shines new light on the mechanisms that govern water flow through GO membranes.
In a recent study published in the journal Nature titled “A time-resolved, multi-symbol molecular recorder via sequential genome editing,” a group of researchers from the University of…