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Jul 2, 2021

Molecular machines talk to living cells for the first time

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, nanotechnology

For the first time, an artificial molecular motor has been created that can ‘talk’ to living cells – by gently pulling their surface with enough physical force to elicit a biochemical response. The approach could help scientists decode the language that cells use to communicate with each other in tissues.

‘There is a mechanical language in the form of physical forces applied by the cells themselves, and we want to understand what information is communicated and what the consequences are,’ explains Aránzazu del Campo, who led the study at the Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Germany. ‘Ultimately, we want to be able to provide signals to cells and guide their function when they are not able to do that by themselves in disease cases.’

Usually, studying how cells communicate by sensing mechanical stimuli and producing biochemical responses requires prodding them with pipettes or the tip of an atomic force microscope. However, this doesn’t work at the more complex tissue level.

Jul 2, 2021

Dr. Maria Millan, MD — President and CEO — California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

US$8.5 Billion In Funding — 150+ Projects


Dr. Maria Millan, MD, is the President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM — https://www.cirm.ca.gov/), an organization that was created in 2004 when voters initially approved a state Proposition which allocated US$3 billion to fund this fascinating area of medicine, and which recently received an additional US$5.5 billion in renewed funding.

Continue reading “Dr. Maria Millan, MD — President and CEO — California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)” »

Jul 2, 2021

New membrane enables us to harvest ‘osmotic’ energy from water

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

The researchers were inspired by bone and cartilage when designing the new membrane.


You’ve likely heard of solar energy, but what is osmotic energy?

Jul 2, 2021

Time’s Arrow Traced to Quantum Source

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology, quantum physics

A new theory explains the seemingly irreversible arrow of time while yielding insights into entropy, quantum computers, black holes, and the past-future divide.

Jul 2, 2021

Breakthrough CRISPR Gene Therapy Could Be a ‘One and Done’ Injection

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

In an early trial, patients received a single infusion of a CRISPR-based therapy to knock out the mutated gene responsible for their disease.

Jul 2, 2021

Zhurong rover footage and more: Understand the world through 9 images

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Zhurong Mars rover — video, audio, and science images.


China’s Zhurong Mars rover sent back its first video and audio from the Red Planet this week as scientists made strides in research on brains and artificial organs.

Jul 2, 2021

OpenAI Launches GitHub Copilot: AI Focused On Code Generation. Should We Be Worried Now?

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Overview of what GitHub Copilot is, what it does, how it works, and whether programmers should be worried about their jobs now…

Jul 2, 2021

Skin in the game: Transformative approach uses the human body to recharge smartwatches

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, wearables

As smart watches are increasingly able to monitor the vital signs of health, including what’s going on when we sleep, a problem has emerged: Those wearable, wireless devices are often disconnected from our body overnight, being charged at the bedside.

“Quality of sleep and its patterns contain a lot of important information about patients’ health conditions,” says Sunghoon Ivan Lee, assistant professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences and director of the Advanced Human Health Analytics Laboratory.

Continue reading “Skin in the game: Transformative approach uses the human body to recharge smartwatches” »

Jul 2, 2021

An approach to achieve compliant robotic manipulation inspired by human adaptive control strategies

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Over the past few decades, roboticists have created increasingly advanced and sophisticated robotics systems. While some of these systems are highly efficient and achieved remarkable results, they still perform far poorly than humans on several tasks, including those that involve grasping and manipulating objects.

Researchers from Guangdong University of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, University of Sussex and Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) at University of the West of England have recently developed a that could help to improve manipulation. This model, presented in a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, draws inspiration from how humans adapt their manipulation strategies based on the task they are trying to complete.

“Humans have the remarkable ability to deal with and complete dynamic tasks, such as curving, cutting and assembly, optimally and compliantly,” Professor Chenguang Yang, the corresponding author for the paper working at BRL, told TechXplore. “Although these tasks are easy for humans, they are quite challenging for robots to perform, even advanced ones.”

Jul 2, 2021

Researchers create unipolar barrier photodetectors based on 2D layered materials

Posted by in category: materials

High dark current can significantly impair the performance of infrared photodetectors, devices that can detect photons in the form of infrared radiation. For many years, most solutions for blocking dark current used the electric field inside the detectors.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently devised an alternative solution to suppress dark current in photodetectors, which is based on the use of van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures. In a paper published in Nature Electronics, they presented visible and mid-wavelength infrared unipolar barrier photodetectors made of band-engineered vdW heterostructures.

“Since Bell Labs produced the Si-based PN junction in 1935, using the built-in in the depletion region has become the main technical route to block dark current,” Weida Hu and Peng Zhou, two of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore via email. “In traditional PN junctional infrared photodetectors, the high Shockley-read-Hall (SRH) recombination and surface recombination in the depletion region seriously limit the suppression of dark current. In response to these issues, engineers introduced a new device structure beyond the PN junction, namely the unipolar barrier structure.”