Drawing design inspiration from the skin of stealthy sea creatures, engineers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a next-generation, adaptive space blanket that gives users the ability to control their temperature. The innovation is detailed in a study published today in Nature Communications.
MeiraGTx’s founders were interested in those uses; the biotech’s programs today are in diseases of the eye, salivary gland and brain.
But “we wanted to have a broader perspective on how you could potentially use gene therapy” too, CEO Alexandria Forbes says.
That vision is a high-tech, futuristic one, in which the human body can essentially become a medicine-making factory, enabled by gene therapy. But it’ll require more research, and is still years from fruition.
“Smart” contact lenses sound like something from a sci fi movie — but they’re real, and they could help troops in the field.
French engineering school IMT Atlantique revealed what it calls “the first stand-alone contact lens with a flexible micro battery” earlier this month.
And, notably, it caught the attention of the U.S. military’s attention: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is reportedly interested in the contact lens to augment troops’ visual capabilities in the field, according to Task and Purpose — meaning the gadget could represent the augmented contact lens that DARPA has spent a decade searching for.
Weird Flex
Here is a vegetable weeding robot designed to increase efficiency on large-scale vegetable farms. It works autonomously and can cover up to 12 acres in 9 hours. It uses GPS and camera to get the job done with accuracy.
Dino is designed to reduce labor costs and free up time for farming teams to focus on more important tasks. It can be put on a schedule and since it’s electric, only minimal maintenance is required.
