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(Natural News) A recent breakthrough in high-intensity focused ultrasound therapy (HIFU) technology has proven its use as an effective cancer treatment. A multi-institutional research team from China developed a semi-enclosed, spherical cavity transducer that can produce a focused, standing-wave field with a subwavelength-scale focal region and extremely high ultrasound intensity. The spherical cavity transducer appeared to generate tighter focal regions and greater pressure amplitude compared with the traditional concave spherical transducer. Researchers said the level of intensity generated by the new transducer design may lead to significant improvements in HIFU therapy. The findings were published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

HIFU is a non-invasive, targeted treatment that makes use of sound waves to eradicate cancer cells. HIFU uses an ultrasonic transducer to convert electrical signals into sound waves, then concentrates ultrasound into a small focal region to raise the temperature to more than 65 decrees Celsius, thereby killing cancer cells in the process without inducing damage to surrounding tissues. The technique works in the same manner as focusing sunlight through a lens, which helps eliminate the disease-causing cells.

HIFU can be used as an alternative to traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and surgery.

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Longevity Vision Fund has exited stealth with plans to invest $100 million in startups with aspirations to extend healthy lifespans. The fund, which is linked to the founder of XPrize, will pump the money into biotechs and other longevity startups based around the world in seed to series B rounds.

Sergey Young, the founder of Longevity Vision, unveiled the fund at an event in London this week. Young is the cofounder of Peak State Ventures and an innovation board member at XPrize Foundation, a nonprofit known for running competitions to incentivize advances in fields including suborbital space flight.

At Peak State, Young and his colleagues invest in fields well outside of longevity, including property and education. But Young has established a foothold in the longevity space, leading to him becoming development sponsor of Longevity XPrize and a longevity partner at Bold Capital Partners.

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For better or worse, robots with humanoid features are often compared to humans—we want to know if they’re anywhere close to doing the same kinds of things that we do, and with a few exceptions, the answer is “probably not.” Humanoid robots are difficult to build and program, but we keep doing it because it makes some amount of sense to have robots that look and function like we do operating in the same environments that we operate in. However, one of the great things about robots is that they don’t have to be constrained by the same boring humanoid-ness that we are, and we can do all kinds of things to them to make them more capable than we’ll ever be.

Leonardo augments humanoid legs with thrusters to help it run and jump.

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Vibration-based energy harvesting has long promised to provide perpetual power for small electronic components such as tiny sensors used in monitoring systems. If this potential can be realized, external energy sources such as batteries would no longer be needed to power these components.

Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo in Japan believe they have taken a step toward achieving self-powered components by developing a new type of micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) energy harvester. Their approach enables far more flexible designs than are currently possible— something, they say, that is crucial if such systems are to be used for the Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor networks.

Scientists in Japan have developed a MEMS energy harvester charged by an off-chip electret.

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— the story.

Plants could soon provide our electricity. In a small way they already are doing that in research labs and greenhouses at project Plant-e — a university and commercially sponsored research group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

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