April, 2022 | TechieTonics

SQuRO, Quadruped Robotic Rat: Biomimicry

April 28, 2022April 28, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

Nature has always inspired robotics engineers to design bots with the same agility and efficiency. And this is also one of the reasons why researchers look up to biomimicry to solve human design challenges. When it comes to navigate tight and congested arenas wouldn’t rodents be the best options to design a device? Researchers at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) thought the same. According to Qing Shi, a Professor at BIT, legged robots have limitations when operating in narrow spaces. Micro quadruped robots too can face performance issues due to…

Book Review: The God Equation by Dr. Michio Kaku

April 26, 2022August 5, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

Dr. Michio Kaku is a well-known figure in science academia. He is a master story teller. His super power is, he can make science graspable for non-science people like myself. In The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, Dr. Kaku talks about three things: physics from creation to present, the effort put behind in unifying all known physical forces and the theory of dimensions, string theory.

Bacterium Flagellar Beats on Graphene: Microbial Melody

April 26, 2022April 26, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

Anything that vibrates, creates sound. This implies, microbes too must emit noise. Does this mean, we can also hear disease? Pathogenic bacteria mixed with other healthy microbe bacteria might sound in a certain way. So, if this technology is used for diagnostic purposes, we could we hear disease!

Two Neutron Stars could give Birth to a Third: Stellar Formation

April 7, 2022April 7, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

An international team of astrophysics from Manly Astrophysics and Universidad de Murcia has proposed for a new type of exotic neutron star. According to astronomers Arthur Suvorov and Kostas Glampedakis, the novel neutron star could be the result of a super strong magnetic field that emanates during a collision between old neutron stars.

Book Review: In His Own Words by Nelson Mandela

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

In His Own Words: From Freedom To The Future: Tributes And Speeches by Nelson Mandela is one of those books, which everyone must read once in their life time. Nelson Mandela was, indeed, a prolific writer as well as a gifted speaker. He became an epitome of freedom around the world after his South African history in 1994. I have always looked up to him for his patience, diligence and integrity.

Book Review: Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins

April 6, 2022April 7, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science is the second volume of Richard Dawkins’ memoirs, first being An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist. As expected, the autobiographical memoir is not a chronological tale, rather it is a series of anecdotes. In fact, Dawkins writes, “If you don’t like digressive anecdotes, you might find you’re reading the wrong book.”

Magnetic Tentacle Robot for Autonomous Endoscopy: Soft Catheters

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

Magnetic tentacle robot, strange it may sound but researchers at STORM Lab at the University of Leeds have come up with a tiny canular form of robot that can explore the smallest bronchial tubes in the lungs. The nano tubiform bot measures around 2 millimetres in diameter. That happens to be two times the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. The tentacle robot will be guided from the outside with the help of (external) magnets.

Spiders Can Use Their Silk to Hear: Acoustic Properties of Webs

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022 Pooja Kashyap

Researchers at Binghamton University, in collaboration with Cornell University, suggest that spiders use their webs to assist in their hearing mechanism. Distinguished Professor Ron Miles and doctoral student Junpeng Lai conducted the experiment at the Binghamton University anechoic chamber.