Singapore’s First 3D-printed Concept Car: Coupé of the Future

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have developed nation’s first urban solar electric car with cutting-edge 3D-printed body casing that is having nearly 150 parts. The two eco-cars, dubbed as NV8 and NV9, are racing in this year’s the Shell Eco-marathon Asia that is taking place in Manila at the end of this month.

Read More

Buddhism Is Not What You Think by Steve Hagen

Simple and free flowing book, Buddhism Is Not What You Think written by Steve Hagen talks about what reality is as per Zen Buddhism. The author resonates one central point in the entire book and that is, reality is about direct experience of the real time than mere feelings and thoughts, which happen to be in constant flux in conscious and subconscious level in human mind.

Read More

10 Images of ESA’s IXV Mini-Shuttle: Blasting off in February 2015

ESA’s mini shuttle is all set to launch its flight and reentry mission. With this development, Europe will set strong foundation for innovative technology that would help future reentry missions for astronauts as well as other spatial bodies. The test flight is scheduled to be held on February 11. The entire operation would last for about 100 minutes testing the critical systems using 300 embedded sensors. Following are some of the images of the ESA’s space taxi, as they call it. 1) IXV during integration at Thales Alenia Space 2)…

Read More

Smartphone driven Autonomous Drone: The Smart Copter

For the first time consumer-grade electronics are used for programming autonomous drones. This drone makes use of smartphone as its brain. The phone senses its environment by taking real time pictures. Even the real time computation is done on the device itself along with higher-level autonomy, maneuvering, navigation, control and computer vision algorithms. The product is the brainchild of GRASP Laboratory, University Of Pennsylvania. Click on the video below to see the autonomous flying robot: This makes me think, if you lose your smartphone, you’d end up losing the drone…

Read More

Hector Robot is the Giant Stick Insect: Biomimicry

Biomechatronics researchers at Bielefeld University, Germany have come up with a bot called Hector that is inspired from stick insect, another invention in the field of biomimicry. The insect bot has six limbs with an ability of functioning independently. The embedded sensors help it in reacting autonomously to its external setting and accordingly assist in learning from experience. Only for research platform Jan Paskarbeit, the developer envisions Hector in areas like testing animal locomotion theories. The bot however, is not designed with an intention of severing humans in areas like…

Read More

Nanoparticle Compound delivered directly into the Gut Tissue: Self-propelling Nanobots

Experts believe that micromachines or nanobots use in the field of medicine can change the way some of the medical conditions are diagnosed and treated. Using these nanobots, medical payload would be sent directly to the specific injury site. Until now the researchers have achieved to test such micromachines in cell samples under laboratory conditions. 

Read More

Drones to take Water Samples: New Era of Hands-on Aerial Robots

Drones embedded with cameras or infrared sensors have been doing well in areas like farming and surveillance but it seems that researchers are looking forward to extend the current restrictions. Thinking on these terms, some engineers have come up with tiny crafts that have an ability of scooping up water samples for identifying invasive species and checking oil leaks over the surface. Some drones of the similar kinds have been upgraded as they can even carry out rudimentary analysis on the collected water sample. This would come as a handy…

Read More

PET Plastic Bottles morph to Paper: Ecological Paper

A Mexican startup company, Cronology situated in Ecatepec, has designed an innovative environment friendly technology that recycles waste PET bottles into peta paper or mineral paper. The technology claims to conserve around 20 trees from being chopped down and 50,000 liter of precious water on the production of per ton of paper, as they do not need chlorine or water for manufacturing. 

Read More

Coin Spiders Self-Emasculate after Mating: Survival of the Genes

Much has been discussed about the cruel phenomenon of sexual cannibalism practiced by the famous black widow spider but not many know about another crazy phenomenon practiced by a male coin spider. These male spiders (Herennia multipuncta) are one of the greatest lovers in the nature. These tiny spiders have the courage to propose a female almost four times its size, which, if hungry rejects the proposal and preferably feeds on the male. However, scientists observed that if the male is lucky enough to woo the female, the male after mating…

Read More

10 Images from Space Station Element Cupola: An Astronaut’s Office within the ISS

Last month, we covered a round up related to view from space and now we have some images from within Cupola, the pressurized Space Station Element with seven windows. Cupola The Cupola is an observatory module of the ISS. It has seven windows that are used for performing experiments, anchoring and observing Earth. The Space Shuttle mission STS-130 was kicked off from Earth on 8 February 2010 and docked to the Tranquility (Node 3) module. Considering Cupola’s successful attachment, ISS assembly has reached 85 percent completion. The observatory module is…

Read More

Head Mounted Wireless System Fabricated: Paralyzed Patients to convey thoughts at the speed of Internet

Now paralyzed patients would soon be conveying their thoughts via remote control manually attached to their skull. Experts at Brown University in collaboration with Blackrock Microsystems, a firm based in Utah have fabricated the wireless device. They claim that the gizmo can be implanted to the skull of a patient and then the thought commands are transmitted by the inbuilt radio system. As per the sources, once it gets clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the device would be tested on volunteers, by the end of this year.

Read More