Tag: innovation

Magnetic Tentacle Robot for Autonomous Endoscopy: Soft Catheters

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.

Read More

Skin-Integrated Electronics to Capture Haptic Feedback: Human-Machine Interfaces

Pooja Kashyap

To control a remote robot via electromechanical devices, require the operator to wear huge and at times bulky gear. To make things easier, researchers from Hong Kong and China have fabricated a flexible skin patch, which has an ability to provide haptic feedback. Now not only the user can receive feedback from another (human) user but also from a robot to be more specific, haptic feedback from remotely controlled robot.

Read More

Interview: Takashi Ozaki, Research Scientist at Toyota Central R&D Labs, Japan

Pooja Kashyap

Takashi Ozaki is the frontier research leader at Beyond-X Research Domain, Toyota Central R&D Labs. Inc. Japan. He completed his B.E. and M.E. from Kyoto University. His area of research fields includes – bioinspired actuators and robotics, micro electromechanical systems and microfabrication processes.  

Read More

Biofuel to Produce Locally on Mars: Martian Exploration

Pooja Kashyap

What if we are able to produce fuel directly on Mars? Explorers would then be able to stay on the red planet a li’l longer and return journey will then be easier relatively.   Shipping the propellant and oxygen for a return journey from Mars would cost billions of dollars. To make things easier, researchers have developed a concept for local rocket fuel production with algae and E.coli.

Read More

Magnetic Tunnel Surrounds Our Solar System: Galactic Bodies

Pooja Kashyap

Radio astronomy is very fascinating since it shows the “other side” of reality which we do not witness in our everyday life. Of course, due to our own limitations. Dr. Jennifer West, an astrophysicist at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics suggests that a gigantic magnetic tunnel surrounds our solar system. This magnetic flux can be observed in radio waves.

Read More

Interview: Dr Benjamin Pope, an Astrophysicist at The University of Queensland, Brisbane

Pooja Kashyap

Dr Benjamin Pope is a physicist and data scientist at The University of Queensland, Brisbane. He is working to find planets around other stars using NASA space telescopes. With the help of leading-edge machine-learning algorithms, he is trying to dig up tiny signals out of the noise to expand our knowledge of the universe.

Read More

Formation of Single Unit by Collision of Multiple Grains: Resurrecting Quasicrystals

Pooja Kashyap

Quasicrystal is a form of matter with an unusual arrangement of atoms. Although it’s called a “crystal” but it lacks symmetry. Unlike crystals, pattern within the quasicrystal does not repeat itself. They were first discovered in 1980s and since then the possible atomic arrangements violated the rules that fall under the category of crystals, that is, the materials could have only two-, three-, four- or six-fold symmetry.  

Read More

Metal Eating Bacteria to Clean Up Metallic Waste: Green Mining

Pooja Kashyap

A starving being can eat everything and anything and within minutes. While in the character of 19th-century trapper, Leonardo DiCaprio, a starving man in The Revenant eats raw bison liver. Survival instinct is what keeps the living beings away from extinction coz of hunger and this can be seen in microorganisms as well.

Read More