Hasta La Gadget!

This is the Crossbow TelosB wireless remote platform, and it did an important job for science in January of last year — it monitored the close proximity interactions among 788 students and staff at one US high school to track a virtual flu. After collecting over 762,000 sneeze-worthy anecdotes among the module-toting teachers and teens, Stanford researchers ran 788,000 simulations charting the path the virus might take and methods the school might try to keep it in line. Sadly, the scientists didn’t manage to come up with any easy answers, as virtual vaccination seemed to work equally well (or poorly) no matter who got the drugs, but that if only we could actually monitor individuals in real life as easily as in a study, prevention would be much easier. But who will bell the cat, when it’s so much less political to ionize?

Scientists attempt to predict flu spread, give ZigBee radios to 700 high school students originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robots are among our most polarizing technological innovations. Some of us love and openly embrace bots, while others live in near constant fear of an android coup. When I hear, “robot learns to run like humans,” I imagine robot races and bipedal bots bounding over hills to help save us. The fearful, however, see their worst fears realized: “Now robots can actually chase and catch us.”

Robot researchers like Ryuma Niiyama (currently working in MIT’s Robot Locomotion Group) couldn’t care less about your fears. According to a report in IEEE Spectrum, Niiyama is building a biped robot called “Athlete” that uses artificial muscles and prosthetic feet to run at speeds and in a style more akin to human locomotion. Previous humanoid robots like the Honda Asimo use a complex array of motors, sensor and actuators to walk and even, in the case of Asimo, “run.” However, anyone who has seen Asimo dash around a stage knows that the bot’s motion doesn’t look entirely natural.

Niiyama’s robot mimics some aspects of human running to achieve a more natural gait. The robot’s artificial muscles reside entirely above the “knees”. Below that it’s all prosthetic elastic blades that some double amputees use for running. As a result, the robot springs forward with each step–as humans do– and uses its muscles and sensors to maintain balance as it races forward; again, pretty much as people do when they’re running.

So far, Niiyama and his team have only been partially successful. Athlete runs a few unaided steps but then falls over. Watch the video below, which charts Athlete’s development from an early 2007 model to today’s elastic-blade-fitted Athlete.

Video after the jump.

When it comes to building better batteries, building electrodes with greater surface area is key, and scientists are looking to exotic methods to attract the tiny particles they need. We’ve already seen graphene and carbon nanotubes soak up those electrons, but the University of Maryland has another idea — they’re using the Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) to generate usable patterns of nanorods on the surface of existing metal electrodes. By simply modifying the germ and letting it do its thing, then coating the surface with a conductive film, they’re generating ten times the energy capacity of a standard lithium-ion battery while simultaneously rendering the nasty vegetarian bug inert.

Meanwhile, the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Sandia Labs was more curious how these tiny charges actually work without confusing the forest for the trees, so to speak, so a team of scientists set about constructing the world’s smallest battery. Using a single tin dioxide nanowire as anode, a chunk of lithium cobalt dioxide as cathode, and piping some liquid electrolyte in between, they took a microscopic video of the charging process. See it in all its grey, goopy glory right after the break.

Continue reading World’s smallest battery uses a single nanowire, plant-eating virus could improve Li-ion cells tenfold

World’s smallest battery uses a single nanowire, plant-eating virus could improve Li-ion cells tenfold originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Dec 2010 10:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers at the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, led by Christopher A. Voigt have just published a paper which promises to get your circuits moving. The team has been working with E. coli bacteria to build logic gates like the ones found in computers directly into cells, making it possible to rewire and program them. The simple logic gates used in the experiment were built into genes then inserted into E. coli cells. The logic gates then acted as the communicator between the separate strains, allowing them to be connected together.The use of logic gates in cells could make it possible to tackle more complicated processes, so that science can begin to use cells at the molecular level for biomedical advances.

Researchers develop programmable molecular circuitry for living cells originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 05:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Calm down, everyone, please take your seats. Now, no one here is saying arsenic-bred life is impossible — they’re not saying that, so your science fiction novel (which should be beyond the outline phase and in rough draft form) is conceptually fine. But, as you might have heard, there are a number of scientists — including some that co-authored a 2007 paper that called for such arsenic-based research — who are calling into question the paper behind NASA’s big astrobiological announcement, noting what they see as “fatal flaws” and errors in methodology. Frankly, this kind of thing happens with most-to-all science papers, but given all the self-made hooplah surrounding the unveil, a public opposition seems poetically appropriate. Expect this toxic fight to propagate throughout an assortment of scientific journals, the initial test trialed numerous times over in hopes of recreating (and further verifying). Make no mistake, someone’ll be bringing a beaker to the test tube fight.

NASA paper on arsenic-bred organisms finds phosphorous-based detractors originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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