Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A robot nicknamed ‘Morphobot' (M4), designed to travel over various terrains on land and in the air by transforming its appendages between wheels, propellors, legs, and hands, is described in Nature Communications ("Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) with appendage repurposing for locomotion plasticity enhancement"). The robot...
Smart textile might be the sports clothing of the future
Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Using nanomagnets composites and conductive yarn, scientists have invented a smart textile that can sense and measure body movements—from muscles flexing to veins pulsing. The device, presented in the journal Matter ("A textile magnetoelastic patch for self-powered personalized muscle physiotherapy"), is self-powered, stretchy, durable, waterproof,...
Researchers use ultrasound to control orientation of small particles
Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Acoustic waves may be able to control how particles sort themselves. While researchers have been able to separate particles based on their shape — for example, bacteria from other cells — for years, the ability to control their movement has remained a largely unsolved problem,...
‘Toggle switch’ can help quantum computers cut through the noise
Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) What good is a powerful computer if you can’t read its output? Or readily reprogram it to do different jobs? People who design quantum computers face these challenges, and a new device may make them easier to solve. The device, introduced by a team of...
New protein scaffolds for assembling multi-enzyme systems with unprecedented control
Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Cell-free biocatalysis is being increasingly used as a substitute for conventional chemical catalysts, given that enzymes (biological catalysts) are more sustainable and selective in the manufacture of valuable chemicals. Chemical biomanufacturing has benefited from extraordinary advances in molecular and synthetic biology, which have stimulated the...
How uploading our minds to a computer might become possible
Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The idea that our mind could live on in another form after our physical body dies has been a recurring theme in science fiction since the 1950s. Recent television series such as Black Mirror and Upload, as well as some games, demonstrate our continued fascination...
a polygon shapeshifting robot for space travel (w/video)
Jun 27, 2023 (Nanowerk News) By combining inspiration from the digital world of polygon meshing and the biological world of swarm behavior, the Mori3 robot can morph from 2D triangles into almost any 3D object. The EPFL research, which has been published in Nature Machine Intelligence ("Morphological flexibility in robotic...
Using electric fields to control the movement of defects in crystals
Jun 26, 2023 (Nanowerk News) An international team of researchers, led by Professor Yu Zou (MSE), is using electric fields to control the motion of material defects. This work has important implications for improving the properties and manufacturing processes of typically brittle ionic and covalent crystals, including semiconductors — a...
Yeast dust makes a cheap, fast virus test
Jun 26, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from The University of Queensland have made a dust from baker’s yeast that can detect COVID-19 and could safeguard communities against future pandemics. The powdery ‘nanoprobes’ developed at UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) are synthetic yeast fragments which can be deployed...