Category Technology/Electronics

Materials that shrink when heated – changing color from black to golden – could save expensive electronics from heat damage.
Scientists have created materials that shrink uniformly in all directions when heated under normal everyday conditions, using a cheap and industrially scalable process...

Multi-junction solar cells are both the most efficient type of solar cell on the market today and the most expensive type of solar cell to produce. In a proof-of-concept paper, researchers from North Carolina State University detail a new approach for creating multi-junction solar cells using off-the-shelf components, resulting in lower cost, high-efficiency solar cells for use in multiple applications.

Multi-junction, or stacked, solar cells are currently the most efficient cells on the market, converting up to 45% of the solar energy they a...

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control. Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

Being able to noninvasively control robotic devices using only thoughts will have broad applications, in particular benefiting the lives of paralyzed patients and those with movement disorders.

BCIs have been shown to achieve good performance for controlling robotic devices using only the signals sensed from brain implants...

Engineers have shown it is technically possible to guide a tiny robotic capsule inside the colon to take micro-ultrasound images. Known as a Sonopill, the device could one day replace the need for patients to undergo an endoscopic examination, where a semi-rigid scope is passed into the bowel – an invasive procedure that can be painful.

Micro-ultrasound images also have the advantage of being better able to identify some types of cell change associated with cancer...