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    Category Technology/Electronics

    Storing Data in Everyday Objects

    December 9, 2019, Categories  Biology/Biotechnology, Physics, Technology/Electronics, Health/Medical, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    3D-printed plastic rabbit
    A 3D-​printed plastic rabbit. The plastic contains DNA molecules in which the printing instructions have been encoded. (Photograph: ETH Zurich / Julian Koch)

    Researchers and an Israeli scientist have discovered a new method for turning nearly any object into a data storage unit. This makes it possible to save extensive data in, say, shirt buttons, water bottles or even the lenses of glasses, and then retrieve it years later. The technique also allows users to hide information and store it for later generations. It uses DNA as the storage medium.

    Living beings contain their own assembly and operating instructions in the form of DNA. That’s not the case with inanimate objects: anyone wishing to 3D print an object also requires a set of instructions...

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    Developing a Digital Twin of a Vehicle

    December 7, 2019, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Flight of the UAV estimations
    In the case of the digital twin UAV, Willcox’s system is able to capture and communicate the evolving changes in the health of the UAV. It can also explain what sensor readings are indicating declining health and driving the predictions.

    Researchers create virtual UAVs that can predict vehicle health, enable autonomous decision-making. In the not too distant future, we can expect to see our skies filled with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) delivering packages, maybe even people, from location to location.

    In such a world, there will also be a digital twin for each UAV in the fleet: a virtual model that will follow the UAV through its existence, evolving with time...

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    Micro Implants could Restore Standing and Walking

    December 6, 2019, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics, Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Biomedical engineering researcher Vivian Mushahwar is developing spinal implants that could one day restore the ability to stand and walk in patients with paralysis. (Photo: Ross Neitz)

    When Vivian Mushahwar first applied to grad school, she wrote about her idea to fix paralysis by rewiring the spinal cord. It was only after she was accepted into a bioengineering program that the young electrical engineer learned her idea had actually prompted laughter. “I figured, hey I can fix it, it’s just wires,” Mushahwar said. “Yeah, well, it’s not just wires. So I had to learn the biology along the way.”

    It’s taken Mushahwar a lot of work over two decades at the University of Alberta, but the Canada Research Chair in Functional Restoration is still fixated on the dream of helping people wal...

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    Bending an Organic Semiconductor can Boost Electrical Flow

    December 5, 2019, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Organic transistors based on single crystals of rubrene, a hydrocarbon, can roughly double the speed of electricity flowing through them when a crystal is slightly bent (strained). This useful behavior cannot be easily achieved with traditional semiconductors made, for example, of silicon. Molecules of rubrene are arranged in a herringbone pattern (upper left), forming highly ordered semiconducting molecular crystals that can be used to create rigid (upper right) or flexible (lower left) high-performance organic transistors, based on thick or ultra-thin single crystals, respectively. An example of a freestanding rubrene transistor is shown on a finger tip (lower right).
    Image: Vitaly Podzorov/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

    Slightly bending semiconductors made of organic materials ca...

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