Category Technology/Electronics

BLOODHOUND SSC during construction at the Bloodhound Technical Centre, Avonmouth, summer 2015. Credit: Author provided

It’s a staggering feat, a car faster than the speed of sound. On Oct 15 1997, Andy Green travelled across the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in the Thrust SSC at 763.035 mph, or Mach 1.02. Two decades on, that record remains unchallenged. Until now. Back in 2007, a small team of British engineers headed up by Richard Noble and Andy Green decided to have a pop at the world land speed record once more. This time, their sights were set on 1,000mph...

Scientists at EPFL and ETHZ have developed a new method for building microrobots that could be used in the body to deliver drugs and perform other medical operations. Credit: Selman Sakar

The robots enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine. EPFL and ETHZ scientists developed a simple and versatile method for building such bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features. They also created a platform for testing several robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion. Their work produced complex reconfigurable microrobots that can be manufactured with high throughput...

This is an overview of designing and building a custom lab instrument using the Multifluidic Evolutionary Component (MEC) system created at UC Riverside. Credit: UC Riverside

Uni of CA, Riverside researchers have created a Lego-like system of blocks that enables users to custom make chemical and biological research instruments quickly, easily and affordably. The system of 3D-printed blocks can be used in university labs, schools, hospitals, and anywhere there is a need to create scientific tools.

Each block, called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs) because of their flexibility and adaptability, performs a basic task found in a lab instrument, like pumping fluids, making measurements or interfacing with a user...

This is a schematic of an optical tweezer used in a vacuum chamber by Purdue University researchers, who controlled the “electron spin” of a levitated nanodiamond. The advance could find applications in quantum information processing, sensors and studies into the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics. Credit: Purdue University image/ Tongcang Li

Researchers have demonstrated how to control the “electron spin” of a nanodiamond while it is levitated with lasers in a vacuum, an advance that could find applications in quantum information processing, sensors, quantum mechanics studies, and measurement of magnetic and gravitational fields, which could be applied to computer memory and experiments to search for deviations from Newton’s law of gravitation. .

Electrons can be thought of as havin...