Category Technology/Electronics

Mark Pollock and trainer Simon O’Donnell Courtesy of Mark Pollock

Robotic step training, noninvasive spinal stimulation enable patient to take thousands of steps. A 39yo man who had had been completely paralyzed for 4 years was able to voluntarily control his leg muscles and take many steps in a robotic exoskeleton during 5 days of training with the aid of the robotic device combined with a novel noninvasive spinal stimulation pattern that does not require surgery, UCLA scientists report.

This is the first time that a person with chronic, complete paralysis has regained enough voluntary control to actively work with a robotic device designed to enhance mobility...

Gerard Coté, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems. Credit: Texas A&M University

It could significantly improve malaria diagnoses, Rx in developing countries that often lack the resources to address the life-threatening disease. The add-on device, which is similar in look and feel to a protective phone case, uses a smart phone’s camera features to produce high-resolution images of objects 10X smaller than the thickness of a human hair, says Prof Gerard Coté who developed the mobile-optical-polarization imaging device (MOPID).

MOPID is capable of accepting a small cartridge containing a patient’s blood-smear sample, which is then imaged using polarized light in order to detect ...

This is especially in situations where the water is in the form of vapor or tiny droplets. Enhancing the mobility of liquid droplets on rough surfaces has applications ranging from condensation heat transfer for heat exchangers in power plants to more efficient water harvesting in arid regions where collecting fog droplets on coated meshes provides drinking water and irrigation for agriculture to the prevention of icing and frosting on aircraft wings.

“This represents a fundamentally new concept in engineered surfaces,” said Assistant Prof Tak-Sing Wong. “Our surfaces combine the unique surface architectures of lotus leaves and pitcher plants, in such a way that these surfaces possess both high surface area and a slippery interface to enhance droplet collection and mobility...

Schematic diagrams depicting the conformation of amphipathic binaphthyl and its molecular deformation caused by compression at the air-water interface. a) Pliers representing amphipathic binaphthyl (left), chemical formula of amphipathic binaphthyl (center), and three-dimensional conformation of amphipathic binaphthyl. b) and c) Schematic representation of compressed and expanded amphipathic binaphthyl molecules that are arranged in a line at the air-water interface. These forces cause conformational change similar to opening and closing pliers. Credit: Copyright NIMS

It takes advantage of the property that molecular machines aggregate on the surface of water and  will contribute to development of basic technology for operation of various molecular machines in sensors and other types of de...