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    Dynamic Hydrogel used to make ‘Soft Robot’ Components and LEGO-like building blocks

    March 21, 2019, Categories  Technology/Electronics, Chemistry/Nanotechnology, Biology/Biotechnology

    LEGO-like hydrogel building blocks patterned with tiny fluid channels can be assembled into complex microfluidic devices and then sealed tightly together.
    Credit: Wong Lab / Brown University

    Using a new type of dual polymer material capable of responding dynamically to its environment, Brown University researchers have developed a set of modular hydrogel components that could be useful in a variety of “soft robotic” and biomedical applications.

    The components, which are patterned by a 3D printer, are capable of bending, twisting or sticking together in response to treatment with certain chemicals. For a paper published in the journal Polymer Chemistry, the researchers demonstrated a soft gripper capable of actuating on demand to pick up small objects...

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    Giant X-ray ‘Chimneys’ are Exhaust Vents for Vast Energies produced at Milky Way’s center

    March 21, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Galactic chimneys (yellow-orange areas) are centered on the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. (This is a false-color image; white patches indicate spots where unrelated, bright X-ray sources have been removed from the image.)
    Credit: Gabriele Ponti/MPE/INAF and Mark Morris/UCLA

    Close look at what might be happening in other, more energetic galaxies. The center of our galaxy is a frenzy of activity. A behemoth black hole – 4 million times as massive as the sun – blasts out energy as it chows down on interstellar detritus while neighboring stars burst to life and subsequently explode.

    Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered two exhaust channels – dubbed “galactic center chimneys” – that appear to funnel matter and energy away from the cosmic firewo...

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    Computer scientists Create Reprogrammable Molecular Computing System

    March 21, 2019, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology


    Artist’s representation of a DNA computing system.
    Credit: Caltech

    Computer design meets potions class: A little of vial 1 and a little of vial 2 yield six-bit computations encoded in DNA. Computer scientists at Caltech have designed DNA molecules that can carry out reprogrammable computations, for the first time creating so-called algorithmic self-assembly in which the same “hardware” can be configured to run different “software.”

    In a paper published in Nature on Feb XX, a team headed by Caltech’s Erik Winfree (PhD ’98), professor of computer science, computation and neural systems, and bioengineering, showed how the DNA computations could execute six-bit algorithms that perform simple tasks...

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    Weird, Wild Gravity of Asteroid Bennu

    March 20, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The asteroid Bennu as seen by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The flying saucer-like shape of Bennu is generated, in part, by its spin.
    Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona

    Research led by the University of Colorado Boulder is revealing the Alice in Wonderland-like physics that govern gravity near the surface of the asteroid Bennu. The new findings are part of a suite of papers published today by the team behind NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. And they come just three months after OSIRIS-REx first encountered Bennu on Dec. 3, 2018.

    Since then, the spacecraft has completed a few dozen laps around the asteroid, which is about as tall as the Empire State Building, circling Bennu fro...

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