The bipod gait is faster than the tripod gait during ground locomotion in a hexapod robot.

When vertebrates run, their legs exhibit minimal cont

act with the ground. But insects are different. These 6-legged creatures run fastest using a 3-legged, or “tripod” gait where they have 3 legs on the ground at all times – 2 on 1 side of their body and one on the other. The tripod gait has long inspired engineers who design six-legged robots, but is it necessarily the fastest and most efficient way for bio-inspired robots to move on the ground?

Researchers at EPFL and UNIL revealed there is in fact a faster way for robots to locomote on flat ground, provided they don’t have the adhesive pads used by insects to climb walls and ceilings...

Researchers from MIT’s Microsystems Technologies Laboratories (MTL) have designed a new power converter that maintains its efficiency at currents ranging from 100 picoamps to 1 milliamp, a span that encompasses a millionfold increase in current levels.

Design reduces converter’s resting power consumption by 50%. The “internet of things”, IoT is the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock will soon have sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks. Those sensors will have to operate at very low powers, in order to extend battery life for months or make do with energy harvested from the environment...

dATF4 regulation of mitochondrial folate-mediated one-carbon metabolism is neuroprotective. Cell Death and Differentiation, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/cdd.2016.158

A genetic ‘switch’ has been discovered by MRC researchers at the University of Leicester which could help to prevent or delay the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The team discovered that a gene called ATF4 plays a key role in Parkinson’s disease, acting as a ‘switch’ for genes that control mitochondrial metabolism for neuron health. Dr Miguel Martins from the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester explained: “When the expression of ATF4 is reduced in flies, expression of these mitochondrial genes drops. This drop results in dramatic locomotor defects, decreased lifespan, and dysfunctional mitochondria in the brain.”

“Intere...

Raw image data collected from dGEMRIC MRI protocol at an inversion time of 1600 milliseconds (left). The T1 map computed from seven different inversion times using the automated, real-time, quantitative magnetic resonance imaging pipeline (right). Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas at Austin, Texas Advanced Computing Center

A new, automated platform that returns in-depth analyses of MRI scans in minutes, rather than hours or days has been developed by Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSC) and Philips Healthcare. The system has the potential to minimize patient callbacks, save millions annually, and advance precision medicine.

The team presented a proof-of-concept demonstration of the platform at the International Conference on ...