Northwestern University

Vstone, an Osaka-based technology firm, is organizing the world’s first marathon for robots. As many of you will already know, a marathon is 42 kilometers (or about 26 miles), and these little mechanical men are ready to run the whole thing. The miniature bipedal robots (some autonomous, some remote-controlled) possess a far shorter stride than the

In what represents an important step toward curing HIV, a USC scientist has created a virus that hunts down HIV-infected cells. Dr. Pin Wang’s lentiviral vector latches onto HIV-infected cells, flagging them with what is called “suicide gene therapy” — allowing drugs to later target and destroy them. “If you deplete all of the HIV-infected

Next-generation fully flexible electronic systems in combination with existing flexible components such as display, memory, and LED. While mobile phone technology has improved dramatically in the last five years, one element has not seen any radical change. The batteries that power our devices have not increased much in capacity, and they are also inflexible in

Engineers at NUS have discovered “robotic” muscles that can carry loads 80 times their own weight and stretch to five times the original length with the load. These new artificial muscles could potentially convert and store energy to power the robots after charging for less than a minute. The feat represents a first in robotics,

“The foundation of the asteroid grand challenge is partnerships like this one,” NASA and Planetary Resources Inc., of Bellevue, Wash., are partnering to develop crowd-sourced software solutions to enhance detection of near-Earth objects using agency-funded data. The agreement is NASA’s first partnership associated with the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge. Under a non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement,

Tissue engineering combined with gene therapy technology has the potential to manage the repair of defective articular cartilage. Researchers at Micro Orthopaedics, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, led by Dr. Ai-xi Yu, have suggested that articular cartilage defects can be repaired by a novel thermo-sensitive injectable hydrogel engineered with gene modified bone marrow mesenchymal stromal

THE global signs of a recovery in economic confidence seem puzzling.

FACIAL recognition technology is a staple of sci-fi thrillers like “Minority Report.”   But of bars in Chicago? SceneTap, a new app for smart phones, uses cameras with facial detection software to scout bar scenes. Without identifying specific bar patrons, it posts information like the average age of a crowd and the ratio of men

A new approach allows “smart” machines to understand sounds other than speech Robots can already discern and react to speech thanks to voice-recognition software such as the iPhone’s Siri. But “smart” machines still struggle with most other sounds. “In some sense, it’s almost a simpler problem, but there hasn’t been a lot of work on

Image via Wikipedia  A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show. The controlled fusion of atoms – creating conditions like those in our Sun – has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source. However, there have been doubts about the use of