For expecting parents, 24 weeks is an important milestone. It’s a little more than halfway through pregnancy, and it’s at this age that the fetus has at least a fighting chance of surviving outside its mother’s body. The odds of survival aren’t great—only about half of babies birthed at this age survive—but it’s possible.
Continue reading… “Scientists built an external womb to help premature infants survive”
This past summer, a plane went into a stomach-churning ascent and plunge 30,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. The goal was not thrill-seeking, but something more genuinely daring: for about 25 seconds at a time, the parabolic flight lifted the occupants into a state of simulated weightlessness, allowing a high-tech printer to spit out cardiac stem cells into a two-chambered, simplified structure of an infant’s heart.
Continue reading… “The factories of the future could float in space”
Who are today’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs? That answer is very different than it was 20 years ago.
Most new entrepreneurs are still white and male, but the U.S. entrepreneurial population is becoming much more diverse in terms of age, race and region. Cities in the southern half of the U.S., such as Los Angeles, Miami and Austin, have become hotbeds for startups and small businesses.
Continue reading… “The changing demographics of entrepreneurship”
Wi-Fi can pass through walls.
This fact is easy to take for granted, yet it’s the reason we can surf the web using a wireless router located in another room. But not all of that microwave radiation makes it to (or from) our phones, tablets, and laptops. Routers scatter and bounce their signal off objects, illuminating our homes and offices like invisible light bulbs.
Now, German scientists have found a way to exploit this property to take holograms, or 3D photographs, of objects inside a room — from outside it.
Continue reading… “Photographing people in 3D through walls using Wi-Fi”
Food and transportation aren’t the only aspects of a mission to Mars scientists must consider. Limited cargo space means to obtain tools or similar items, astronauts may need to make use of resources available on the red planet – like dirt. Four Northwestern University researchers were recently able to utilize a Martian dust simulant to 3D print building blocks and tools.
NASA started looking into space 3D printers back in 2013 to manufacture repair parts or tools. Now Northwestern scientists have used lunar and Martian dust simulants approved by NASA to 3D print tools in a process the university described as simple, scalable, and sustainable.
Continue reading… “Scientists use Martian dust to 3D print tools”
If you’re frustrated with slow wi-fi, you might be one of the many people eagerly awaiting the commercialisation of li-fi (or light-based wi-fi), which promises to be up to 100 times faster than the connections we use today.
Most li-fi systems rely on transmitting data via LED bulbs, which means there are some limitations to how easily the technology could be applied to systems outside the lab. But researchers have come up with a new type of li-fi that uses infrared light instead, and it’s reportedly already cracked 40 gigabits per second (gbps) in early testing.
Hydrogels have shown significant potential in everything from wound dressings to soft robots, but their applications have been limited from their lack of toughness – until now. A team of scientists at Hokkaido University have developed a new set of hydrogel composites or “fiber-reinforced soft composites” that combine hydrogels with woven fiber fabric to create a material that is five times stronger than carbon steel.
Continue reading… “Fiber-reinforced hydrogel is 5 times stronger than steel”
It’s not every day that scientists are able to create an entirely new substance, but Harvard researchers managed to do just that, and in the process created what could be a world-changing material with a bunch of different applications. It’s called atomic metallic hydrogen, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: hydrogen in the form of metal. If that sounds weird, it probably should, because it’s literally never existed on the planet before now.
Continue reading… “Scientists find a way to turn hydrogen into a metal”
It’s official: graphene has been made into a superconductor in its natural state – which means electrical current can flow through it with zero resistance. Last year, physicists managed to do this by doping graphene with calcium atoms, but this is the first time researchers have achieved superconductivity in the material without having to alter it. And the results so far show that the material achieves an incredibly rare type of superconductivity that’s even crazier and more powerful than scientists expected.
Continue reading… “Graphene’s power has finally been unlocked, and it’s crazier than we expected”
Three-dimensional printers have brought major advances to every corner of manufacturing: Scientists have used the process to engineer human tissue, print a rubber material to make drones less dangerous to people on the ground, and create a lightweight material that’s 10 times stronger than steel and just 1/20th its density.
Continue reading… “What’s the next big thing in 3-D printing? Shapeshifting Materials”
Last September, we wrote about the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Germany and their R&D on metamaterials, hacking the internal structures of materials to create simple, non-powered machines. By experimenting with various microstructural designs, researchers were able to 3D print simple machines that can deform to create some form of actuation, allowing the 3D printing of switches, latches, door handles, and the like.
To the 78 organs that make up the human body, a group of scientists says we should add one more: the mesentery. Located in our abdominal cavity, the mesentery is a belt of tissue that holds our intestines in place. While anatomists knew it was there, it was always thought to be composed of several different segments, as opposed to being one single structure. This knocked it out of contention for organ status, as our bodily organs must be continuous, as well as provide some vital function to our anatomy.
Continue reading… “The human body’s 79th organ?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.