Science & Technology News – Page 212

Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, new technology, Science & Technology News

Replacement blood vessels may be woven from bio-yarn

February 19, 2020

Blood vessels made from the yarn should reportedly be tolerated by all patients

When a damaged blood vessel has to be replaced, it’s important that the replacement be well-tolerated by the body. And while bioprinted blood vessels are one possibility, French scientists are now working on weaving the things out of collagen yarn.

Led by researcher Nicolas L’Heureux, a team at the Inserm institute – aka the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research – started by lab-cultivating human cells, which in turn produced extracellular matrix deposits that were high in collagen. The extracellular matrix is the three-dimensional network of macromolecules that surrounds the body’s cells, helping to keep those cells structurally and biochemically supported.

Sheets of the lab-grown matrix deposits were next cut into very thin fiber-like strips, forming the yarn. It can be woven, knitted or braided, and has already been used to create vascular grafts (implantable tubes for redirecting the flow of blood). Those grafts exhibited “burst pressure, suture retention strength and transmural permeability that surpassed clinical requirements.”

Continue reading… “Replacement blood vessels may be woven from bio-yarn”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Science & Technology News

Meet Ella: New Zealand Police unveil first artificial intelligence officer

February 19, 2020

The police have unveiled their first AI officer, with hopes she’ll soon be smiling and blinking out of screens in stations all around New Zealand.

Ella, the artificial intelligence cop at the centre of the police’s new digital services, was revealed at the police national headquarters in Wellington this morning.

Ella, which stands for Electronic Lifelike Assistant, is part of two new digital kiosks police have designed to help reduce queues in stations and to provide a modern way to connect with the public.

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App, China, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

Chinese government rolls out coronavirus ‘close contact detector’ app

February 18, 2020

China has rolled out an app that lets people check whether they have been in close contact with someone infected by the coronavirus.

The “close contact detector,” as BBC puts it, notifies users if they have had exchanges with any individuals who have been confirmed or suspected of carrying the virus. All users need to do is scan a QR code with an app like Alipay or WeChat. People at risk are then advised to stay at home or inform local health authorities.

Once their phone number is linked, users are asked to fill in their name and ID number. The app can then be used to check the status of up to three ID numbers. The app, which was developed in cooperation by the government and the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, relies on data from from the health and transport authorities.

Although the invasiveness of the software certainly raises questions about the obtrusive surveillance practices within the country, experts believe citizens won’t see the new app as controversial, considering the extent of the epidemic.

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Energy, Engineering, new technology, Science & Technology News

Graphene amplifier unlocks hidden frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum

February 18, 2020

Light in the THz frequencies hits the ‘sandwich’ and is reflected with additional energy. Credit: Loughborough University

Researchers have created a unique device which will unlock the elusive terahertz wavelengths and make revolutionary new technologies possible.

Terahertz waves (THz) sit between microwaves and infrared in the light frequency spectrum, but due to their low energy, scientists have been unable to harness their potential. The conundrum is known in scientific circles as the “terahertz gap.”

Being able to detect and amplify THz waves (T-rays) would open up a new era of medical, communications, satellite, cosmological and other technologies. One major application would be as a safe, non-destructive alternative to X-rays. However, until now, the wavelengths, which range between 3mm and 30μm, have proved impossible to use due to relatively weak signals from all existing sources.

A team of physicists has created a new type of optical transistor—a working THz amplifier—using graphene and a high-temperature superconductor. The physics behind the simple amplifier relies on the properties of graphene, which is transparent and is not sensitive to light and whose electrons have no mass. It is made up of two layers of graphene and a superconductor that trap the graphene massless electrons between them like a sandwich.

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Energy, Engineering, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy

Lasers etch a ‘perfect’ solar energy absorber

February 18, 2020

Using femto-second lasers to etch metallic structures, University of Rochester Institute of Optics professor Chunlei Guo and his team have developed a technique that can be used to collect sunlight to heat etched metal surfaces, which can then power an electrical generator for solar power. Credit: J. Adam Fenster/University of Rochester

The University of Rochester research lab that recently used lasers to create unsinkable metallic structures has now demonstrated how the same technology could be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.

In a paper in Light: Science & Applications, the lab of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics also affiliated with Physics and the Material Sciences Program, describes using powerful femto-second laser pulses to etch metal surfaces with nanoscale structures that selectively absorb light only at the solar wavelengths, but not elsewhere.

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Higher Education, Latest News, Legalized marijuana, Science & Technology News

This Colorado college will start offering a cannabis major in the fall

February 18, 2020

(CNN) Students on Colorado State University’s Pueblo campus will have the option to study cannabis beginning this fall.

State officials on Friday approved a bachelor’s of science degree program in Cannabis Biology and Chemistry, according to the Colorado Department of Higher Education, which said it was one of the first such programs in the country.

“The new major is a pro-active response to a rapidly changing national scene regarding the cannabis plant,” a proposal for the program by CSU-Pueblo officials says, citing shifting attitudes toward cannabis and its legalization for recreational use in numerous states, including Colorado.

The program will be part of CSU-Pueblo’s department of chemistry and consist mainly of chemistry and biology coursework with some classes in math and physics, the proposal says.

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Business, Employment, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

The secret to winning the war for talent

February 17, 2020

In the long siege known as the war for talent, employers need a new battle plan. Instead of trying desperately to recruit from the outside to fill a growing skills gap, companies should turn to the resources that exist within their own workforces.

This is a build versus buy strategy, with greater emphasis placed on training to develop skills in-house to meet the organization’s current and future needs. As a recent Harvard Business Review article observed, rather than spending billions to acquire talent, a better approach is investing in the talent that’s already in place. “Poach-and-release is no longer a sustainable model for talent acquisition,” the authors write.

There is a greater-than-ever need for effective and efficient corporate training as the shortage of skilled workers heightens to an urgent business issue. At an education conference I attended recently, Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told the audience that the concern he hears most frequently from employers is the difficulty of hiring enough workers.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

8 powerful examples of AI for good

February 17, 2020

Amid the cacophony of concern over artificial intelligence (AI) taking over jobs (and the world) and cheers for what it can do to increase productivity and profits, the potential for AI to do good can be overlooked. Technology leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, Huawei and Google have entire sections of their business focused on the topic and dedicate resources to build AI solutions for good and to support developers who do. In the fight to solve extraordinarily difficult challenges, humans can use all the help we can get. Here are 8 powerful examples of artificial intelligence for good as it is applied to some of the toughest challenges facing society today.

There are more than 1 billion people living with a disability around the world. Artificial intelligence can be used to amplify these people’s abilities to improve their accessibility. It can facilitate employment, improve daily life and help people living with disabilities communicate. From opening up the world of books to deaf children to narrating what it “sees” to those with visual impairments, apps and tools powered by artificial intelligence are improving accessibility.

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Analysis, Human Behavior, Life Skills, Science & Technology News

New theory of complex emotions

February 17, 2020

We updated Roger Hargreaves’s Little Miss and Mr. Men universe as a suggestion to include some of our new emotions. Illustration: Zohar Lazar

If You Can Say It, You Can Feel It Some scientists believe we have infinite emotions, so long as we can name them.

Sometime last year, I came across the word hangxiety, a neologism for hangover-induced anxiety. I cringed when I read it; it felt so phony.

The most mental distress I’d ever experienced during a hangover was some light teasing in a group chat. And then, last fall, the morning after a night of drinking, I woke up with a racing heart and a constricted feeling across my chest, as if I’d been sleeping under a dozen weighted blankets. I thought about the things I’d said and done the night before, and the physical sensations intensified.

This happened again, and then again. I haven’t had a hangover in months, largely because I’m terrified of them now. Was this always the way my brain and body responded to hangovers? Or did learning about hangxiety somehow influence the way I experience a hangover? I’d like to think I’m not that suggestible, but some emerging, somewhat controversial research on how and why we feel our feelings argues that language doesn’t just describe a feeling. It can also change it.

Continue reading… “New theory of complex emotions”

Energy, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy, Solar Power

New research explains how solar panels could soon be generating power at night

February 16, 2020

As beneficial as current solar panel technology has been in our quest to switch to renewable energy, such panels can’t generate electricity at night. Now, new research suggests it could be possible to design panels that can operate around the clock.

Under optimum conditions, at night these specially designed photovoltaic cells could generate a quarter of the energy they produce during the day, according to the new study.

To achieve this, we’d need to incorporate thermoradiative cells – devices that generate energy thanks to radiative cooling, where infrared or heat radiation leaves the cell and produces a small amount of energy in the process.

Continue reading… “New research explains how solar panels could soon be generating power at night”

Environment, new technology, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

The sun is still a burning mystery. That may be about to change.

February 16, 2020

The historic launch of the new European Solar Orbiter helps foster a golden age for understanding our nearest star.

On Sunday evening, a rocket lit up Florida’s nighttime sky as it ferried a spacecraft toward a first-of-its-kind adventure to the sun.

Even though our home star smolders every day in our skies, humans have only ever seen the sun from one perspective: face-on, from within the plane of the planets. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, or SolO, is about to change that, as it is designed to perform a detailed reconnaissance of the sun that will allow it to see the star’s previously invisible polar regions.

From this unique vantage point, SolO’s suite of 10 instruments will help uncover how the star sends streams of energetic particles called the solar wind throughout our planetary system. It will also help answer what controls the sun’s 11-year magnetic cycle, which varies in intensity and creates unanticipated fluctuations in solar activity.

“We fundamentally really don’t understand that,” says ESA’s Daniel Müller, SolO project scientist. “Hopefully, we’re filling in that gap with Solar Orbiter.”

Continue reading… “The sun is still a burning mystery. That may be about to change.”

Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Scientists create ‘chemical gardens’ that can be used as bone substitute materials

February 16, 2020

A new way of making bone-replacement materials that allows for cells to grow around and inside them has been developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham.

The team adopted a novel approach called chemobrionics, in which chemical components are controllably driven to react together in specific ways, enabling the self-assembly of intricate bio-inspired structures.

Scientists first observed these life-like ‘chemical gardens’ several hundred years ago, but recent renewed interest in the field of chemobrionics has seen researchers using these techniques to design new materials at the micro- and nanoscale.

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