Science & Technology News – Page 73

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

The future of personalized medicine: Technion team built blood tree from scratch

September 30, 2021

Currently, transplanted grafts need to be implanted into a healthy part of the body so that the patient can generate new blood vessels to support it.

By HADAS LABRISCH

Engineered blood vessels in Technion study. Vascular structures in the scaffold lumen (brown) communicate with vessels located in the surrounding hydrogel (green).(photo credit: Courtesy)AdvertisementSkin flaps, bone grafts, implanted tissue – recent advancements in medicine have changed the face of surgery in terms of autologous – meaning self – transplantations.While extensive damage to organs once meant a nearly sure amputation or need for an external transplant, today’s science focuses on harvesting cells and tissue from a person’s own body to complete the injured pieces of the puzzle, using grafts and flaps to repair skin, vessels, tubes and bones.Yet, ask any surgeon attempting to insert a flap and they would tell you that the most important – and restrictive – component of a graft’s success is ample blood supply.

City Planning, Science & Technology News

Iteris develops a new AI sensor system for smart cities and traffic management

September 27, 2021

Recently, Iteris announced the development of a new AI-powered sensor system that can detect, monitor, and manage traffic. What challenges do growing cities face, what does the system provided by Iteris offer, and what problems can integrated smart systems face?

By Robin Mitchell

What challenges do growing cities face?

As the world population grows, so does the demand for transportation services, whether it be increased use in buses, taxis, or privately owned vehicles. While the current climate crisis is changing how vehicles are made and what sources of energy they use, it has little impact on the increasing number of vehicles. Using public transport may be better for the environment, but poor availability and inconvenience leads many to privately own vehicles.

Most roads around the world were laid during a time of significantly fewer vehicles, and these roads may have been designed with a few decades of vehicle growth in mind. If the demand on a road increases to the point where traffic starts to build up, it is often impossible to widen the road and add lanes as roads often have buildings on either side.

This leads us to a new challenge where modern road networks are quickly becoming congested. Congested traffic is not only bad for waiting times, but it also results in increased emissions from vehicles and can increase the chances of collisions and accidents.

For traffic management to improve, smart cities will need to be introduced, which involve the placement of sensors and smart technologies that allow computers to take over control in real-time. Simply put, a smart city would recognise key areas of congestion and then redirect traffic to improve safety while reducing waiting times. Furthermore, a smart city would be able to more efficiently control signals at traffic lights to prevent severe congestion forming while making better decisions on when to let pedestrian’s crossroads.

Aviation, Science & Technology News

Bell’s Plan To Finally Realize A Rotorcraft That Flies Like A Jet But Hovers Like A Helicopter

September 23, 2021

After 50 years of sporadic development, Bell thinks it can build a survivable, long-range, high-speed, VTOL aircraft adapted to tomorrow’s wars.

Bell has provided The War Zone with exclusive details about its recently revealed concepts for future High-Speed Vertical Take-Off and Landing, or HSVTOL, aircraft, which we looked at initially in this previous article. While being able to takeoff and land vertically using rotors and fly at jet speeds in forward flight sounds far-fetched, it turns out that there is decades of elaborate risk reduction work and general research already done on this exact concept. As such, actually realizing such a capability set may be far less of a technological revolution than one would think at first glance.

The War Zone sat down, virtually at least, with Jeff Nissen, Senior Manager Advanced Technology at Bell Flight, to talk about how the company has got to this point in its HSVTOL endeavors, as well as looking at some of the details of its latest concepts and how they could find a place in the U.S. military’s inventory.

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

FIRST SUCCESSFUL TRANSPLANT OF A ROBOTIC HEART

September 7, 2021

Every 10 minutes someone is added to the organ transplant waiting list in the US.

As of May 2021, there were over 100,000 people waiting for replacement organs across the country.

And countless more people in need of “spare parts” never even make it onto the waiting list. On average, 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of US deaths could be prevented or postponed with access to organ replacements.

That’s why the recent announcement of the first successful human transplant of an artificial heart in a US patient is such a big development.

The artificial heart used in the transplant was created by medical technology company Carmat, which won FDA approval for human trials just last year. Discussing the latest developments in biotech—using biology as technology—is a key focus of my year-round coaching program Abundance360.

In today’s blog, we’ll discuss how Carmat’s artificial heart works and how it fits into the broader objective of regenerative medicine.

Let’s dive in…

Science & Technology News, Space

Astroscale successfully demos in-space capture-and-release system to clear orbital debris

September 5, 2021

By Aria Alamalhodaei

Astroscale hit a major milestone Wednesday, when its space junk removal demo satellite that’s currently in orbit successfully captured and released a client spacecraft using a magnetic system.

The End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission was launched in March, with the goal of validating the company’s orbital debris removal tech. The demonstrator package, which was sent up on a Soyuz rocket that launched from Kazakhstan, included two separate spacecraft: a “servicer” designed to remove space junk, and a “client” that poses as said space junk.

“A major challenge of debris removal, and on-orbit servicing in general, is docking with or capturing a client object; this test demonstration served as a successful validation of ELSA-d’s ability to dock with a client, such as a defunct satellite,” the company explained.

The demonstration today showed that the servicer — a model of Astroscale’s future product — can successfully magnetically capture and release other spacecraft.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

Working in space: China’s space robotic arm in 60 seconds

September 4, 2021

Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, completed their second extravehicular stint with the help of a giant robotic arm on August 20.

Science & Technology News, Trending

Ranked: The World’s Fastest Growing Cities

September 1, 2021

By Avery Koop

By 2025, the world’s population will reach over 8.1 billion people.

Most of that population growth will be concentrated in cities across Africa and Asia. To help paint a detailed picture, this map uses data from the United Nations to rank the top 20 fastest growing cities in the world in terms of average annual growth rate from 2020 to 2025.

Automobiles, Science & Technology News

Mazda Is Working on a New Hydrogen Rotary Engine: Report

August 28, 2021

Remember the RX-8 Hydrogen RE? Probably not, but it’s proof that Mazda has done this before.

BY CHRIS TSUI

While most of the automotive world pivots toward battery-electric, Mazda is apparently following in part-owner Toyota’s footsteps in betting on hydrogen. What’s more, the Hiroshima automaker is said to be pairing the niche energy tech with another niche propulsion method: the rotary. If a new report from Japan’s Best Car Web is to be believed, Mazda is currently working on a hydrogen rotary engine, that is, a rotary engine that runs on hydrogen instead of gasoline.

Decrypted via Google Translate, “Although it is a small scale, development has progressed. As the world has suddenly turned to decarbonization, the view that ‘hydrogen rotary is an important technology’ is rapidly expanding,” a Mazda official reportedly told the publication.

drones, Science & Technology News

UK looks at drones, 3D printing to fix its dimpled roads

August 28, 2021

By Ishveena Singh

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) is launching a multimillion-pound initiative to improve local roads across England. Among other things, this program aims to explore the use of drones and 3D printing technology when it comes to finding and fixing potholes.

According to a bunch of measures announced by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, new and innovative technology such as drones and 3D printing will take center stage in helping England to perk up its dimpled roads that many have likened to the surface of the moon.

The condition is so bad that councils in England and Wales had to fill up 1.7 million potholes in the financial year 2020-21 alone – which is equal to one being fixed every 19 seconds. So now, a red-faced government is committing funds to use advanced technology, such as drones to spot defects in roads and 3D printing to repair cracks.

drones, Science & Technology News

Qualcomm launches world’s first drone platform with both 5G, AI tech

August 27, 2021

By Ishveena Singh

Qualcomm has unveiled the world’s first drone platform and reference design that will tap in both 5G and AI technologies. The chipmaker’s Flight RB5 5G Platform condenses multiple complex technologies into one tightly integrated drone system to support a variety of use cases, including film and entertainment, security and emergency response, delivery, defense, inspection, and mapping.

The new solution is purpose-built for autonomous drones, with Qualcomm aiming to give developers an easy-to-use platform to create premium drones right out of the box.

The Flight RB5 5G Platform is powered by the chipmaker’s QRB5165 processor and builds upon the company’s latest IoT offerings to offer high-performance and heterogeneous computing at ultra-low power consumption.

Along with breakthrough camera capabilities that can deliver 4K HDR video, 200MP photo, and 7-camera concurrency, the platform supports 5G and long-range Wi-Fi 6 connectivity to enhance safer beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) flights.

Science & Technology News, SpaceX

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Shoots for the Moon—by 2024 or Sooner

August 25, 2021

A SpaceX rocket, carrying astronauts, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 23, 2021.

By Al Root

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk said his space company can be ready to go to the moon in the next three years.

Musk said in a Saturday Twitter post responding to a question about the timeline that SpaceX’s lunar lander would be ready for its moon mission “probably sooner” than 2024.

SpaceX won NASA’s lunar lander contract in April, beating Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin and Leidos (ticker: LDOS) unit Dynetics for the job.

The NASA program, dubbed Artemis, is slated to take astronauts, including women, to the moon in 2024. SpaceX will make a reusable lander it calls Starship that will eventually carry people to Mars if Musk’s ultimate ambitions are realized.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

From Exploration to 3D Printing Colonies: NASA Wants 3D Printing Simulation Included in ISS Cargo for Materials

August 25, 2021

By Aubrey Clarke

NASA is including the Redwire Regolith Print (RRP), a printing system, in their preparation for the future Artemis lunar missions. They intend to use the moon’s dusty soil (officially known as regolith) as a printing raw material. Instead of hauling tons of heavy equipment from Earth, the plan is to use readily available resources on the moon to build what is needed.

Engineers want to 3D print with regolith from the moon for a long time, and in fact, they have proven the procedure on Earth possible. Bringing a 3D printer to ISS for testing is a significant step toward making the technology suitable for deployment. The researchers would like to know if printing without gravity is possible and what the strength of the printed material should be.

NASA is including the Redwire Regolith Print (RRP), a printing system, in their preparation for the future Artemis lunar missions. They intend to use the moon’s dusty soil (officially known as regolith) as a printing raw material. Instead of hauling tons of heavy equipment from Earth, the plan is to use readily available resources on the moon to build what is needed.

Engineers want to 3D print with regolith from the moon for a long time, and in fact, they have proven the procedure on Earth possible. Bringing a 3D printer to ISS for testing is a significant step toward making the technology suitable for deployment. The researchers would like to know if printing without gravity is possible and what the strength of the printed material should be.