Science & Technology News – Page 96

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Bio-Inspired Scaffolds Help Promote Muscle Growth

May 25, 2021

Aligned myotubes formed on electrospun extracellular matrix scaffolds produced at Rice University. The staining with fluorescent tags shows cells’ expression of myogenic marker desmin (green), actin (red) and nuclei (blue) after seven days of growth. Credit: Mikos

Original story from Rice University

Rice University bioengineers are fabricating and testing tunable electrospun scaffolds completely derived from decellularized skeletal muscle to promote the regeneration of injured skeletal muscle.

Their paper in Science Advances shows how natural extracellular matrix can be made to mimic native skeletal muscle and direct the alignment, growth and differentiation of myotubes, one of the building blocks of skeletal muscle. The bioactive scaffolds are made in the lab via electrospinning, a high-throughput process that can produce single micron-scale fibers.

The research could ease the burden of performing an estimated 4.5 million reconstructive surgeries per year to repair injuries suffered by civilians and military personnel.

Current methods of electrospinning decellularized muscle require a copolymer to aid in scaffold fabrication. The Rice process does not.

“The major innovation is the ability to prepare scaffolds that are 100% extracellular matrix,” said Rice bioengineer and principal investigator Antonios Mikos. “That’s very important because the matrix includes all the signaling motifs that are important for the formation of the particular tissue.”

Science & Technology News, Space

Why NASA is building a gigantic telescope on the far side of the Moon

May 24, 2021

NASA’s Lunar Crater Radio Telescope could help us study the cosmic dark ages

STORY BY The Cosmic Companion, Exploring the wonders of the Cosmos, one mystery at a time.

Following the Big Bang, our budding Universe slowly cooled, and the first atoms took shape. Gravity gradually pulled on clumps of hydrogen and helium gas, forming the earliest stars. This era, lasting a few hundred million years prior to the large-scale formation of stars, is called the cosmic dark ages.

The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), an ambitious concept to place a massive radio telescope on the far side of the Moon, would study the Universe during this ancient era in detail for the very first time.

“While there were no stars, there was ample hydrogen during the universe’s Dark Ages — hydrogen that would eventually serve as the raw material for the first stars. With a sufficiently large radio telescope off Earth, we could track the processes that would lead to the formation of the first stars, maybe even find clues to the nature of dark matter,” explained Joseph Lazio, radio astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of the LCRT team.

Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News

Canoo’s first consumer ‘lifestyle vehicle’ will cost almost $35,000

May 24, 2021

By Nicole Lee

Back in 2019, Canoo had a bold plan to sell a subscription-only EV. Now, however, it appears that plan has been shelved, at least temporarily. The company announced today that the futuristic-looking van, officially called the “Lifestyle Vehicle,” will have a starting price of $34,750. The price can be as high as $49,950 before incentives or optional equipment. Starting today, you can reserve one of your own for a $100 deposit. The Lifestyle Vehicle will arrive in 2022.

On top of that, the company also announced that its MPDV (which starts at $33,000) and pickup truck can be reserved for a $100 deposit as well. Deliveries for those vehicles, however, are slated for 2023.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

NCSU researchers’ 3D-printable jelly could boost biomedical materials

May 24, 2021

Researchers develop a 3D-printable jelly that is strong and flexible. Photo courtesy of Orlin Velev, NC State University.

by Mick Kulikowski .

RALEIGH – 3D-printable gels with improved and highly controlled properties can be created by merging micro- and nano-sized networks of the same materials harnessed from seaweed, according to new research from North Carolina State University. The findings could have applications in biomedical materials – think of biological scaffolds for growing cells – and soft robotics.

Described in the journal Nature Communications, the findings show that these water-based gels – called homocomposite hydrogels – are both strong and flexible. They are composed of alginates – chemical compounds found in seaweed and algae that are commonly used as thickening agents and in wound dressings.

Merging different-size scale networks of the same alginate together eliminates the fragility that can sometimes occur when differing materials are merged together in a hydrogel, says Orlin Velev, S. Frank and Doris Culberson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State and corresponding author of the paper.

Ford Motor Company, Science & Technology News

Ford follows Tesla into in-car gaming with new software update, also adds Amazon Alexa

May 24, 2021

Updates available to about 100,000 owners of 2021 model year F-150s, Mustang Mach-Es and the upcoming Bronco

By Frank Miles

Ford says it is starting to send out in-car gaming with over-the-internet software updates to some of its newer models as the auto giant moves to offer technology to match electric car maker Tesla.

For now, the updates are only available to about 100,000 owners of 2021 model year F-150s, Mustang Mach-Es and the upcoming Bronco, but Ford plans to spread the tech across its entire lineup as models are updated. It plans to make 33 million vehicles with the capability by 2028.

Aviation, Science & Technology News

World’s First Electric Luxury Commuter Plane Alice Aims to Reinvent Air Mobility

May 23, 2021

By Elena Gorgan

The electric revolution is slow in coming to the automotive industry, but that’s nothing compared to the snail-like crawl it’s displaying in aviation. Alice wants to change all that and, in the process, shake up the game.

Alice is dubbed the world’s first electric luxury commuter airplane. It’s the first aircraft from Israeli-American company Eviation, and it comes with an estimated delivery date for 2024. This year, Eviation hopes to take Alice on its first test flights ahead of a 2023 certification.

Alice has been around for years, in one form or another, and it’s one of those few projects of this type that are both instantly memorable and extremely promising. It’s a proper passenger plane, so not an eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft), and it’s meant for commuting across short distances. It’s also very luxurious and quite beautiful.

First announced in 2017, Alice is now officially gearing up to take to the skies. A prototype was developed and unveiled in 2019, but it burned down in a fire in 2020. A static model was presented at the Paris Air Show and, had it not been for the health crisis of 2020, Alice would have started test flights. Not that 2020 was able to put a damper on its progress: Eviation has been working hard to advance the project and, at the same time, keep investors and potential customers in the loop.

Augmented Reality, Science & Technology News

First spinal surgery with augmented reality headset takes place

May 23, 2021

Dr. Kornelis Poelstra, director of The Robotic Spine Institute of Las Vegas, recently led the first-ever spinal surgery procedure using an xvision augmented reality headset paired with a surgical robot.

Dr. Poelstra and his practice, in partnership with The Nevada Spine Clinic, completed the posterior lumbar fusion procedure on a patient using a combination of Medtronic’s Mazor X robotic platform integrated with Augmedics’ newly FDA-approved xvision.

Normally a fairly invasive and lengthy surgery lasting anywhere between six to seven hours, this particular patient’s procedure using the xvision headset in tandem with the Mazor X robot brought the surgery time down to just under two hours.

This is because the xvision headset allows for the surgeon and his team to more precisely identify and pinpoint where to place the implants, in this case a proprietary superalloy MoRe (Molybdenum-Rhenium) lower-profile 4.5mm rod, paired with the MiRusEuropa Pedicle Screw System.

brain hacking, Science & Technology News

Man paralyzed from neck down uses AI brain implants to write out text messages

May 23, 2021

Read my blips

By Katyanna Quach

A combination of brain implants and a neural network helped a 65-year-old man paralyzed from the neck down type out text messages on a computer at 90 characters per minute, faster than any other known brain-machine interface.

The patient, referred to as T5 in a research paper published [preprint] in Nature on Wednesday, is the first person to test the technology, which was developed by a team of researchers led by America’s Stanford University.

Two widgets were attached to the surface of T5’s brain; the devices featured hundreds of fine electrodes that penetrated about a millimetre into the patient’s gray matter. The test subject was then asked to imagine writing out 572 sentences over the course of three days. These text passages contained all the letters of the alphabet as well as punctuation marks. T5 was asked to represent spaces in between words using the greater than symbol, >.

Signals from the electrodes were then given to a recurrent neural network as input. The model was trained to map each specific reading from T5’s brain to the corresponding character as output. The brain wave patterns recorded from thinking about handwriting the letter ‘a’, for example, were distinct from the ones produced when imagining writing the letter ‘b’. Thus, the software could be trained to associate the signals for ‘a’ with the letter ‘a’, and so on, so that as the patient thought about writing each character in a sentence, the neural net would decode the train of brain signals into the desired characters.

With a data set of 31,472 characters, the machine learning algorithm was able to learn how to decode T5’s brain signals to each character he was trying to write correctly about 94 per cent of the time. The characters were then displayed so he was able to communicate.

Higher Education, Science & Technology News

Why the Business Education of the Future Won’t be at Wharton or Stanford

May 22, 2021

In that same study, 97% of companies said customer education impacts their overall revenue by increasing brand awareness, boosting product usage and decreasing churn. Yet 68% believe they could be using customer education to derive even more value—a gap that Academy Builders aims to fill.

By Emily Hubbell

As you read this article, 31.7 million small businesses are operating across the United States, delivering the goods and services that fuel a strong economy. The lifeblood of the nation, these small businesses employ 60.6 million workers; that’s nearly 50% of all U.S. employees. They create two-thirds of new jobs and represent 44% of our domestic economic activity.. Think those statistics are impressive? Get ready to watch them explode.

Before COVID-19, Bain & Company predicted that the number of entrepreneurs and small businesses in the U.S. would skyrocket to 70 million by 2030. Now, the number of Americans who own a company could eclipse 100 million in that same timeframe—a shift triggered more by necessity than opportunity. Artificial intelligence could eliminate more than 20% of current jobs by the end of the decade. And then there’s the recession, which has historically inspired high levels of entrepreneurship. But no matter the impetus for starting a business, there’s one common thread: More entrepreneurs than ever are entering the role unprepared—and unable to afford business school as a source of training.

Business owners are good for the economy. They fuel innovation, increase competition and create high-quality jobs. But as the number of entrepreneurs skyrockets, it raises a critical question: How can we educate small business owners affordably and at scale? For a growing group of innovators, the answer is “customer education:” a market segment that shifts small business training away from universities and toward the companies that entrepreneurs do business with. Among the leaders shaping this emerging space is Scott Duffy, whose Academy Builders, Inc., is launching as the race to disrupt entrepreneur education accelerates.

quantum computing, Science & Technology News

New Intel Horse Ridge Cryogenic Chip Offers High-Fidelity Two-Qubit Control: A Major Quantum Computing Breakthrough

May 22, 2021

By Griffin Davis

Intel collaborates with QuTech, an advanced research center for quantum internet and quantum computing, to develop a new cryogenic control SoC called the Horse Ridge. The tech giant manufacturer claimed that this new chipset is a breakthrough in quantum computing.

A “Mistral” supercomputer, installed in 2016, at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ, or Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum) on June 7, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. The DKRZ provides HPC (high performance computing) and associated services for climate research institutes in Germany. Its high performance computer and storage systems have been specifically selected with respect to climate and Earth system modeling.

Right now, researchers and experts are finding it hard to understand quantum computations since they are complex mathematical equations. On the other hand, they also deal with quantum states, specifically superposition and entanglement.

Because of these, traditional computers are currently unable to perform quantum computations because they don’t have the ability to harness the phenomenon of quantum mechanics. Since this is the case, experts are forced to create quantum supercomputers that are specifically developed to perform quantum computing.
And now, Intel also developed a new SoC that could be used in these special desktops.

To help you have more idea about it, here are other details of Intel’s new Horse Ridge.

Batteries, Science & Technology News

‘HOLY GRAIL’ BATTERY BREAKTHROUGH SEES SCIENTISTS SOLVE 40-YEAR PROBLEM

May 22, 2021

Lithium-metal batteries hold far more energy and charge in a fraction of the time compared to those used in smartphones and electric cars

By Anthony Cuthbertson

Researchers have demonstrated a solution to a 40-year problem regarding the creation of a “holy grail” battery that could radically transform the electric car industry.

The breakthrough involves harnessing the power of lithium-metal batteries, which are capable of holding substantially more energy and charge in a fraction of the time compared to lithium-ion batteries that are currently used in everything from smartphones to Tesla vehicles.

Until now, scientists have been unable to create a lithium-metal battery stable enough to be used in commercial applications.

The development, made by a team at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), allows this next-generation batter to be charged and discharge at least 10,000 times, which would increase the lifetime of electric vehicles to that of of their gasoline counterparts – while simultaneously increasing their range and reducing their charge time.

“A lithium-metal battery is considered the holy grail for battery chemistry because of its high capacity and energy density,” said Xin Li, an associate professor at SEAS.

City Planning, Science & Technology News

Toyota’s Futuristic Woven City Will Be Powered by Hydrogen

May 21, 2021

By Cristina Mircea

The fact that Toyota started to build its own 175-acre city of the future it’s already yesterday’s news. It is happening and it’s going to be a society of the future, fully automated, sustainable and interconnected using AI technology. But what we didn’t know up until now was how they’re planning to power the entire ecosystem. Turns out they’re going to use hydrogen energy.

Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota, which is responsible for the prototype city, recently announced in a press release (you can peruse it in its dedicated section below the article) that it partnered with ENEOS, a major Japanese player in the hydrogen business. The goal is to create a hydrogen-based society and to become carbon-neutral at the same time, by 2050, according to their estimates.

Toyota and ENEOS are going to test the hydrogen-based supply chain in and around Woven City, from the production phase to delivery and usage. The Japanese carmaker sees hydrogen as one of the cleanest energy sources available and tries to explore and implement the hydrogen and fuel cell technology as much as it can.