For the 2 billion people in the world who still lack sanitation, Caltech is creating a cheap, safe, and clean toilet. But building this cool product is really the easy part.
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Magic ‘metamaterials’ taking physics by storm
“Metamaterials” that can be designed to have surprising properties have many physicists abuzz. Continue reading… “Magic ‘metamaterials’ taking physics by storm”
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This Gates-funded toilet will change how we think about poop
Yan Qu and Clement Cid spend a lot more time thinking about poop than your average academics. The pair, both at Caltech, are part of a team working on what could be the future of bathrooms: a self-cleaning, solar-powered toilet that turns human waste into hydrogen and fertilizer.
Continue reading… “This Gates-funded toilet will change how we think about poop”
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Microchip heals itself after being blasted by lasers
A computer chip that can heal its own injuries.
Our technologies are becoming more biological with each passing year. And here’s the latest breakthrough: Caltech engineers have developed an integrated computer chip that can learn to heal its own injuries.
Continue reading… “Microchip heals itself after being blasted by lasers”
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Scientists Develop a $1.50 Lens-Free Microscope
Optofluidic microscope
Using a $1.50 digital camera sensor, scientists at Caltech have created the simplest and cheapest lens-free microscope yet. Such a device could have many applications, including helping diagnose disease in the developing world, and enabling rapid screening of new drugs.
Continue reading… “Scientists Develop a $1.50 Lens-Free Microscope”
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A Shatterproof Ceramic That Could Be Used To Make Lightweight Vehicles
A tough ceramic’s structure mimics that of abalone shells.
Ceramics are lightweight and hard, but you can’t make jet engines out of them because they’d shatter like dinner plates. So, materials scientists have been trying to mimic natural materials that combine strength (a measure of resistance to deformation) with toughness (a measure of resistance to fracture). In particular, they’ve looked to the porous but resilient material called nacre that lines abalone shells. Now researchers have developed a method for manufacturing nacre-like materials in the lab. These new materials have mechanical properties similar to metal alloys and are the toughest ceramics ever made. The new method could lead the way to ceramic structural materials for energy-efficient buildings and lightweight but resilient automobile frames.
Continue reading… “A Shatterproof Ceramic That Could Be Used To Make Lightweight Vehicles”
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Ten Minute Blood Test To Identify Cancer Proteins
A microfluidic chip identifies 35 proteins in a drop of blood within 10 minutes.
Measuring proteins in the blood can help doctors determine patients’ cancer risk and monitor the health of the elderly and people with chronic diseases. But current methods for testing these proteins are too expensive and require too much blood to be performed regularly. A microfluidic chip in clinical trials does on a single chip in 10 minutes what normally takes multiple technicians hours to do–and with just a single drop of blood. Researchers hope to make bedside diagnostics based on blood proteins a reality by bringing down the cost of such tests by at least an order of magnitude.
Continue reading… “Ten Minute Blood Test To Identify Cancer Proteins”
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