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Transport Tech 

The Brilliant Sorcery of England’s 7-Circle Magic Roundabout

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I am from a different land—a different time, maybe—where the car people resist the circling. No circles at all costs, they say. Straight ahead is the way forward. But in this place, across the sea, the cars circle in all directions, within and without each other, a tango of mystery. This place is Swindon, they tell me. It is in south England, a land recently torn asunder. They call this swirl of movement the “magic roundabout”. But how does such sorcery work? The roundabout in its common form is already…

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IT 

Applications of Nanoparticles in Biology and Medicine

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Nanotechnology [1] is enabling technology that deals with nano-meter sized objects. It is expected that nanotechnology will be developed at several levels: materials, devices and systems. The nanomaterials level is the most advanced at present, both in scientific knowledge and in commercial applications. A decade ago, nanoparticles were studied because of their size-dependent physical and chemical properties [2]. Now they have entered a commercial exploration period [3,4]. Living organisms are built of cells that are typically 10 μm across. However, the cell parts are much smaller and are in the…

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Transport Tech 

Riversimple launches Rasa, a hydrogen-powered city car for the masses

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A new hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle prototype has been launched with a claimed fuel economy equivalent to 250 mpg (0.9 L/100km). Dubbed “Rasa,” the new car has a lightweight carbon-fiber monocoque shell, in-wheel electric motors, a bank of supercapacitors charged by braking-regeneration, and a host of other features that enable it to travel up to a claimed 300 miles (483 km) on just a 3.3 lb (1.5 kg) tank of hydrogen. A road-legal two-seater engineering prototype, the Rasa by Riversimple Movement Ltd UK has been designed from scratch to meet the company’s brief of…

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Medical Tech 

Transparent skull implant set to ease laser brain surgery

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Researchers at the University of California – Riverside (UCR) report their progress with the new implant material in two recently published journal papers. Their aim is to develop a biocompatible “window to the brain” whereby surgeons will be able to direct laser therapy into patients’ brains on demand, without having to perform repeated craniotomies. Such a material could transform a risky, highly invasive operation into a less risky, minimally invasive one. Brain surgeons use laser therapy to treat patients with life-threatening conditions such as brain cancer, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases.…

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Transport Tech 

Mercedes’ futuristic self-driving bus makes 12-mile journey through Amsterdam

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Mercedes-Benz has brought autonomous public transport another step closer. The automaker unveiled its self-driving Future Bus in Amsterdam yesterday, sending it on a 12-mile route between Schipol airport and the nearby town of Haarlem. The vehicle’s CityPilot program is adapted from Daimler’s Highway Pilot system that aids truck drivers with long-haul highway journeys. Future Bus uses GPS, long- and short-range radars, and 12 cameras to identify pedestrians, obstacles, and bus stops. It can navigate busy city traffic, go through tunnels, and brake when something moves into its path. The bus is able…

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IT 

Virtual Reality Is Coming to Medical Imaging

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The medical-imaging industry is about to get a lot more “real.” New technologies coming to some hospitals and medical schools will allow doctors not only to see three-dimensional pictures produced by imaging equipment such as magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound, but to interact with what is pictured—say, a heart or liver—as if it were real. Using devices such as virtual-reality viewers, as well as styluses or other hardware that provides a feeling of resistance, doctors will be able to take a tour of a patient’s brain, for example, and even…

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Medical Tech 

New Radioactive Tracer Lights Up Brain’s Connections to Study Disorders

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Various brain disorders change the physical nature of synapses in the brain, but this fact has been useless in clinical practice because evaluating these changes could only be done once the patient passes away. Now researchers at Yale University have developed a technique, published on in journal Science Translational Medicine, that relies on PET (positron emission tomography) and a novel tracer to image billions of synapses at the same time. Their radioactive tracer was engineered to grab onto the synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A), which after injection can be viewed on a PET scanner.…

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Transport Tech 

The World’s First 1,000-mph Car Has Been Unveiled

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The world land speed record is in serious jeopardy. That’s because the Bloodhound SSC was unveiled to the world in its final form Thursday in London, and this supersonic chariot won’t just break the land speed record, it’s expected to obliterate it. The Bloodhound represents the collaborative efforts of more than 200 global companies as well as eight years of designing and manufacturing. The team’s efforts have yielded a rocket on wheels that could reach a speed of 1,000 miles per hour — shattering the current world record of 763 mph. The…

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Medical Tech 

E. coli: The ideal transport vehicle for next-gen vaccines?

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Most people recoil at the thought of ingesting E. coli. But what if the headline-grabbing bacteria could be used to fight disease? Researchers experimenting with harmless strains of E. coli — yes, the majority of E. coli are safe and important to healthy human digestion — are working toward that goal. They have developed an E. coli-based transport capsule designed to help next-generation vaccines do a more efficient and effective job than today’s immunizations. The research, described in a study published today (July 1) in the journalScience Advances, highlights the capsule’s…

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IT 

A Brainy New Chip Could Make Computers More Like Humans

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What’s the News: Researchers at IBM have developed a new “cognitive computing” microchip inspired by the brain’s computational tricks. These new chips, the researchers say, could make processors that are more powerful and more efficient than today’s computers—and better at the flexible learning and responses that are a struggle for current AI systems but a breeze for the human brain. How the Heck: IBM has made two prototypes of the new chip, which it calls a “neurosynaptic core.” Both are built on a standard semiconductor platform with 256 “neurons,” the chip’s computational components.RAM units…

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