INSIDER

Plastics can be made scratch-proof and flame-proof, or given antibacterial properties through the addition of nano-sized additives mixed in with the pellets of plastic during the manufacturing process. However, the particle distribution within the plastic compound must be absolutely precise. A new device being...

How can you measure forces acting between two components within a device without drilling holes or sticking on a sensor? Researchers at the Technischen Universität Darmstadt, Germany, have developed a simple solution: a screw with an integrated sensor.

Electromagnetic fields can interfere with or damage electronic devices. Electromagnetic radiation is invisible to people. A new measuring instrument being developed by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Muenchen, Germany, can help determine the strength, frequency, and direction of the attack.

A team of researchers from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made the first battery electrode that heals itself, opening a new and potentially commercially viable path for making the next generation of lithium ion batteries.

Scientists at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, have taken a quantum leap toward understanding the exciting phenomenon of superconductivity. They have created the world’s smallest SQUID, a Superconducting QUantum Interference Device, used to measure magnetic fields, breaking the world...

A team of researchers at Kansas State University, Manhattan, are developing improvements for astronauts' outerwear. The team, which includes electrical and computer engineering professors and more than a dozen students, envisions a future spacesuit that could monitor astronauts'...

A team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, have received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for its project to perfect the technology to steer a robotic catheter through the heart’s beating chambers using the push and pull of magnetic fields while...

Researchers from the Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry in the University of Helsinki’s Department of Chemistry in Finland have managed to draw in an alcohol-based solution using laser light. The research was published in the journal, Macromolecules.

A researcher at Western New England University, Springfield, MA, has created a novel hand-held, noninvasive monitoring device that uses multilayer nanotechnology to detect acetone has been shown to correlate with blood-glucose levels in the breath of diabetics. Ronny Priefer, PhD, created the...

A team of researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo, and Microsoft Research have developed a novel method to rapidly and inexpensively make electrical circuits by printing them with commodity inkjet printers and off-the-shelf materials. For about $300 in equipment costs, anyone can produce working...

Microbeam radiation therapy (MRT) provides tremendous promise for cancer patients due to its ability to destroy tumor cells while protecting surrounding healthy tissue. Yet its clinical use has been limited by the size of the massive electron accelerators called synchrotrons needed to generate the...

Nitric oxide (NO) carries messages within the brain and coordinates immune system functions. It appears to have contradictory roles in cancer progression, and researchers at MIT in Cambridge, MA, are working to understand this better by creating a new tool to measure it in the body in real time. They have...

A team of scientists from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Laser Zentrum Hannover have discovered that a naturally-occurring compound called riboflavin, which is better known as vitamin B2, can be incorporated into 3D printing processes to...

Breast cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer and cancer deaths among women worldwide. Routine screening can increase breast cancer survival by detecting the disease early when it is most treatable. A new imaging tool, called a photoacoustic mammoscope, being developed by a team of researchers at the...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) involves an immune system attack against the central nervous system and causes progressive paralysis by destroying nerve cells and the spinal cord. It interrupts vision, balance, and even thinking. Although there is still no cure, there are some medications and alternative treatments that may...

A team of engineers at the University of Colorado at Boulder say that they have successfully added a fourth dimension to their printing technology, opening up exciting possibilities for the creation and use of adaptive, composite materials in manufacturing, packaging, and biomedical applications.

While sutures have evolved over millennia, and catgut gave way to synthetics for stitching up injuries and surgical wounds, the basic process of suturing tissue remains the same. However, the method may finally have become outdated, say a team of researchers at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY.

Researchers at Kiel University, Kiel, Germany, have been studying the role of adhesion in nature, which allows insects and lizards to climb walls, plants to twine up structures, and even bacteria cling to surfaces. During evolution, many of these develop mushroom-shaped adhesive structures and organs,...

According to a study of 69,000 Medicare patient records led by researchers at The Johns Hopkins Hospital's Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Spine Outcomes Research Center, people with spine compression fractures who undergo operations to strengthen back bones with cement survive...

A small, wireless capsule has been developed by a team of doctors and engineers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, that, they say, can restore the sense of touch that surgeons are losing as they shift increasingly from open to laparoscopy or minimally invasive surgery.

While most artificial feet and limbs work well to restore mobility to people who have lost a leg, few provide a natural gait. As a result, more than half of all amputees suffer a fall every year, compared to about one-third of people over age 65. To find a better way of restoring natural motion to artificial...

A study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), New York, NY, researchers suggests that narrow-spectrum ultraviolet (UV) light could dramatically reduce surgical infections without damaging human tissue.

New research at the University of Chicago is laying the groundwork for touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs that one day could convey real-time sensory information to amputees via a direct interface with the brain.

The world’s largest smartphone chipmaker, Qualcomm, says it wants to start helping partners manufacture a radically different kind of a chip—a neuro-inspired chip that mimics the neural structures and processing methods found in the brain. This approach could enable machines to perform complex tasks while consuming...

A team of scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington used mathematical modeling to develop a computer simulation that they hope will one day improve the treatment of dangerous reactions to medical implants such as stents, catheters, and artificial joints.

The silk of the venomous brown recluse spider could be the key to creating new super-sticky films and wafer-thin electronics and sensors for medical implants that are highly compatible with the human body. So says a team of scientists from Oxford University, UK, and The College of William and Mary,...

Measuring blood flow in the laboratory to study ailments like migraines or strokes and designing new ways to address them can be accomplished using laser speckle contrast imaging. However, this requires expensive professional-grade imaging equipment. Researchers at the University of Texas at...

Small cubes with no exterior moving parts can propel themselves forward, jump on top of each other, and snap together to form arbitrary shapes, say researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Known as M-Blocks, the robots are cubes with no external moving parts. Nonetheless, they’re able to...

Laser-based technology could make brain tumor surgery more accurate by allowing surgeons to better identify cancer tissue from normal brain tissue at a microscopic level during surgery. This could allow them to avoid leaving behind cells that could spawn a new tumor, say a team of...