If you think at something difficult to break and resistant you won’t think to glass. How many time did you hear: “be careful, it is glass!”? Well it turns out that glass can be strong, even stronger than steel. It just a matter of how you manufacture it. If you …
Read More »Tickling a bug … it takes advanced robotics
I should say I never felt the need to tickle a bug, not even sure if tickling is something that bugs experience, like/dislike. Yet a team of researchers at the Ritsumeikan University noticed that with our big human fingers it would be impossible to “tickle” a bug and therefore took …
Read More »Smart windows are, still, around the corner
Many of our homes have double, even triple glass panes windows. Adding glass panes provides better heat and sound insulation, saving money and providing enhanced comfort. The characteristics of these windows do not change with seasons, they remain the same in Winter as in Summer. Yet, the problem in Winter …
Read More »MXene: the marvel of alloys
There are 92 elements in the periodic table (118 if you want to include the artificial ones) and they can be combines in gazillions of ways, not just in terms of placing two or more different atoms together, also by placing them in different 3D structures. Each of the resulting …
Read More »From gene editing to gene writing
The discovery of the DNA first and the sequencing of the human genome have created huge expectation for a future where it would be possible to radically cure/stop genetic diseases (and there are over 6,000 genetic disorders already identified). Clearly the first step is to understand what might be wrong …
Read More »Vantablack in Nature
Some two years ago I published two posts on Vantablack, a black that is “blacker” than any black you see around. It was invented, created, by researchers using carbon nanotubes able to absorb 99.965% of light, practically creating a black void with no reflection to the point that a Vantablack …
Read More »Robotics: learning from spiders
Nature had billion of years to try solutions and select the ones that worked best. The process has been completely random hence resulting in many dead-end, but what we see around us is something that has worked out. It might seem impossible that something as complex as an eye can …
Read More »Post-Pandemic Scenarios – XXVIII – Robots and Company 3
Soft Robotics Robots have been associated with something “hard”, most likely because their roots are in the world of mechanics, being built with cogs and bars. That was something that was clearly setting them apart from living things that are all made by some soft substance (we call it flesh….). …
Read More »Post-Pandemic Scenarios – XXI – How smart can a smart home become?
Smart, smart home Using smart materials it will be possible to build walls that change their characteristics, like become more or less insulating depending on the inside-outside temperature and the one we feel comfortable, thus decreasing the use of heating/cooling. They can also change their surface reflectivity, again to improve …
Read More »Sutures that heal and monitor
Sutures have been used for thousands of years by all civilisation. We have testimony of sutures using vegetable fibres, even sutures using the claws of some type of insects. Of course, modern medicine is no longer using these “natural” materials having been able to leverage on much better materials created …
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