It encourages wearers to take more steps, covering distances more quickly than they could without it.
A wearable exoskeleton can help runners increase their speed by encouraging them to take more steps, allowing them to cover short distances more quickly.
While previous studies have focused on how wearable exoskeletons can help people reduce the energy they expend while running, the new study, published today in Science Robotics, examines how wearable robots can assist runners as they sprint.
A team of mechanical engineers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has found a way to electronically control cockroaches without injuring them. In their paper published in the journal npj Flexible Electronics, the group describes the new technology they used to remotely control the cockroaches and the benefits of doing so.
Prior research teams have created a variety of cyborg cockroaches, but they all had one feature in common—they all involved attaching probes to the insect’s nervous system—procedures that led to damage to the insect, and likely some degree of pain.
In this new effort, the researchers noted that damaging cockroaches during attempts to control them results in a very short life expectancy, which then results in very little payoff for a lot of work. They also suggest such research is unethical because of the pain inflicted on the cockroaches. In this new effort, they have found a way to control cockroaches that does not involve cutting into them, resulting in a much longer lifespan.
This processor is the first to be built on the Intel 4 (7nm) architecture.
Intel, the PC silicon giant, has recently made a significant announcement that’s set to revolutionize its mobile processor line. On Tuesday, at the Intel Innovation event, the company unveiled its highly anticipated Meteor Lake processors, now known as Core Ultra chips. This is after Intel decided to do away with the Core “i” designation in June 2023. It is slated for release on December 14, and laptops coming out in the first quarter of 2024 should start adopting the new chips. While this news is undoubtedly exciting for tech enthusiasts, it also raises important questions for consumers: Will Intel-powered Windows… More.
Source: Intel Corporation.
Meteor Lake isn’t just another processor in Intel’s lineup; it represents a pivotal moment in the company’s evolution. This processor is the first to be built on the “Intel 4” (7nm) architecture, a significant leap forward in terms of efficiency and power from the 12th and 13th gen Alder Lake and Raptor Lake CPUs. Competitors like Apple already leapfrogged into the world’s first 3nm process with the announcement of Apple’s A17 Bionic Pro on the iPhone 15 Pro lineup. But those are based on ARM architecture, while Intel is on the classic x86-64 ones.
Aiming to be first in the world to have the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence while also maintaining control over more than a billion people, elite Chinese scientists and their government have turned to something new, and very old, for inspiration—the human brain.
Equipped with surveillance and visual processing capabilities modelled on human vision, the new “brain” will be more effective, less energy hungry, and will “improve governance,” its developers say. “We call it bionic retina computing,” Gao Wen, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, wrote in the paper “City Brain: Challenges and Solution.”
What do pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, Iron Man and flu vaccines all have in common? They are examples of an old idea that’s been gaining in significance in the last several decades: transhumanism. The word denotes a set of ideas relating to the increasing integration of humans with their technologies. At the heart of the transhuman conversation, however, lies the oldest question of all: What does it mean to be human?
When talking about transhumanism, it’s easy to get lost because the definition is imprecise. “Transhumanism” can refer to the Transhumanist (with a capital T) movement, which actively pursues a technologically enhanced future, or an amorphous body of ideas and technologies that are closing the bio-techno gap, such as a robotic exoskeleton that enhances the natural strength of the wearer.
At Arizona State University, a diverse set of researchers has been critically examining transhumanism since 2004.
Digesting a crunchy critter starts with the audible grinding of its rigid protective covering — the exoskeleton. Unpalatable as it may sound, the hard cover might be good for the metabolism, according to a new study, in mice, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers, led by Steven Van Dyken, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology & immunology, found in mice that digesting chitin, an abundant dietary fiber in insect exoskeletons and also mushrooms and crustacean shells, engages the immune system. An active immune response was linked to less weight gain, reduced body fat and a resistance to obesity. “Obesity is an epidemic,” Van Dyken said. “What we put into our bodies has a profound effect on our physiology and on how we metabolize food. We’re investigating ways to counteract obesity based on what we learn about how the immune system is engaged by diet.”
Findings, in mice, suggest engaging immune system with such fiber to counteract obesity.
Serious vision loss affects millions of Americans each year, and biological strategies are still decades away from restoring eyesight lost to macular degeneration. But University of Oregon researchers are looking to create an electronic solution — a bionic eye — that could restore people’s sight. They’re tapping into the world of fractal structures that will allow a retinal implant and a human brain to communicate with each other.
What do you think? China is doing it. The West is going to have to keep up. Have you seen the Netflix series Altered Carbon? It’s like that.
A U.S. Army video shows its concept of the soldier of the future. At first glance, it looks like it will only be a better-equipped soldier.
But the video mentions “neural enhancement.” That can mean a brain implant that connects a human to computers. The defense agency DARPA has been working on an advanced implant that would essentially put the human brain “online.” There could also be eye and ear implants and other circuitry under the skin to make the optimal fighting machine.
Americans will have to decide whether this is ethical because some in our military clearly want it.
FULL REPORT: https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/national-security/2021/april/ne…-soldiers.
For now, cyborgs exist only in fiction, but the concept is becoming more plausible as science progresses. And now, researchers are reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters that they have developed a proof-of-concept technique to “tattoo” living cells and tissues with flexible arrays of gold nanodots and nanowires. With further refinement, this method could eventually be used to integrate smart devices with living tissue for biomedical applications, such as bionics and biosensing.
Advances in electronics have enabled manufacturers to make integrated circuits and sensors with nanoscale resolution. More recently, laser printing and other techniques have made it possible to assemble flexible devices that can mold to curved surfaces. But these processes often use harsh chemicals, high temperatures or pressure extremes that are incompatible with living cells. Other methods are too slow or have poor spatial resolution. To avoid these drawbacks, David Gracias, Luo Gu and colleagues wanted to develop a nontoxic, high-resolution, lithographic method to attach nanomaterials to living tissue and cells.
The team used nanoimprint lithography to print a pattern of nanoscale gold lines or dots on a polymer-coated silicon wafer. The polymer was then dissolved to free the gold nanoarray so it could be transferred to a thin piece of glass. Next, the gold was functionalized with cysteamine and covered with a hydrogel layer, which, when peeled away, removed the array from the glass. The patterned side of this flexible array/hydrogel layer was coated with gelatin and attached to individual live fibroblast cells. In the final step, the hydrogel was degraded to expose the gold pattern on the surface of the cells. The researchers used similar techniques to apply gold nanoarrays to sheets of fibroblasts or to rat brains. Experiments showed that the arrays were biocompatible and could guide cell orientation and migration.
Robots based on soft materials are often better at replicating the appearance, movements and abilities of both humans and animals. While there are now countless soft robots, many of these are difficult to produce on a large-scale, due to the high cost of their components or their complex fabrication process.
Researchers at University of Coimbra in Portugal recently developed a new soft robotic hand that could be more affordable and easier to fabricate. Their design, introduced in Cyborg and Bionic Systems, integrates soft actuators with an exoskeleton, both of which can be produced using scalable techniques.
“Most robots are made of rigid materials,” Pedro Neto, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “However, when we observe animals, we notice that their bodies can be composed of hard parts (skeletons) and soft parts (such as muscles). Some animals, like earthworms, are entirely soft-bodied. Taking inspiration from nature, we anticipate that the next generation of robots will incorporate components made of soft materials or, in some cases, they can be entirely soft-bodied.”