News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Biomedical engineers have built simple machines out of DNA, consisting of arrays whose units switch reversibly between two different shapes. The arrays' inventors say they could be harnessed to make nanotech sensors or amplifiers. Potentially, they could be combined to form logic gates, the parts of a molecular computer.

Today Scientists have called for action. The scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution have published a joint statement from scientists at Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen and North Carolina State University. The scientists call attention to a serious lack of data on the worldwide distribution of disease-causing organisms. Without this knowledge, predicting where and when the next disease outbreak will emerge is hardly possible. Macroecologists hold the expertise to create the needed data network and close the knowledge gaps.

To help scientists take advantage of huge numbers of low-quality patient brain scans, a team of MIT researchers has devised a way to boost the quality of these MRI scans so that they can be used for large scale studies of how strokes affect different people.

A team from Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, the LMU Munich, and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany, has engineered highly versatile metafluorophores by integrating commonly used small fluorescent probes into self-folding DNA structures where their colors and brightness can be digitally programmed. This nanotechnological approach offers a palette of 124 virtual colors for microscopic imaging.

High-strength, lightweight steels can finally be processed on an industrial scale, thanks to a breakthrough in controlling undesired brittle stages from production, by WMG, University of Warwick.

The new technique could have significant implications in the development of micromotors and optical devices for use in solar cell optics. 'What we ultimately hope to achieve is a highly accurate, passive technology for use in a concentrated solar device that would follow the sun without the need for a mechanical tracking mechanism,' says Dr. Avi Niv, study co-author.

Vanderbilt engineers have designed a 'granular jamming cap' filled with coffee grounds that can improve the accuracy of the sophisticated 'GPS' system that surgeons use for nose and throat surgery.

A recent discovery by Stanford University scientists could lead to a new, more sustainable way to make ethanol without corn or other crops. This promising technology has three basic components: water, carbon dioxide and electricity delivered through a copper catalyst.