Tag Archives: smart materials

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 …

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 …

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 …

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….). …

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 …

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 …

The digital cameras embedded in smartphones have made incredible progresses, killing point and shoot cameras and now getting close to kill reflex cameras. The quality of the photos has improved thanks to electronics (better digital sensors and faster processing chip) and to software (computational photography). What has seen very little …

For quite some time the focus of researchers working on creating an artificial hand/limb has been on functionality, and rightly so. How can we create an artificial hand that can be controlled by the person’s brain via the stump? Researchers have discovered that the brain of a person with an …

17. Brain Computer Interfaces The connection of our brain to a computer was in a way imprinted in the name that many gave to the earlier ideas of computers: “Electronic Brains”. If they are both “brains” it makes sense to look for a connection among them: easier said than done. …

If you open the hood of your car you’ll see, among many other parts, the battery. Take an electric car and you’ll see plenty of batteries. Researchers and engineers have been at work for a while to remove those batteries and embedding them into the car’s chassis and the bodywork …