SXSW Day 4 From Serious Wonder

SXSW (South-by-Southwest) is Austin’s annual festival of panels, expos and keynote presentations oriented around Music, Film and Interactive technology. This year promises some very exciting debuts and startups, which will have a profound impact on how society is shaped and the new directions that technology is currently pushing us towards. Here are some highlights of the…

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Streamlined Stem Cell Production

Japanese scientists have found that stem cell production is as easy as dipping blood cells into acid. STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) is a cell reprogramming method that has successfully reverted blood cells in mice back into stem cells with only a low pH shock of acid. The discovery was published in January’s issue of Nature…

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The Nanoleaf is the Future of Light

Call me what you will, but I think that lighting technology will herald the future faster than anything else. And I think that improved efficiencies in home and commercial lighting indicate how far we’ve come with technological change. But all you care about is flipping the light switch on and off. It seems that the…

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Outing Time Travelers on Social Media

Time travelers on social media beware: you may slip up and post information well ahead of its time. One research study out of Michigan Technological University has sought to uncover undercover travelers who exist among us in our digital present. The study was conducted by physics professor Robert Nemiroff and graduate student Teresa Wilson. Their…

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Introducing the Self-Healing Battery

Self-healing battery electrodes are an exciting development for lithium ion based products. Scientists at Stanford University’s SLAC laboratory have developed electrodes that are able to heal the small cracks in silicon that come from repetitive battery operation, as reported in the Nov. 19th issue of Nature Chemistry. Silicon electrodes are a prized commodity for charging and…

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The Rise of Soft Robotics

One of the more difficult challenges soft robotics aim to fix is the inflexibility of robot technology. Jointed robots are interrupted if conditions impede their performance. For better versatility, researchers are creating robots inspired by invertebrates such as octopuses and earthworms. While they would be slower and weaker than their counterparts, pliable automatons are adaptable,…

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Subway-Generated Heat Could Power Your Home

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”1568983557″ locale=”us” height=”75″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61zkmYzNAWL._SL75_.jpg” width=”74″]Subway-generated heat sets a great precedence for future public transit developments and energy efficiency at home. The sweltering heat that accompanies the comings and goings of London’s Northern Line will be put to use by powering up to 500 homes in the Islington borough. The power plant, Bunhill Heat…

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Infrared Vision May Pave the Way for X-Ray

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B003AUF1XI” locale=”us” height=”75″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41J1H28SZcL._SL75_.jpg” width=”75″]New research on infrared vision could pave the way to ultimately realizing science fiction’s fabled X-ray vision as a viable technology. A research team from the University of Buffalo has found a way to see through multiple layers of graphene sheets in order to identify the electronic properties of…

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2D Tin Tapped as the Next Supermaterial

2D Tin has been discovered as having potential for besting Silicon in microprocessing capabilities and conducting electricity at maximum efficiency. According to researchers at the U. S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, a single layer of tin atoms could be the world’s first material to conduct electricity with 100% efficiency…

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