New remote-controlled microrobots for medical operations

For the past few years, scientists around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots to better treat a variety of diseases. The robots are designed to enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine.

EPFL scientist Selman Sakar teamed up with Hen-Wei Huang and Bradley Nelson at ETHZ to develop a simple and versatile method for building such bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features. They also created a platform for testing several robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion. Their work, published in Nature Communications, produced complex reconfigurable microrobots that can be manufactured with high throughput. They built an integrated manipulation platform that can remotely control the robots' mobility with electromagnetic fields, and cause them to shape-shift using heat.

A robot that looks and moves like a bacterium

Unlike conventional robots, these microrobots are soft, flexible, and motor-less. They are made of a biocompatible hydrogel and magnetic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have two functions. They give the microrobots their shape during the manufacturing process, and make them move and swim when an electromagnetic field is applied.

Building one of these microrobots involves several steps. First, the nanoparticles are placed inside layers of a biocompatible hydrogel. Then an electromagnetic field is applied to orientate the nanoparticles at different parts of the robot, followed by a polymerization step to "solidify" the hydrogel. After this, the robot is placed in water where it folds in specific ways depending on the orientation of the nanoparticles inside the gel, to form the final overall 3D architecture of the microrobot.

Once the final shape is achieved, an electromagnetic field is used to make the robot swim. Then, when heated, the robot changes shape and "unfolds." This fabrication approach allowed the researchers to build microrobots that mimic the bacterium that causes African trypanosomiasis, otherwise known as sleeping sickness. This particular bacterium uses a flagellum for propulsion, but hides it away once inside a person's bloodstream as a survival mechanism.

The researchers tested different microrobot designs to come up with one that imitates this behavior. The prototype robot presented in this work has a bacterium-like flagellum that enables it to swim. When heated with a laser, the flagellum wraps around the robot's body and is "hidden."

A better understanding of how bacteria behave

"We show that both a bacterium's body and its flagellum play an important role in its movement," said Sakar. "Our new production method lets us test an array of shapes and combinations to obtain the best motion capability for a given task. Our research also provides valuable insight into how bacteria move inside the human body and adapt to changes in their microenvironment."

For now, the microrobots are still in development. "There are still many factors we have to take into account," says Sakar. "For instance, we have to make sure that the microrobots won't cause any side-effects in patients."

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Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Awesome Brick Creator

Amazing

REFINING OF CRUDE OIL

Ever wondered what the refining of crude oil Entails to get subsidiary products like

AGO - Automotive Gas & Oils ( Diesel/Gas)

DPK - Dual Purpose Kerosene. Actually it is multi-purpose kerosene for highway and non-highway use (turbine engines, farm equipment, railroad equipment, etc) 

PMS - Premium Motor Spirit. Another name for gasoline. 

Jet A1 - Common jet engine fuel with a lower freezing temperature than Jet-A


Well watch a Simulation of the fractional distillation of crude Oil into these various components Below:

COULSON AND RICHARDSON 4TH EDITION

You Can hardly graduate as a Chemical Engineer, without a copy of this....

Shear and Moment, a Prerequisite For Civil Engineering Constructions

Ever wondered How well calculated, Construction and erection of bridges Stand solidly on platforms? Building of sky scrapers and tower that withstand tonnes of wind and instructions plus weights and loads....

Well!don't think too far... Shear and Moments help Engineers Do the tricks.
A bending moment is the reaction induced in a structural element when an external force or moment is applied to the element causing the element to bend.

How Engineers see things

Pal V- One The Flying Car

The PAL-V ONE is a two seat hybrid car and gyroplane: a personal air and land vehicle. What makes the PAL-V ONE attractive is the convenience of fully integrated door-to-door transportation.On the ground this slim, aerodynamic, 3-wheeled vehicle has the comfort of a car with the agility of a motorcycle thanks to its patented, cutting-edge, ‘tilting’ system. It can be driven to the nearest airfield and take off just like any other airplane. The single rotor and propeller are unfolded to make the PAL-V ONE ready to fly.When airborne, the PAL-V ONE usually flies below 4,000 feet (1,200 m), the airspace available for uncontrolled Visual Flight Rules (VFR) traffic; so there will be no interference from commercial air traffic. Furthermore, the PAL-V ONE is powered by a very robust, flight certified aircraft engine. It runs on gasoline. It can reach speeds of up to 180 km/h (112 mph) both on land and in the air.The PAL-V ONE has a very short take off and landing capability, making it possible to land practically anywhere. When not using controlled airspace, you can take off without filing a flight plan. Flying a PAL-V ONE is like a standard gyroplane. It is quieter than helicopters due to the slower rotation of the main rotor. It takes off and lands with low speed, cannot stall, and is very easy to control. The gyroplane technology means that it can be steered and landed safely even if the engine fails, because the rotor keeps auto rotating.

watch Video below

Did you know ?

1.      220 million tons of old computers and other technological hardware are trashed in the United States each year.

2.      A diamond will not dissolve in acid. The only thing that can destroy it is intense heat.

3.      According to Moore's Law, microchips double in power every 18 to 24 months.

4.      Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921.

5.      Although the famous first flight at Kitty Hawk took place on December 17, 1903, the secretive Wright Brothers did not demonstrate the technology to the broader public until August 8, 1908.

6.      As of early 2009, there have been 113 space shuttle flights since the program began in 1981.

7.      Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1997 was the first to be webcast.

8.      Chuck Yeager blasted through the sound barrier at Edwards Air Force Base in 1947.

9.      Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, the phenomenon by which electrons are knocked out of matter by electromagnetic radiation such as light.

10.   In 1901, the Spanish engineer Leonar do Torres-Quevedo was responsible for the earliest developments in the remote control with his Telekine that was able to do "mechanical movements at a distance."

11.   In their Miyagi, Japan laboratories, beginning in 1924, Professor Hidetsugu Yagi and his assistant, Shintaro Uda, designed and constructed a sensitive and highly-directional antenna using closely-coupled parasitic elements. The antenna, which is effective in the higher-frequency ranges, has been important for radar, television, and amateur radio.

12.   Marie Curie was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes for Science

13.   No one has received more U.S. patents than Thomas Edison – 1,093 to be exact.

14.   On 11 July 1962, France received the first transatlantic transmission of a TV signal from a twin station in Andover, Maine, USA via the TELSTAR satellite.

15.   On 9 June 1906 the Winnipeg Electric Railway Co. transmitted electric power from the Pinawa generating station on the Winnipeg River to the city of Winnipeg at 60,000 volts. It was the first year-round hydroelectric plant in Manitoba and one of the first to be developed in such a cold climate anywhere in the world.

16.   On December 12, 1901, a radio transmission of the Morse code letter 'S' was broadcast from Poldhu, Cornwall, England, using equipment built by John Ambrose Fleming.

17.   One third of the world population has never made a telephone call.

18.   Samuel Morse, the inventor of the Morse code, was a painter as well. One of his portraits is of the first governor of Arkansas and hangs in the governor’s mansion of that state.

19.   Telecommunications satellites, and other satellites that need to maintain their position above a specific place on the earth, must orbit at 35,786 kilometers and travel in the same direction as the earth's rotation.

20.   The circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles. Its surface area is about 200,000,000 square miles and it weighs 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

21.   The Ericsson Company first produced cellular phones in 1979.

22.   The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo in San Francisco.

23.   The first Japanese-language word processor was developed in Tokyo between 1971 and 1978.

24.   The first laser was made in California in 1960.

25.   The first two video games copyrighted in the U.S. were Asteroids and Lunar Lander in 1980.

26.   The Internet is the fastest-growing communications tool ever. It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million, television 13 years, and the Internet just 4 years.

27.   There have been 113 space shuttle flights since the program began in 1981.

28.   Tim Berners-Lee coined the phrase “World Wide Web” in 1990.

29.   U.S. President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1997 was the first to be webcast.

30.   Valdemar Poulsen, a Danish engineer, invented an arc converter as a generator of continuous-wave radio signals in 1902.

Spectroscopy

Imaging spectroscopy -- the acquisition of spectra for every point in an image -- is a powerful analytical method that enables remote material detection, identification, measurement, and monitoring for scientific discovery and application research. From mapping vegetation species on Earth to studying the composition of the intergalactic medium, spectrometers can be used to reveal physical, chemical, and biological properties and processes.

Since its inception in the late twentieth century, spectrometer technology has advanced to where we are now capable of using advanced spectroscopy to understand worlds from the micron scale to exoplanet distances. Spectroscopy provides access to information about molecules, atmospheric conditions, and composition, and it has been used on Earth and throughout the solar system to perform new science research. In the future, spectroscopy of exoplanets could provide the first evidence of life beyond Earth.

AVIRIS Image Cube shows the volume of data returned by the instrument.  The rainbow-colored panels to the top and right of each image represent the different reflected light, or spectral, signatures that underlie every point in the image.

High-fidelity spectrometers with advanced detectors, optical designs, and computation systems are needed to derive information of value from remotely measured spectra. Current research focuses on several key topics:

• Versatility: Increasing both spectral range and swath width would enable future spectrometers to measure the global distribution of atmospheric gases on a daily basis. These versatile instruments would also help meet the mass and power constraints of future missions without compromising performance.
• Optical design: Improved diffraction gratings for tuning efficiency and reducing scattering and polarization sensitivity would lead to higher-quality spectral measurements.
• Real-time algorithms: Onboard cloud screening with negligible false alarms, for example, would lower buffering, transmission, analysis, and curation costs by eliminating unusable data.

In recent years, JPL has developed, tested, and delivered airborne, rover-type and space class imaging spectrometers. Our Moon Mineralogy Mapper spectrometer discovered evidence of low concentrations of water on the illuminated surface of the Moon and was successful at enabling scientists to derive mineralogical properties from its spectral measurements. This and a range of potential future mission for science and applications research has driven our interest in miniaturizing such a system for in situ use on other solar system bodies in the future.

Curled up from; Jet propulsion Laboratory, 

California Institute of Technology