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Category: biological – Page 16

Palladium-liquid gallium catalyst transforms chemical manufacturing, boosting speed, safety and sustainability

A major breakthrough in liquid catalysis is transforming how essential products are made, making the chemical manufacturing process faster, safer and more sustainable than ever before.

Researchers from Monash University, the University of Sydney, and RMIT University have developed a liquid that could transform chemical production across a range of industries—from pharmaceuticals and sustainable products to advanced materials.

By dissolving palladium in liquid gallium the team, led by Associate Professor Md. Arifur Rahim from Monash University’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, created a self-regenerating catalytic system with unprecedented efficiency.

Humans as hardware: Computing with biological tissue

Most computers run on microchips, but what if we’ve been overlooking a simpler, more elegant computational tool all this time? In fact, what if we were the computational tool?

As crazy as it sounds, a future in which humans are the ones doing the computing may be closer than we think. In an article published in IEEE Access, Yo Kobayashi from the Graduate School of Engineering Science at the University of Osaka demonstrates that living tissue can be used to process information and solve complex equations, exactly as a computer does.

This achievement is an example of the power of the computational framework known as , in which data are input into a complex “reservoir” that has the ability to encode rich patterns. A computational model then learns to convert these patterns into meaningful outputs via a neural network.

Liquid robot can transform, separate and fuse like living cells

A joint research team has successfully developed a next-generation soft robot based on liquid. The research was published in Science Advances.

Biological cells possess the ability to deform, freely divide, fuse, and capture foreign substances. Research efforts have long been dedicated to replicating these unique capabilities in artificial systems. However, traditional solid-based robots have faced limitations in effectively mimicking the flexibility and functionality of living cells.

To overcome these challenges, the joint research team successfully developed a particle-armored liquid robot, encased in unusually dense hydrophobic (water-repelling) particles.

Scientists develop dog-inspired robot that runs without motors

Scientists from TU Delft and EPFL have created a quadruped robot capable of running like a dog without the need for motors. This achievement, a product of combining innovative mechanics with data-driven technology, was published in Nature Machine Intelligence and could pave the way for energy-efficient robotics.

“Commercial quadruped robots are becoming more common, but their energy inefficiency limits their operating time,” explains Cosimo Della Santina, assistant professor at TU Delft. “Our goal was to address this issue by optimizing the robot’s mechanics by mimicking the efficiency of biological systems.”

After 7,000 years without light and oxygen in Baltic Sea mud, researchers bring prehistoric algae back to life

A research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) was able to revive dormant stages of algae that sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea almost 7,000 years ago. Despite thousands of years of inactivity in the sediment without light and oxygen, the investigated diatom species regained full viability.

The study, published in The ISME Journal, was carried out as part of a collaborative research project PHYTOARK, which aims at a better understanding of the Baltic Sea’s future by means of paleoecological investigations of the Baltic Sea’s past.

Many organisms, from bacteria to mammals, can go into a kind of “sleep mode,” known as dormancy, in order to survive periods of unfavorable environmental conditions.

Advancing semiconductor devices for AI: Single transistor acts like neuron and synapse

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have demonstrated that a single, standard silicon transistor, the fundamental building block of microchips used in computers, smartphones and almost every electronic system, can function like a biological neuron and synapse when operated in a specific, unconventional way.

Led by Associate Professor Mario Lanza from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the College of Design and Engineering, NUS, the research team’s work presents a highly scalable and energy-efficient solution for hardware-based (ANNs).

This brings —where chips could process information more efficiently, much like the —closer to reality. Their study was published in the journal Nature.

Why reproduce Harold Katcher’s experiment

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Dirac’s Plate Trick, the Hairy Ball Theorem and more: Research probes physics of irregular objects on inclined planes

How gravity causes a perfectly spherical ball to roll down an inclined plane is part of the elementary school physics canon. But the world is messier than a textbook.

Scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have sought to quantitatively describe the much more complex rolling physics of real-world objects. Led by L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in SEAS and FAS, they combined theory, simulations, and experiments to understand what happens when an imperfect, spherical object is placed on an inclined plane.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research, which was inspired by nothing more than curiosity about the everyday world, could provide fundamental insights into anything that involves irregular objects that roll, from nanoscale cellular transport to robotics.

US Military Wants to Grow Biological Structures in Space

Want to restore the planet’s ecosystems and see your impact in monthly videos? The first 200 people to join Planet Wild with my code SABINE23 will get the first month for free at https://planetwild.com/r/sabinehossen…

If you want to get to know them better first, check out their latest mission, where they go on to Kenya to find a more peaceful solution for the coexistence of lions and farms. https://planetwild.com/r/sabinehossen…

Last month, DARPA published a call for proposals on how to “grow” massive biological structures in space. It’s not as crazy as it sounds: The space race is heating up outside of the weird space biology sector. Some startups are building self-assembling space habitats, others are working on spaceports, and the ISS’s successor is in development. Let’s take a look.

The DARPA Call: https://sam.gov/opp/426e5868fcf74dd4a…

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