Lifeboat Foundation

Most humanoid robots pick things up with their hands – but that’s not how we humans do it, particularly when we’re carrying something bulky. We use our chests, hips and arms as well – and that’s the idea behind Toyota’s new soft robot.

Punyo, as it’s called, is a torso-up humanoid research platform. First and foremost, it’s adorably Japanese, with a cute and approachable looking face and a cuddly, husky look reminiscent of the Baymax robot from Disney’s Big Hero 6. Adding to the cuddle factor, he appears to be wearing a big, cosy-looking sweater.

Continue reading “Toyota’s new soft humanoid picks things up with its whole body” »

Water and electronics don’t usually mix, but as it turns out, batteries could benefit from some H₂O.

By replacing the hazardous chemical electrolytes used in commercial batteries with water, scientists have developed a recyclable ‘water battery’ – and solved key issues with the emerging technology, which could be a safer and greener alternative.

Continue reading “New ‘Water Batteries’ Are Cheaper, Recyclable, And Won’t Explode” »

In a collaborative study, researchers from Kyushu University and Harvard Medical School have identified proteins that can turn or “reprogram” fibroblasts—the most commonly found cells in skin and connective tissue—into cells with similar properties to limb progenitor cells. Publishing in Developmental Cell, the researchers’ findings have enhanced our understanding of limb development and have set the stage for regenerative therapy in the future.

Globally, close to 60 million people are living with limb loss. Amputations can result from various medical conditions such as tumors, infections, and birth defects, or due to trauma from industrial accidents, traffic accidents, and natural disasters such as earthquakes. People with limb injuries often rely on synthetic materials and metal prostheses, but many researchers are studying the process of limb development, with the aim of bringing regenerative therapy, or natural tissue replacement, one step closer as a potential treatment.

“During limb development in the embryo, limb progenitor cells in the limb bud give rise to most of the different limb tissues, such as bone, muscle, cartilage and tendon. It’s therefore important to establish an easy and accessible way of making these cells,” explains Dr. Yuji Atsuta, lead researcher who began tackling this project at Harvard Medical School and continues it as a lecturer at Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Sciences.

Optical properties of afterglow luminescent particles (ALPs) in mechanoluminescence (ML) and mechanical quenching (MQ) have attracted great attention for diverse technological applications. A team of researchers from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has garnered attention by developing an optical display technology with ALPs enabling the writing and erasure of messages underwater.

The team, comprised of Professor Sei Kwang Hahn and Ph.D. candidate Seong-Jong Kim from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the POSTECH, uncovered a distinctive optical phenomenon in ALPs. Subsequently, they successfully created a device to implement this phenomenon. Their findings have been published in Advanced Functional Materials.

ALPs have the capability to absorb energy and release it gradually, displaying mechanoluminescence when subjected to external physical pressure and undergoing mechanical quenching where the emitted light fades away. While there has been active research on utilizing this technology for optical displays, the precise mechanism has remained elusive.

The thermal hall effect (THE) is a physical phenomenon characterized by tiny transverse temperature differences occurring in a material when a thermal current passes through it and a perpendicular magnetic field is applied to it. This effect has been observed in a growing number of insulators, yet its underlying physics remains poorly understood.

Researchers at Université de Sherbrooke in Canada have been trying to identify the mechanism behind this effect in different materials. Their most recent paper, published in Nature Physics, specifically examined this effect in the antiferromagnetic insulator strontium iridium oxide (Sr₂IrO₄).

“Our current research activity on the THE in insulators started with our discovery of a large THE in cuprate superconductors,” Louis Taillefer, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org.

Last year was awash with claims that researchers had found new high-temperature superconductors. While some of those claims were quickly quashed, others are still being explored, such as the report that single crystals of the nickelate La₃Ni₂O₇ can superconduct at up to 78 K when under a pressure of 18 gigapascals (GPa) [1]. Now experiments performed by Jinguang Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Science and colleagues strengthen the claim that this compound is indeed a superconductor [2]. If confirmed, these results would make La₃Ni₂O₇ one of the few transition-metal compounds outside of cuprates to superconduct at temperatures above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen.

The initial report of superconductivity in La₃Ni₂O₇ came from measurements of single crystals. Those experiments showed a sudden drop in electrical resistance at around 80 K in samples held at pressures above 14 GPa. However, the report lacked measurements of two key hallmarks of a material entering the superconducting state—its resistance falling to zero and the expulsion of external magnetic fields.

For their experiments, Cheng and his colleagues studied polycrystalline samples of La₃Ni₂O₇ subjected to pressures of up to 18 GPa. The researchers chose polycrystalline samples over single-crystal ones, as they are significantly easier to prepare. Their resistance measurements indicated the zero-resistance state needed to confirm the presence of superconductivity. But the researchers’ attempts to detect the magnetic hallmark of superconductivity failed. Cheng says that recent unpublished results from their lab show that doping La₃Ni₂O₇ with the lanthanide praseodymium increases the superconducting temperature to 82.5 K. In those experiments, he says, the team observed both superconducting hallmarks.

Muon spectroscopy serves as a crucial experimental method for exploring the magnetic characteristics of materials. This technique involves embedding a spin-polarized muon within the crystal lattice and observing the impact of the surrounding environment on its behavior. It operates on the principle that the muon will settle into a specific location predominantly influenced by electrostatic forces, a position that can be pinpointed through the calculation of the material’s electronic structure.

But a new study led by scientists in Italy, Switzerland, UK, and Germany has found that, at least for some materials, that is not the end of the story: the muon site can change due to a well-known but previously neglected effect, magnetostriction.

Pietro Bonfà from the University of Parma, lead author of the study just published in Physical Review Letters, explains that his group and their colleagues at the University of Oxford (UK) have been using density-functional theory (DFT) simulations for at least a decade to find muon sites.

Inspired by nature, nanotechnology researchers have identified ‘spontaneous curvature’ as the key factor determining how ultra-thin, artificial materials can transform into useful tubes, twists and helices.

Greater understanding of this process—which mimics how some seed pods open in nature—could unlock an array of new chiral materials that are 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, with the potential to improve the design of optical, electronic and mechanical devices.

Chiral shapes are structures that cannot be superimposed on their mirror image, much like how your left hand is a mirror image of your right hand but cannot fit perfectly on top of it.

Using cellulose from trees and a synthetic polymer, MIT researchers have created a material that “is stronger and tougher than some types of bone, and harder than typical aluminum alloys,” the university announced.

The researchers hope their compound could lead to better, more sustainable plastics in the future. Currently, the material shrinks while drying, making printing anything large out of it difficult.

“If you could avoid shrinkage, you could keep scaling up, maybe to the meter scale,” said MIT’s Abhinav Rao. “Then, if we were to dream big, we could replace a significant fraction of plastics with cellulose composites.”