Technology and Science Highlights of the Week #26 September 2024
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Researchers at the University of Waterloo have designed an energy-efficient device that produces drinking water from seawater using an evaporation process driven largely by the sun.
Desalination is critical for many coastal and island nations to provide access to fresh water, given water scarcity concerns due to rapid population growth and increasing global water consumption.
To solve this problem, Waterloo researchers drew inspiration from the natural water cycle to create a device that mirrors how trees transport water from roots to leaves. The new technology can continuously desalinate water without the need for major maintenance. The study is published in Nature Communications.
Researchers have been developing robots for almost 70 years. Until now, all the machines they have created have one thing in common: they are powered by motors. Even androids that can walk use arms and legs that are powered by motors, rather than muscles like humans and animals. This partly explains why they lack the agility and adaptability of living creatures.
A new robotic leg powered by artificial muscles is not only more energy efficient but also capable of high jumps and fast movements. It can also react to obstacles – all without the use of complex sensors. The leg was developed by researchers from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Germany).
The robotic leg’s ability to jump is based on its ability to explosively lift its own weight. The researchers also showed that the leg has a high degree of adaptability, which is especially important for soft robotics. Unlike electric motors, which require sensors to constantly determine the angle of the leg, the artificial muscle adapts to the appropriate position through interaction with the environment.
The authors note that electro-hydraulic actuators are unlikely to be used in heavy machinery on construction sites, but have specific advantages, for example in grippers, where movements must be highly adapted depending on what is being gripped, be it a ball, an egg or a tomato.
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Physicists have created and studied a new 2-D state of matter called Bose glass that could help scientists explore a concept known as many-body localization. Such a concept could help quantum computers overcome decoherence by storing information more locally and thus preventing it from leaking into the environment. However, there is still a lot that scientists don’t know about Bose glass, so it will take time to figure out what its potential applications might be.
Physicists hope that 2-D Bose glass could help in the search for many-body localization material, which could be particularly useful for quantum computers. Such a material would open up many new possibilities not only for fundamental research but also for creating new quantum computers since the quantum information stored in such a system should remain more local and not leak into the environment. This process is called decoherence, and it is a problem that many quantum computing systems face, scientists say.
Researchers have developed a way to create microscopic silicone coatings for blood cells. Scientists have created microscopic silicone coatings for blood cells. The new nanotechnology has successfully allowed researchers from the South China University of Technology to transfuse blood between animals of different species.
“The blood retains all the important functions of red blood cells, has excellent mechanical properties, is resistant to adverse environmental conditions, can be stored for a long time, and is not “seen” by the immune system,” the team explains.
This geological phenomenon is related to the heating and cooling of the planet during the changing seasons. Sunlight penetrates the ice sheet in the spring, infrared radiation is trapped, heating the regolith beneath the ice and causing the ice sheet to sublimate from below (sublimation is the transition of matter from a solid state directly to a gaseous state). As a result, spiders are formed: gas escapes to the surface at high speed.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has reproduced this process to see if the "spiders" are still forming today or if they are a relic of Mars' geological history. The researchers placed soil designed to imitate Martian soil inside a special chamber, pumped carbon dioxide into it so that it condenses and forms ice thick enough for the experiment. The ice was then heated from below.
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