Reporte #116
Tackling air pollution in China
MIT News – Engineering
Combining climate policy and vehicle emissions standards could pack a one-two punch.
Three Studies Show How Robocars Will Make for Safer, More Efficient Roads
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
Nailing down the safety benefits of robocar technology is harder than it looks. Of course, any system that keeps you from driving into a brick wall must be good for your health, but the problem is that not all drivers handle such safety features properly.
World’s Thinnest Hologram Promises 3D Images on Our Mobile Phones
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
Holograms have fascinated onlookers for over half a century. But the devices for producing these holographic images have been relatively bulky contraptions, forced into their large size in part by the wavelengths of light that are necessary to generate them.
Artificial Photosynthesis Moves on From Water Splitting to CO2 Reduction
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
The road toward commercial artificial photosynthesis has been a bumpy one. Stories like the so-called artificial leaf generated a lot of hype in 2011, but the company initially behind the technology—Sun Catalytix—soon abandoned their commercial efforts in 2012 when it became clear the economics simply did not add up.
WannaCry Update: Microsoft Pushes a “Geneva Convention” to Thwart Cyberattacks
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
As the WannaCry ransomware exploit spreads across 150 countries and over 200,000 machines blame is spreading wildly too. And Microsoft has used cybersecurity’s latest headline-grabbing moment to call for a “Digital Geneva Convention” to limit and defang future cyberattacks.
Illuminating uncertainty
MIT News – Engineering
Youssef Marzouk aims to improve predictions of everything from underground pollution to daily weather.
Volvo Takes the Right First Step in Autonomous Garbage Collection
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
In September of 2015, Volvo announced that it was developing a robot designed to pick up trash bins and take them to a garbage truck. We were a little bit skeptical of that particular approach to the problem, but it’s not the only angle that Volvo is taking towards autonomous refuse handling. Volvo Trucks has been testing a self-driving garbage truck in Sweden, designed to help humans do this dirty job more safely and more efficiently. It’s not as slick as a team of little mobile robots that can pick up bins all by themselves, but it’s a much more practical near-term solution towards solving the larger problem.
New Bioprinter Makes It Easier to Fabricate 3D Flesh and Bone
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
The ideal 3D bioprinter, says tissue engineering expert Y. Shrike Zhang, would resemble a breadmaker: “You’d have a few buttons on top, and you’d press a button to choose heart tissue or liver tissue.” Then Zhang would walk away from the machine while it laid down complex layers of cells and other materials.
Making brain implants smaller could prolong their lifespan
MIT News – Engineering
Thin fibers could be used to deliver drugs or electrical stimulation, with less damage to the brain.
Researchers Grow Brain Cells on a Chip
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
Every human thought starts with a signal traveling from one neuron to another in the brain. Yet we know relatively little about how these connections form. In an effort to watch that process unfold, Australian researchers engineered a nanowire scaffold on a semiconductor chip that enables brain cells to grow and form circuits. The scientists described their device recently in the journal Nano Letters.