University of Toyama

Automatically creating a near-perfect three-dimensional recreation   Obtaining a high-quality 3D digital model of a physical object can be a fiddly process, that often requires considerable user input. German research and development company NEK, however, is attempting to make things easier, with its OrcaM Orbital Camera System. Users just place an object inside of its

It’s only a matter of time before drugs are administered via patches with painless microneedles instead of unpleasant injections. But designers need to balance the need for flexible, comfortable-to-wear material with effective microneedle penetration of the skin. Swedish researchers say they may have cracked the problem. In a recent study published in PLOS ONE, a research

M.I.T. researchers experiment with modular bots smart enough to morph into things placed near them Dynamically self-assembling robots would certainly be more versatile than those preassembled in a lab or factory. Instead of buying a single bot, you would be shipped a container of modules that you could program to assume a variety of configurations

The bottle bulb may be the coolest idea I’ve ever seen   People often write to Fixes telling us of cool new devices made for the poor:  the sOccket soccer ball that stores energy as children kick it; the neoprene LifeWrap that hospitals can use to save women hemorrhaging in childbirth; adjustable eyeglasses. We love

Because the signature biomarkers that indicate the presence of cancer at the cellular level are generally present only at low levels in biological samples, detecting them is a procedure that usually takes days and involves a room filled with computers. Now researchers have used nanomaterials to develop a microchip small enough to fit in a

The development of open source drivers for Microsoft’s Kinect motion-controller is already opening up new (if not entirely unpredictable) applications for the device. This example, developed by members of the Virtopsy research project at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland, is a functional prototype using Kinect that provides users with a hands-free

A new one atom-thick flat material that could upstage the wonder material graphene and advance digital technology has been discovered by a physicist at the University of Kentucky working in collaboration with scientists from Daimler in Germany and the Institute for Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) in Greece. Reported in Physical Review B, Rapid Communications,

The decline of the world’s large herbivores, especially in Africa and parts of Asia, is raising the specter of an “empty landscape” in some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, according to a newly published study. Many populations of animals such as rhinoceroses, zebras, camels, elephants and tapirs are diminishing or threatened with