Institute for Advanced Study (IAS)

A thousand times more powerful than a human muscle, able to catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself over a distance five times its length within 60 milliseconds –  faster than the blink of an eye. Berkeley Lab Researchers Make a Powerful New Microscale Torsional Muscle/Motor from Vanadium Dioxide Vanadium dioxide is poised to join

Households and businesses that generate their own power through micro-renewables, such as solar panels and wind turbines, may soon be able to decide where to distribute their extra energy thanks to funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The UK has seen an increase in the uptake of micro-generation, in which individuals or organisations

An MFC can perform double duty Some of the planet’s tiniest inhabitants may help address two of society’s biggest environmental challenges: how to deal with the vast quantities of organic waste produced and where to find clean, renewable energy. According to César Torres and Sudeep Popat, researchers at Arizona State University‘s Biodesign Institute, certain kinds

Workplace Surveillance Sees Good and Bad A digital Big Brother is coming to work, for better or worse. Advanced technological tools are beginning to make it possible to measure and monitor employees as never before, with the promise of fundamentally changing how we work — along with raising concerns about privacy and the specter of

Catheter navigates autonomously inside hearts in preclinical tests Surgeons have used robots operated by joysticks for more than a decade, and teams have shown that tiny robots can be steered through the body by external forces such as magnetism. Now, bioengineers led by Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital describe a robotic catheter that

Australia is one of the leaders in the field Moving carefully along a row of apple trees, two of Australia’s newest agricultural workers check if the fruit is ripe or the soil needs water or fertilizer. Meet “Mantis” and “Shrimp”, agricultural robots being tested to do these tasks and more in a bid to cut costs and improve

An effective sail area that is as much as a million times bigger A sail formed not of material, but by electric fields reaching a diameter of 40 kilometers could tap the solar wind and propel the fastest man-made object ever It takes large quantities of rocket fuel to power space probes through the cosmos.

Engineers at the University of Maryland have invented an entirely new kind of battery. It is bio-compatible because it produces the same kind of ion-based electrical energy used by humans and all living things. In our bodies, flowing ions (sodium, potassium and other electrolytes) are the electrical signals that power the brain and control the

Study shows that in the face of an epidemic, even moderate government-mandated travel restrictions would slow contagion. In an epidemic or a bioterrorist attack, the response of government officials could range from a drastic restriction of mobility — imposed isolation or total lockdown of a city — to moderate travel restrictions in some areas or