http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UrN99RELqwo
Intro Video
Researchers engineer light-activated skeletal muscle
Now, scientists at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania are taking more than inspiration from nature — they’re taking ingredients. The group has genetically engineered muscle cells to flex in response to light, and is using the light-sensitive tissue to build highly articulated robots. This “bio-integrated” approach, as they call it, may one day enable robotic animals that move with the strength and flexibility of their living counterparts.
The researchers’ approach will appear in the journal Lab on a Chip.
Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, says the group’s design effectively blurs the boundary between nature and machines.
“With bio-inspired designs, biology is a metaphor, and robotics is the tool to make it happen,” says Asada, who is a co-author on the paper. “With bio-integrated designs, biology provides the materials, not just the metaphor. This is a new direction we’re pushing in biorobotics.”
Researchers engineer light-activated skeletal muscle
Occupy Wall Street plans 'people's wall' outside NY Stock Exchange for anniversary
Occupy Wall Street will turn one year old in a few weeks, and organizers with the group want to make sure the movement's first anniversary won't be forgotten. To commemorate, OWS plans on staging a mass protest outside the New York Stock Exchange.
Organizers with Occupy, a protest movement formed last year to address issues of corporate greed and big businesses’ relationship with politics, are asking supporters to participate in a mass sit-in outside the NYSE when their first birthday comes around next month on September 17.
"There'll be a mass of people converging on the Stock Exchange to deliver our message: that we're the 99 percent and we're not going to take it,” OWS organizer Dana Balicki tells AFP.
The spokesperson with the group says that Occupy hopes to erect a massive “people’s wall” outside the NYSE.
Occupy Wall Street plans ‘people’s wall’ outside NY Stock Exchange for anniversary
Novel Technique to Synthesize Nanocrystals That Harvest Solar Energy
One reason that solar energy has not been widely adopted is because light absorbing materials are not durable. Materials that harvest solar radiation for energy often overheat or degrade over time; this reduces their viability to compete with other renewable energy sources like wind or hydroelectric generators. A new video protocol addresses these issues by presenting a synthesis of two inorganic nanocrystals, each of which is more durable than their organic counterparts. The article, published inJournal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), focuses on the liquid phase synthesis of two nanocrystals that produce hydrogen gas or an electric charge when exposed to light. "The main advantage of this technique is that it allows for direct, all inorganic coupling of the light absorber and the catalyst," says the leading author Dr. Mikhail Zamkov of Bowling Green State University.
Novel Technique to Synthesize Nanocrystals That Harvest Solar Energy
Survey: 75% of Homeless Youth Use at Least One Social Network
In a small but intriguing study, social scientists found that 75 percent of the homeless youth they surveyed use social networks and that their usage patterns were remarkably similar to college students.
Led by the University of Alabama's Rosanna Guadagno, they surveyed 237 college kids and 65 homeless youth, both with an average age of a little over 19 years old. While a greater percentage of the students were on social networks (over 90 percent), both groups of users reported spending more than an hour per day using Facebook, Twitter, and the like.
Guadagno argues that the results should lead us to rethink the concept of the digital divide of Internet haves and have nots. "To the extent that our findings show a 'digital divide' between undergraduates at a four-year university and age-matched participants in a program for homeless young adults, it is mainly in types of Internet use and not access to the Internet, and that divide is relatively minor," we read. "Since it is clear that the proportions of undergraduates and homeless young adults accessing social networking sites are similar, we assert that the term digital divide is not descriptive of the young adult population."
Survey: 75% of Homeless Youth Use at Least One Social Network
Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, has died. He was 82.
According to NBC News, which first reported the astronaut's death, "His family reported the death at 2:45 p.m. ET [on Saturday, 8-25-2012]. A statement said he died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures."
The Los Angeles Times obituary notes that "Armstrong's lunar stroll on July 20, 1969 -- watched by an estimated 600 million television viewers worldwide -- established him firmly as one of the great heroes of the 20th century."
If one clicks on the NBC News story on the Web, it now carries this update: "(Editor's note: An earlier version of this story included the wrong name in the headline.)"
The editor's note does not say what name NBC News originally wrote in its headline. Here is a screenshot TVWeek took of the original NBC News headline:
Neil Young, the famous Canadian folk-rock musician, is 66 and not dead. (The picture in the screenshot is Neil Armstrong. It was only in the headline that NBC News wrote the name of the wrong Neil.)
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