We've seen self-healing materials and artificial arms, but a team of researchers hailing from UCLA have taken two fabulous ideas and wed them together to create "an artificial muscle that heals itself and generates electricity." Put simply, the contracting / expanding of the material can generate a small electric current, which can be "captured and used to power another expansion or stored in a battery." The scientists have relied on carbon nanotubes as electrodes rather than metal-based films that typically fail after extended usage, and in an ideal world, the research could eventually lead to (more) walking robots and highly advanced prosthetics. Integrate an AC adapter in there and we're sold.

[Via CNET]

You've got plenty of options when it comes to healing your own body, but patching up your domicile usually requires days of back-breaking labor and gobs of cash to boot. Thankfully, that awful process could be nearing its end, as a £9.5 million ($18.64 million) European Union-funded project sets out to develop self-healing walls for your average home. The idea is to develop "special walls for the house that contain nano polymer particles, which will turn into a liquid when squeezed under pressure, flow into the cracks, and then harden to form a solid material." The technology would prove quite useful in areas where earthquakes are prominent, and in an effort to test things out before shoving it out to contractors everywhere, a swank villa is being erected on a Greece mountainside to collect information. The house's walls will be built from "novel load bearing steel frames and high-strength gypsum board," but more importantly, they will contain a smorgasbord of wireless sensors and RFID tags meant to collect, store, and disseminate critical data regarding "any stresses and vibrations, temperature, humidity, and gas levels." Now, who's the lucky lad(s) that get to call this their home research dwelling?

[Via Physorg]

Scientists at the University of Alabama have just developed a "self-healing material," that releases a "syrupy epoxy" stored inside an outer polymer paneling when the exterior is breached. The epoxy flows into cracks or damaged areas and sets when exposed to UV light, reports NewScientist. In addition, embedded circuitry alerts technicians armed with a special wand to damaged areas. As the website reports further: "This is because the wand induces a current in the embedded circuit when it is intact. When the circuit is damaged this cannot happen and the wand sounds an alarm." We hope that these eggheads plan on collaborating with the University of Michigan's self-healing chip project so that both universities can create the ultimate in self-sustaining electronics.

[Photo: University of Alabama]

Although you may have never given a thought to what transistors do to repair themselves when certain sectors fail, there are a few organizations who make it their life's work. Researchers from the National Science Foundation, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, and the University of Michigan have a mission to complete before their grant money runs dry: to create semiconductors that can heal themselves without the burdensome redundancy currently used. The goal here, which could seem a tad superfluous until you consider these chips operate in things like airplanes and medical devices -- you know, fairly critical applications -- is to design a semiconductor that runs more efficiently and can be counted on to function no matter how crucial the situation. By designing a chip that can auto-detect a problem, then shift the resources to a functioning area while the chip diagnoses and repairs the issue with help from "online collaboration software," you'll get a slimmer semiconductor that suffers no noticeable loss in performance while self-repairing. If this circuitry talk has your wires all crossed up, here's the skinny: more dependable chips will make everyone's life a bit easier, and if the team's plan is free of defects, we can expect to see prototypes within the next three years.

[Via Mobilemag]