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Researchers improve spinach-based solar cells by adding blackberry dye
Biohybrid solar cells aren't nearly as efficient as standard silicon panels, but including natural materials in renewable energy could make it more cost-effective. Scientists have refined one design based on the proteins in spinach leaves by adding natural dye extracted from blackberries, a combination which apparently produces much more voltage than the greens alone.
ICYMI: Tricksy smartphones, fake kidney implants and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170{width:100%;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170").style.display="none";}catch(e){} #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-25170").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It: Brand new Mobile World Congress smartphones can both take heat map selfies and charge your phone with a power pack using salt and water (aka break-up tears). Vanderbilt University researchers developed an artificial kidney that uses the patient's own kidney cells to filter blood and avoid rejection. And it turns out cancer cells get healthy cells to to join their tumor party by engaging in some old-fashioned arm-twisting. Researchers recorded cancer cells extending fibers to reel other cells in and it is not a pretty sight.
ICYMI: Cotton Candy body parts, robotic bartender and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-27934{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-27934, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-27934{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-27934").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Vanderbilt University scientists whipped up some human capillaries by using a cotton candy machine to properly shape channels for the blood vessels. A Kickstarter project is selling a tiny video camera attachment with a flexible cord to aim and drop it into places you normally can't see, like inside a car engine. And the University of Maryland is training a robot to make drinks by watching a human; a process that is far more adorable than you'd first think.
Cotton candy machines help create artificial organs
You may have seen some pretty unusual ways to make artificial organs, but Vanderbilt University might have just topped them all. Its researchers have developed a technique for making the templates of artificial organs using a cotton candy machine -- that's right, the machine whipping up treats at the county fair could effectively save your life. The team discovered that the same centrifugal process that melts sugar into delicious, fluffy strands also turns hydrogel into cell-friendly microfibers that behave like capillaries in the human body.
Nanowires three atoms wide could lead to paper-thin gadgets
What's that odd shape, you ask? That's the world's thinnest nanowire -- and it could be the key to a future wave of flexible devices. In blasting single-layered, semiconducting materials with an electron beam, Vanderbilt University student Junhao Lin has created wires that measure just three atoms wide while remaining strong and very bendy. Since there are already transistors and memory gates made out of the same material, Lin envisions circuits and whole devices that are paper-thin, yet can stand up to abuse; in the long run, he envisions rollable tablets and TVs that could fit in your pocket. The technique could help produce 3D circuitry, too. We're still a long way from either of those becoming practical realities, but the discovery at least shows that they're technically possible.
App turns Android tabs into math tools for the visually impaired (video)
Two high school students are taking part in a bit of an experiment at Vanderbilt University. The college's Medical and Electromechanical Design Laboratory (MED Lab) is working on an Android app that turns tablets into a teaching aid for the visually impaired. Areas of math that rely heavily on visual elements, such as algebra and calculus, prove problematic for students with poor eyesight. A common solution involves pipe cleaners, a cork board and push pins, to recreate graphs, but the method is quite slow. The MED Lab is looking to haptic feedback as a way to help the visually impaired identify lines, graph points and other data that is normally represented visually. For more details about the project check out the video after the break.
Graphene coatings used to repel, attract water, could make Rain-X decidedly obsolete
Graphene looks poised to replace our silicon and our touchscreens, even fix our batteries. Now it's due for something perhaps a little less revolutionary: keep our pants clean. Physicist James Dickerson and a team of researchers at Vanderbilt University have created two ways to apply thin graphene sheets that either make them super-hydrophobic or super-hydrophilic. These alternate arrangements, termed "rug" and "brick," make the water bead up and run off or spread out and form incredibly thin sheets. Potential applications are windshields that don't need wipers, pants that cause red wine drops to just bounce off, and goggles that never, ever fog -- no buffing required.
Research suggests that your body knows you made a typo when your conscious mind simply can't be bothered
This may or may not come as a shocker to you -- but when you make a typo, your body can tell, according to a new study at Vanderbilt University. The study monitored a group of people who could type at least 40 WPM consistently as they transcribed copy. In analyzing the typists' key strokes, researchers found that interestingly, even if a typist's mistake was immediately 'silently' corrected onscreen by those running the study, the typist's fingers fumbled or paused, signaling an 'awareness' that a mistake had been made. Essentially, this means that while the conscious mind may not know that a mistake has been made (especially if there's no visual evidence of it), the part of the brain that controls the fingers typing movements have some awareness of the mistakes. For those of us who spend our lives banging away at a keyboard, these preliminary results won't really come as any surprise -- the feeling of having made a mistake is pretty instinctual. Regardless, the results suggest a hierarchical manner of mistake detection in humans, the "lower" more instinctual part of the brain recognizing and correcting the mistake, while the conscious part of the brain assigns credit and blame. Now if we could just figure out what part of our brain is responsible for relentlessly pointing out others' typos, we'd be set.
