Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Solar panels from grass clippings

Plants naturally convert solar energy and now scientists at MIT have found a way to extract the molecules responsible for photosynthesis and use them with a stabilizer to keep them "alive" and harvest electricity.
This video describes how the process could be used to provide very low cost energy to remote and developing places.



As seen on Inhabitat via DesignTaxi.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Fabricating origami pop-up microbots

This fascinating video shows the detail of fabricating millimeter scale robots with laser cut pieces sandwiched together and then folded into the 3D shape like pop-up origami.



As seen on Robots.net

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Sonication - healing with focused sound waves

Ultrasound for medical imaging has been used for a long time now, but focused ultrasound in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging produces some amazing breakthroughs in non-invasive surgery.

Watch this inspiring Ted Talk from Yoav Medan.