There are a variety of causes for the occurrence of blindness, such as the lack of enough blood supply for the retina. If it doesn’t get proper amounts of oxygen, the result will be permanent blindness. The chances of preventing it depend on when the doctors realize if a patient’s retina is not receiving sufficient oxygen; the sooner the better. Prof. Bradley Nelson and his team of researchers at ETH Zurich seem to have found out a solution.

Earlier the team created microrobots, measuring a millimeter in length and one third of a millimeter in width, which could be used to deliver medication or remove scar tissue in the eye. Magnetic fields can be used to guide these tiny robots through the vitreous fluid.

They coated these microrobots with nanospheres made of a dye, which fluoresces when exposed to a specific wavelength of light. This fluorescence fades faster if there is higher amount of oxygen surrounding the dye. Now the team can inject these oxygen sensing dye-coated robots into the vitreous fluid to move them to the surface of the retina. They would then apply light to observe the dye’s fluorescence, and thereby determine the amount of oxygen around the area. The robots can be removed from the eye later on by magnetically attaching them to an inserted needle.

According to ETH, other methods now available for determining the oxygen levels within the eye are not sensitive enough. The method using microrobots have already been tested in water samples with different O2 levels and were found to be a success.

[Source]

The post Microrobots For Preventing Blindness appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Today’s car batteries are massive, yet can only go about 100 miles, and can never come close to gasoline. But a new technology currently being developed under IBM’s “Battery 500 Project”, could result in a battery that would power cars for more than 500 miles on a single charge. They are developing a light-weight, ultra high-density lithium-air battery, or air-breathing battery, which actually breathes air.

In a lithium-air battery, oxygen will react with the soft element lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical energy. When the battery is recharged, the process is reversed and oxygen is released. Since the oxygen used for the reaction comes from the atmosphere, the battery will be much lighter compared to conventional batteries.

And these batteries have a much higher energy density than lithium-ion ones. Theoretically, the maximum energy density of lithium-air batteries is 12 kWh/kg. That’s around 15 times greater than li-ion, but more importantly comparable to gasoline. If the project is a success, lithium-air might not only replace li-ion, but also gasoline. That won’t happen anytime soon, but it’s certainly possible.

The talks about lithium-air battery actually started way back in 1970, but at the time we did not have the materials required to build one. But li-air is possible today as we have graphene and carbon nanotubes, and also IBM’s famous computer architecture, Blue Gene. IBM has received assistance from Asahi Kasei and Central Glass.

The post IBM’s 500 Mile Lithium-Air Battery Breathes Air (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

What you see in the above picture is Robojelly, a robot jellyfish designed by the researchers at Virginia Tech, which could be very useful in the future for underwater surveillance or search and rescue operations. You might be thinking that there is nothing new about a robot inspired by nature, but the robot jellyfish has a new trick up its sleeve. Theoretically, the Robojelly will go on working without ever running out of energy, as long as it’s in water.

The Robojelly is powered by hydrogen and is made up of materials called shape-memory alloys. Just in case you are preparing to refer to Wikipedia, shape-memory alloys are materials which are capable of returning to their original shape when heat is applied. The robot mimics a jellyfish’s movements via eight moving segments wrapped in platinum-coated carbon nanotubes.

When the oxygen and hydrogen in the water react with platinum powder, heat will be produced. The alloys will change shape due to this heat and propulsion occurs all thanks to the opening and closing movements of the segments.

The research paper has been published in the journal of Smart Materials and Structures and the project was led by Yonas Tadesse. According to him, “To our knowledge, this is the first successful powering of an underwater robot using external hydrogen as a fuel source”.

In the video, you will find an electricity-powered version of the Robojelly swimming in a water tank. The hydrogen-powered robot needs more work to be done on it and has only been tested while it’s clamped to the tank’s bottom. They are currently working to increase its maneuverability.

So, this is a robot which can stay underwater for a very long time as it can refuel itself from the water around it. That’s certainly very innovative. And yeah, almost forgot, the research is US Navy-backed, and you know what that means. Enemy submarines beware!

[Image Source]

The post Robojelly: The Hydrogen-Powered Robot Jellyfish (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Solar storms, as you know, head towards Earth once in a while to remind us about the Sun’s incredible power. The fast-moving clouds of charged particles reached our planet this week and we are extremely lucky to be on Earth and not on Mars. Studies show that the Earth’s magnetosphere makes sure that the planet is not too affected by solar storms.

It was in 2008 that researchers got a chance to study the effects of the solar storm on two planets (Mars and Earth) at the same time and under the same solar-wind conditions. It was found that the Red Planet lost oxygen atoms in its atmosphere 10 times faster than Earth. This difference is thought to be dependent on the strength of each planet’s magnetic field. As you might know, Mars has a magnetic field that is only one-tenth as strong as Earth’s.

As scientists have long believed that the presence of a magnetic deflector shield is a good defense against charged particles from the Sun, the new results didn’t come as a surprise for the researchers.

But some discoveries made in the past few years related to the Earth’s magnetosphere have also suggested that the field is less-effective against solar storms. Studies have suggested that our planet’s magnetosphere might be transferring more energy from the solar wind to the upper part of the atmosphere when compared to smaller planets with weaker magnetospheres.

But when Mars and Earth lined up on the same side of the sun in 2008, Yong Wei, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, and his team were able to collect data on the loss of oxygen atoms from the atmospheres of both the planets. The oxygen loss at Mars was found to be 10 times higher than at Earth.

More solar storms are expected this week and the researchers are looking forward to take advantage of a present alignment between the Sun, Earth, Mars, and Venus. Venus is important in the study as the planet has a thicker atmosphere and no magnetic field.

The post Recent Solar Flares Affect Mars Much More Severely Than Earth appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

With the alarming problem of increased water consumption, this trend is a growing concern as we wonder if our planet, mother Earth, will be able to replenish the freshwater supplies before they run out.

Well, in case this worst case scenario ever comes to reality, MIT has the solution. An invention discovered and developed in one of their labs might be the answer to freshwater problems. When in contact with direct sunlight, the “artificial leaf”, as they call it, splits water molecules in hydrogen and oxygen gases which can later be stored in fuel cells. What this means is that it produces pure water, which is quite useful especially in the context of high pollution areas around the globe.

While the leaf (a semiconducting silicon coated with a special cobalt catalyst on one side and nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy on the other) is still under research, there is hope that their idea will be usable at large scales in the years to come.

The post MIT’s Artificial Leaf Could Make Pure Water appeared first on Mobile Magazine.