Trending Articles Around The World

• Solar-Powered Hydrogel Collects Clean Water Out of Thin Air

Using solar power and what they refer to "super sponges,"in 2019 a team of engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a neat, and potentially life-saving, magic trick: pulling water out of thin air.

The sponges are actually hydrogels, gel-polymer hybrid materials that are designed to hold and contain substantial amounts of water. The Texas team focused on combining the abilities of an especially absorbent hydrogel known as hygroscopic polypyrrole chloride with one that is reacts to heat called isopropylacrylamide. It's a mouthful, but the two melded together are able to function in both humid and dry weather conditions and have been proven to pull water out of the atmosphere.

Machines have utilized atmospheric water before, like the FreshWater machine from Chile. These hydrogels have also been used for absorption— hygroscopic compounds are typically used in refrigeration. In fact, the team created something similar in 2018, a solar-powered water purification innovation using hydrogels that cleans water from any source. But by using the water that already exists in the atmosphere, the team was able to improve on their own work and existing tech.

• World's Fastest Motor

In september 2015, A new motor developed by researchers at ETH Zurich's Department of Power Electronics and marketed by the Swiss company, Celeroton, can spin in excess of 1 million revolutions per minute.

As a comparison, collapsed stars spin at 60,000 rpms, a blender at about 30,000 and high performance engines at around 10,000 rpms.

The matchbook-sized motor has a titatnium shell, ultra-thin wiring and a trade secret iron formulated cylinder. The need for smaller electronic devices requires smaller holes, which means smaller, faster, more efficient drills.

• Envigreen Edible Bags

India has been moving away from plastics for many years and many cities have already issued plastic bag bans. While legislation like this helps to protect our environment and wildlife, a young entrepreneur, Ashwath Hegde, noticed that it was a hardship for many Indians.

In August 2016 He eventually landed on a combination of natural starch (from potato and tapioca) and vegetable oils to make a bag that looks and feels just like plastic with none of the negative environmental impacts of a plastic vessel. EnviGreen‘s bags will naturally degrade in 180 days and if they are submerged in water they disappear in a day. Oh and also – these bags are edible. This means that when animals encounter non-degraded bags, they can eat them with no adverse effects.

Now this idea has become a startup and its all self funded(Rs30 crore) .the name of the company is EnviGreen Biotech India Pvt Ltd

• DewDrop Water-from-Air Condenser

Jawwad Patel, a 22-year-old engineering student from Hyderabad has designed a 3D-printed apparatus which can ‘create’ water from air. He is the first person from Asia to do so. The water apparatus produces pure drinkable water with the the help of computerised sensor interface with UV filter. In an hour, the device can extract nearly 1.8 litres of water from air.

Called ‘Dewdrop’, this device uses the moisture in the air to create the water. It is also not Patel’s first attempt at creating a novel device. He has previously created a smart helmet, which will not let you drive if you are drunk. He has also been nominated for the National Youth

Award 2015-16 and Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Excellence Award 2016. For more information visit dewdrops official page

• An army of factory robots

Omron artificial intelligence (AI) Automatic Transportation Mobile Robot machines are designed to work together in factories.

The white robots, launched in January, gather data as they roam around, creating maps in their "brain" which they then use to independently navigate their environment.

All the controller has to do is set the robot's destination and it will navigate its own route. Laser sensors on all sides of the "body" allow the robot to detect unexpected objects -- a person, for example. Using those maps, it can reroute to the destination. The robots can travel at 1.8 meters per second, and carry a maximum load of 130 kg -- although the greater the load the slower they travel. And their application isn't limited to factories. At Incheon Airport in South Korea, a mobile robot has been serving customers drinks.

Antibiotics vs superbugs: scientists found deep in Lake

The antibiotics we know today don't work anymore. That's why superbugs (bacteria resistant to modern antibiotics) kill some 700 thousand people each year. There is hope for mankind though: little Amphipoda crustaceans from lake Baikal which is a rift lake in Russia, may be the answer. Turns out... there are actinobacteria living on the crustaceans that produce exactly what researchers worldwide have been looking for - new antibiotics .

• A cancer "vaccine" eliminated tumors in mice

In January 2018, researchers at Stanford University,USA announced in a press release that they were recruiting lymphoma patients in a clinical trial to test a potential cancer vaccine. The news came after the researchers successfully eliminated tumors in mice.

Ketamine, a drug previously known as a "party drug," may be the first new depression drug in 30 years. Johnson & Johnson, one of the pharmaceutical companies pursuing the drug's potential antidepressant qualities, presented some promising new research in May 2018.

Their version of ketamine is a nasal spray made with a compound called esketamine, the chemical mirror image of ketamine. The results found that people who got the real spray saw significantly better improvements in their depressive symptoms than those who got the placebo, over the course of 28 days.

• Smart contact lenses can monitor blood glucose in people with diabetes.

In an attempt to reduce the inconvenience for diabetes patients, a team of researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea developed a new contact lens capable of detecting glucose levels in patients with diabetes .These smart contact lenses are made of transparent nanomaterials and therefore do not obstruct the wearer's view, "Besides, because the system uses a wireless antenna to read sensor information, no separate power source, like battery is required for the smart contact lens sensors."

• Scientists may have discovered a way to prevent peanut allergies

Could peanut allergies soon be thing of the past? Researchers may have the answer to help cure peanut allergy, which is one of the most fatal food allergies. A biopharmaceutical company, Aimmune Therapeutics, based in Brisbane, California, said a major study showed that its daily capsules of peanut flour helped desensitise children to nuts.

• French man became the first person to receive two face transplants

Dubbed as the ‘man with three faces’, Jerome Hamon, 43, of France became the first person in the world to undergo two face transplants in April 2018. The unprecedented feat was led by Dr Laurent Lantieri of the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, a French professor of plastic surgery, who carried out Hamon’s first surgery eight years ago.