CuriouTech

Images of the Terminator 2's T1000 flash before your mind's eye after watching this incredible video by Jing Liu of the Tsinghua University and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Thanks to this self powered liquid motor, the future of shape shifting robots just came a step closer. The metal alloy is mix of indium, liquid gallium, a little tin, and a flake of aluminium. It can propel itself forwards, and navigate tight spaces and bends without the need for an external power source. Besides it being a step towards future T1000's (however scary that notion might be if you've ever seen the Terminator 2, and if you haven't: go watch it!), this metal alloy has other potential usages. When held in place it can be used as a pump to push liquid through cooling devices, or even through blood vessels. source: http://www.sciencedump.com/content/future-shape-shifting-robots-closer-you-think

Last week, Mercedes Benz has unvieled its first futuristic, driverless concept car in San Francisco. The car named as F015 Luxury in Motion was first revealed to the public at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas last September. The car since has received a lots of attention from all around the world. Reddit user 'GoogleplexStar' posting the pic above, commenting, "This driverless Mercedes is cruising around San Francisco, blowing everyone's minds.". "It needed a break from Sunnyvale," the automaker wrote on Twitter, sharing photos of what looks like a roadster from Blade Runner. The F015 is being called as “Virtual Living Room” with seating for up to 4 people with two sets of couches facing each other. This is best for after a hard day work from office to home. And, because its Mercedes, it comes trimmed in walnut veneer, nappa leather, polished aluminium and glass, with soft blue LED lighting,” says Jason Fell at Entrepreneur. The s

Lithium-ion  batteries  have taken us a long way in phones, tablets, and even cars over the years, but it’s not a perfect technology — battery capacity holds us back. Scientists have been on the lookout for an alternative, but nothing has quite panned out yet. There’s been considerable interest around lithium-sulfur batteries in the last few years, and a breakthrough experiment from the Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside could make these batteries the next big thing. All it takes is a little glass. Traditional lithium-ion batteries have found their way into virtually all types of mobile technology, because they have significant energy density and relatively long life. You can charge a  li-ion cell  a few hundred times before it starts to fail, and there’s no memory effects as with older nickel cadmium and nickel-metal hydride rechargeables. This is where lithium-sulfur still falls short, but not because of the memory effect. They just get  di

For the first time, scientists have shown that it’s possible for two people of the same sex to create a baby, without the need for outside egg or sperm donation. The most obvious benefits would be for homosexual couples who want to have a child together, but the method could also help couples who have been affected by infertility.  The team, from Cambridge University in the UK and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, built on previous work where baby mice were successfully raised from mouse skin cells that had been converted into what’s known as  primordial germ cells  - the precursors of egg and sperm cells. It was a real struggle to replicate the process using human biological matter, but now they’ve finally managed to create new human primordial germ cells using skin cells from five human donors and stem cell lines from five human embryos. “We have succeeded in the first and most important step of this process, which is to show we can make these very early human stem cell

General Electric has revealed a new next generation body scanner dubbed as 'Revolution CT' that will give a Guts, Brains, Veins, Hearts and Bones of a body in a high definition.  Using this scanner, Doctors at Florida hospital get up close to bones, organs and veins, without making a single cut. The patients ride into the chamber of the scanner, dubbed as 'Revolution CT' where a fan-shaped beam of x rays passes down their bodies and a computer reconstructs a digital model of the body, slice-by-slice. The scanner can build an image of a heart in the time it takes for a single heartbeat, according to GE. To know more :  click on this link

The materials chitin and chitosan found in the shells are abundant and significantly cheaper to produce than the expensive metals such as ruthenium, which is similar to platinum, that are currently used in making nanostructured solar-cells. Currently the efficiency of solar cells made with these biomass-derived materials is low but if it can be improved they could be placed in everything from wearable chargers for tablets, phones and smartwatches, to semi-transparent films over window. Researchers, from QMUL's School of Engineering and Materials Science, used a process known as hydrothermal carbonization to create the carbon quantum dots (CQDs) from the widely and cheaply available chemicals found in crustacean shells. They then coat standard zinc oxide nanorods with the CQDs to make the solar cells. Dr Joe Briscoe, one of the researchers on the project, said: "This could be a great new way to make these versatile, quick and easy to produce solar cells from readily ava

Researchers at various reserach institutes has been working and successful in finding out a dru that can work against HIV virus and immune against it. The drug has worked against doses of HIV that were higher than  transmitted between humans, and works for at least eight months after injection. A new drug led by the team of researchers at  Scripps Research Institute in the US, is found to be effective against doses of HIV-1, HIV-2 and SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) that have been extracted from humans - including what researchers consider to be the ‘hardest-to-stop’ variants. "Our compound is the broadest and most potent entry inhibitor described so far,” lead researcher Michael Farzan from the Scripps Institute said in a press release. "Unlike antibodies, which fail to neutralise a large fraction of HIV-1 strains, our protein has been effective against all strains tested, raising the possibility it could offer an effective HIV vaccine alternative.” HIV infect