The emerging field of soft robotics requires mechanical components that grasp objects with the same delicacy as human hands. At present, most soft robots are powered by hard, sometimes bulky, actuators such as a servo motor, air compressor or hydraulic pump. However a new class of polymers, called “liquid crystal elastomers,” may eventually find use as soft artificial muscles.
“When two genes interact to cause a clinically important phenotype, we can leverage genotypic information at one of the loci in order to improve our ability to detect the other,” said Veronica Vieland, Ph.D., vice president for computational research and director, Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine.
Scientists at The Ohio State University (OSU) are working to develop a drug that will regenerate a critical enzyme that “ages” after a person is exposed to deadly chemical warfare agents.
left: In a simulation created at the Ohio Supercomputer Center by Bowling Green's Massimo Olivucci, a short fragment of the long retinal chromophore backbone of Anabaena Sensory Rhodopsin undergoes a complete clockwise rotation powered by the energy carried by two photons.
A recently developed, evolutionary computation approach offers researchers an alternative approach to search for models that can best explain experimental data derived from applications such as economics. Esmail Bonakdarian, Ph.D., a Franklin University assistant professor of computing sciences and mathematics, leveraged Ohio Supercomputer Center resources to test the underlying algorithm.
The Center for Surveillance Research (CSR), a National Science Foundation Industry/ University Cooperative Research Center, is a collaborative effort by academia, government and industry to conduct pre-competitive research and student training.
College geoscience students with mobility impairments soon will be able to explore a computer simulation of a large cave system to meet degree requirements of field-based learning experiences.
Slated for launch in 2019-20, the Surface Water and Ocean Topo-graphy (SWOT) satellite mission is a collaborative project of NASA and the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales. SWOT features a swath-mapping radar interferometer that will provide data on inland bodies of water, as well as mapping ocean circulation at high spatial resolution.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) attract great attention for their strong potential in applications involving aerospace/naval materials, nano-electrical products, optical devices, chemical sensors, catalyst supports, water/gas treatments, drug carriers and artificial tissues.
In the past decade, a series of useful molecular systems – known as phototriggers, photoswitches, photocaging groups or photoremovable protecting groups (PRPGs) – have been used in a wide variety of applications, playing a key role in the release of fragrances from household goods, as an aid in multi-step syntheses and in drug and gene delivery.
