Shapeshifters were once the basis for far-fetched science fiction drama. They are now on the outskirts of robot-based research being performed by the U.S.
Ants are notoriously much better than humans at organizing their collective traffic flow when foraging for food, but how they manage to do so isn't fully understood...Last year, physicist Daniel Goldman's lab at Georgia Tech studied how fire ants optimize their tunnel digging. Those tunnels are narrow, with barely enough room for two ants to pass, yet jams rarely happened. When an ant encounters a tunnel in which other ants are already working, i
[I]f a promising Army project proves out, a future soldier might deploy a host of “shape-shifting” particles that form themselves into whatever they need to accomplish the mission. That would include a
Researchers are investigating a different kind of retinal prosthesis made from semiconductive polymers, a class of carbon-based plastics that can conduct electricity in much the same way that silicon microchips do.These polymers are best known for their use in some types of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, the richly colored screens found in millions of smartphones. But the materials also show promise for a new generation of cheap, flexible, lightweight solar cells.
Fire ants build living rafts to survive floods and rainy seasons. Georgia Tech scientists are studying if a fire ant colony’s ability to respond to changes in their environment during a flood is an instinctual behavior and how fluid forces make them respond. Hungtang Ko and David Hu will present the science behind this insect behavior, focusing their discussion on how the living raft changes size under various environmental conditions at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics 72nd Annual Meeting on Nov. 26.
A choreography of swimming, walking and rolling could help future rovers, built by Daniel Goldman's lab, avoid getting stuck in loose soil on the moon or Mars.
In a study published in Heart Rhythm on May 28, researchers led by Favio Fenton at Georgia Institute of Technology detailed how the drug affects electrical signaling in the heart of rabbits and guinea pig, and contributes to abnormal heart rhythms; these animals serve as model for understanding heart issues in humans.
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been promoted as a potential treatment for Covid-19, is known to have potentially serious effects on heart rhythms. Now, corresponding author Flavio Fenton and a team of researchers have used an optical mapping system to observe exactly how the drug creates serious disturbances in the electrical signals that govern heartbeat.
