Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science and College of Engineering have developed a semiliquid lithium metal-based anode that represents a new paradigm in battery design. Lithium batteries made using this new electrode type could have a higher capacity and be much safer than typical lithium metal-based batteries that use lithium foil as…
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Create Soft, Flexible Materials With Enhanced Properties
A team of polymer chemists and engineers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new methodology that can be used to create a class of stretchable polymer composites with enhanced electrical and thermal properties. These materials are promising candidates for use in soft robotics, self-healing electronics and medical devices. The results are published in the…
Synthetic Molecule Invades Double-Stranded DNA
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a synthetic molecule that can recognize and bind to double-stranded DNA or RNA under normal physiological conditions. The molecule could provide a new platform for developing methods for the diagnosis and treatment of genetic conditions. Their findings are published in Communications Chemistry, a new Nature journal. The work was…
Neurons Reliably Respond to Straight Lines
Single neurons in the brain’s primary visual cortex can reliably detect straight lines, even though the cellular makeup of the neurons is constantly changing, according to a new study by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists, led by Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Sandra Kuhlman. The study’s findings, published in Scientific Reports on Oct. 16, lay the…
New Techniques Help Smart Devices Detect What’s Happening
Smart devices can seem dumb if they don’t understand where they are or what people around them are doing. Carnegie Mellon University researchers say this environmental awareness can be enhanced by complementary methods for analyzing sound and vibrations. “A smart speaker sitting on a kitchen countertop cannot figure out if it is in a kitchen,…
Analysis Chronicles Changes in US Investment in R&D
Neuroscientists Map Brain’s Response to Cold Touch
Software Automatically Generates Knitting Instructions for 3D Shapes
Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists have developed a system that can translate a wide variety of 3-D shapes into stitch-by-stitch instructions that enable a computer-controlled knitting machine to automatically produce those shapes. Researchers in the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab have used the system to produce a variety of plush toys and garments. What’s more, James…
Pipe-Crawling Robot will Help Decommission DOE Nuclear Facility
A pair of autonomous robots developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute will soon be driving through miles of pipes at the U.S. Department of Energy’s former uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to identify uranium deposits on pipe walls. The CMU robot has demonstrated it can measure radiation levels more accurately from inside the…
Carnegie Mellon Reveals Inner Workings of Victorious A.I.
Libratus, an artificial intelligence that defeated four top professional poker players in no-limit Texas Hold’em earlier this year, uses a three-pronged approach to master a game with more decision points than atoms in the universe, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University report. In a paper being published online today by the journal Science, Tuomas Sandholm, professor of…
A Computer That Reads Body Language
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have enabled a computer to understand the body poses and movements of multiple people from video in real time — including, for the first time, the pose of each individual’s fingers. This new method was developed with the help of the Panoptic Studio, a two-story dome embedded with…
Lighting the Way to Optimal Photocatalysis
One afternoon, Carnegie Mellon University Materials Science and Engineering (MSE)’s Mohammad Islam walked into colleague Paul Salvador’s office and asked what the biggest problem was in photocatalysis that he’d like to be able to solve. Salvador’s answer: He’d like to determine how the oxidation and reduction reactions in photocatalysis could be separated into distinct channels…
Chemists Perform Surgery on Nanoparticles
A team of chemists led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Rongchao Jin has for the first time conducted site-specific surgery on a nanoparticle. The procedure, which allows for the precise tailoring of nanoparticles, stands to advance the field of nanochemistry. The surgical technique developed by Qi Li, the study’s lead author and a 3rd year graduate…
Chemists Perform Surgery on Nanoparticles
A team of chemists led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Rongchao Jin has for the first time conducted site-specific surgery on a nanoparticle. The procedure, which allows for the precise tailoring of nanoparticles, stands to advance the field of nanochemistry. The surgical technique developed by Qi Li, the study’s lead author and a 3rd year graduate…
Omnidirectional Mobile Robot Has Two Moving Parts
More than a decade ago, Ralph Hollis invented the ballbot, an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body glides atop a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball. The latest version, called SIMbot, has an equally elegant motor with just one moving part: the ball. The only other active moving part of the robot is the body…
Developing Rapid DNA Analysis Technology
Computational Design Tool Transforms Flat Materials into 3D Shapes
A new computational design tool can turn a flat sheet of plastic or metal into a complex 3-D shape, such as a mask, a sculpture or even a lady’s high-heel shoe. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL), say the tool enables designers to fully and…