Air conditioners and refrigerators quietly eat a huge share of the world's electricity, and the gases inside many of them trap heat in the atmosphere. A team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) now reports a step toward a different kind of cooling: a solid metal that gets cold when it is squeezed, built in a way that is cheap, fast to make and tough enough to run for more than 100 million cycles.
The work, published in the journal Science and described in an HKUST pres...
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shape memory alloy
GMO Chickens Could Block Bird Influenza and Prevent Outbreaks
The latest innovative development by Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge are genetically modified glow-in-the-dark chickens developed in order to block the bird flu.
The genetically modified organism chickens are given a shot of a fluorescent protein. The modified birds contain a protein to differentiate themselves from other chickens. Under ultraviolet light, their beaks and feet emit a haunting green hue. This sets them apart from regular birds
To...
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Smart Bird – the ultra-light robot bird
A flying robot that imitates a bird has been created.
Plenty of robots can fly but none can fly like a real bird. Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull that flies by flapping its wings.
This invention of a flying robot imitates a bird. It takes off, lands and flies like a real bird.
The flying robot has a two-meter wingspan, and is made of a lightweight (450 gram) carbon-fiber skeleton body.
It uses hybrid drive technol...
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Controllable Wingsuit to Fly Through the Air
Imagine if you could glide through the air with wings like a bat and control your movements more easily.
Inventor Tony Uragallo of Zephyrhills has invented a new product called Bird Wingsuit which is created of a web of nylon material between outstretched arms and legs.
He based his research on the kite birds to develop his technique. He observed that Kites steer by twisting their tail one way or another and this led him develop his new wingsuit.
Compared to the earlier wingsuits, this ...
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