BBC Knowledge Asia Edition - December 2014

Invisible

material

Now you see it, now you don’t. A team

at the University of Houston has

developed a material that can blend in

with its environment. It could be used

in everything from military

camouflage to wearable electronics,

its designers say. It uses light sensors,

reflectors and organic colour-changing

materials. The system mimics the skins

of creatures like octopuses that change

colour to match their surroundings.

Now

at t

dev

w

in

Exercising has a wealth of health

benefits, but now it could also power

your smartphone. A team at the

American Chemical Society has created

temporary tattoos that produce power

from sweat. They use lactate, which is

present in sweat,

as a power

source to create

a biobattery.

Power from

perspiration

A breakthrough in understanding how

lizards regenerate their tails could lead to

new treatments for spinal chord injuries,

birth defects or diseases such as arthritis.

A lizard is able to lose its tail as a defence

mechanism, sacrificing it in an attempt to

escape a predator. It turns out that lizards

turn on at least 326 specific genes when

regenerating the lost appendages.

This sets in motion a process that controls

stem cells in the brain, hair follicles and

blood vessels.

By further studying their ability to

regenerate, the researchers say they may

be able to harness the same effect to treat

injured humans.

Lizards’ tail regeneration secrets revealed

Meet the real-life Transformers: researchers

at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology have created origami-inspired

autonomous robots that can assemble

themselves in under four minutes.

The robots consist of a sheet of

paper and a polystyrene composite with

hinges cut into it, a pair of motors and a

microcontroller that acts as the robot’s

brain. Circuits embedded in the sheet heat

up, triggering the flat structure to ‘fold’ into

a mini robot capable of walking.

The team says the technology could one

day be used to create robots capable of

everything from helping with housework to

repairing satellites.

Robots that build themselves

There are few things more useless
than cigarette butts. But a team
at Seoul National University
has used the filters to create a
material that can store energy.
They transformed cellulose
acetate fibres into a carbon-
based material using a burning
technique. It could be used for
energy storage in everything
from electric vehicles to
wind turbines.

Cigarette

butt battery

A powerful example of body art...

The green anole lizard

will leave its tail behind

if a predator attacks

Origami robots:

hardly a threat to

Optimus Prime

The

colour-

changing

material