York University

BotFactory

BotFactory offers desktop size equipment for fully printed 3D electronics. This profile provides an update on its progress based on the information gathered at LOPEC 2024.

World's First Printer for Soft, Stretchable Electronics

Voltera has announced the launch of NOVA, a groundbreaking manufacturing platform for printing flexible hybrid electronics. NOVA uses direct-write technology to print circuits on soft, stretchable, and conformable surfaces.

Robots Use Fear to Fight Invasive Fish

The invasive mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) chews off the tails of freshwater fishes and tadpoles, leaving the native animals to perish while dining on other fishes' and amphibians' eggs. Researchers engineered a robot to scare mosquitofish away, revealing how fear alters its behavior, physiology, fertility—and may help turn the tide against invasive species.

Which COVID-19 Patients Are Most Likely to Need Ventilators?

Researchers are developing a computational tool to help medical staff decide which patients will need the most extensive treatment for COVID-19.

Long-Term Vagus Nerve Implant for Bioelectronic Medicine Research

Researchers have developed a long-term implant model for vagus nerve stimulation in mice that successfully modulates heart rate and inflammatory proteins. The device and procedure may change the way preclinical bioelectronic medicine research is conducted and lead to alternative therapies for various chronic diseases, including Crohn's, rheumatoid arthritis and heart failure, among others.

Building High-Efficiency Underwater Solar Cells

For the most part, solar cells have been limited to powering land- and space-based devices. While marine applications for solar cells do exist—for example, to power submerged autonomous vehicles and sensors—traditional photovoltaic materials like silicon cannot be used efficiently in deeper waters.

Researchers One Step Closer to Creating Organic Batteries

Researchers have discovered a way to make Lithium-powered batteries more environmentally friendly while retaining performance, stability and storage capacity.

First Long Term Vagus Nerve Stimulation Implant in Mice

Previous preclinical VNS studies have been limited to short-term stimulation -- a timeframe of minutes to hours -- due to the surgical and technological challenges of implanting a stimulator small enough to fit a mouse nerve. In order to conduct mouse studies lasting weeks or even months, Feinstein Institutes researchers developed new techniques to deliver long-term electrical stimulation in mice.

Robots Appear More Persuasive When Pretending to be Human

Recent technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have made it possible for machines, or bots, to pass as humans. A team of researchers conducted an experiment to study how people interact with bots whom they believe to be human, and how such interactions are affected once bots reveal their identity.

DNA as Tool to Build Graphene Circuits

Graphene is a groundbreaking material in the nanotechnology field, but it has characteristics that limit its potential applications. A research team is investigating ways to incorporate DNA nanotechnology as a construction tool to assemble graphene in new ways that could make the material more useful in electronic devices, among other applications.

Wearable motion sensors could save unborn babies

The thump, thump of a baby's heartbeat is a milestone in any pregnancy. Now, researchers have developed a technique that could allow expectant parents to hear their baby's heartbeat continuously at home with a non-invasive and safe device that is potentially more accurate than any fetal heartrate monitor currently available in the market.

Neural networks generate synthetic fingerprints

Fingerprint authentication systems are a widely trusted, ubiquitous form of biometric authentication, deployed on billions of smartphones and other devices worldwide. Yet a new study reveals a surprising level of vulnerability in these systems. Using a neural network trained to synthesize human fingerprints, the research team evolved a fake fingerprint that could potentially fool a touch-based authentication system for up to one in five people.

New sensors track dopamine in the brain for more than a year

Neuroscientists have now devised a way to measure dopamine in the brain for more than a year, which they believe will help them to learn much more about its role in both healthy and diseased brains.

Seeking a new element in artificial intelligence: trust

For decades, the cybersecurity community has devised protections to fend off malicious software attacks and identify and fix flaws that can disrupt the computing programs that are central to all aspects of life. Now, a team of researchers has received a grant to develop some of the first tools to bring those same protections to artificial intelligence systems.

Organic crystals twist, bend, and heal

Crystals are brittle and inelastic? A novel class of smart, bendable crystalline organic materials has challenged this view. Now, scientists have engineered a molecular soft cocrystalline structure that bends and twists reversibly and without disintegration when stimulated by high temperature, mechanical force, or under UV light.

Capturing brain signals with soft electronics

A new technology for long-term stable neural recording. It is based on a novel elastic material composite, which is biocompatible and retains high electrical conductivity even when stretched to double its original length.

New CRISPR method efficiently corrects DMD defect in heart tissue

Scientists have developed a CRISPR gene-editing technique that can potentially correct a majority of the 3,000 mutations that cause Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) by making a single cut at strategic points along the patient's DNA.

Dozens of new genes that create T cell-resistant cancer discovered

To better understand why some cancers are resistant to immunotherapy, researchers collaborated on a large-scale CRISPR cancer study.

Surprise discovery in energy efficient information storage

Today almost all information stored on hard disc drives or cloud servers is recorded in magnetic media, because it is non-volatile (i.e. it retains the information when power is switched off) and cheap.