Travelling to work, meeting friends for a catch up or just doing some shopping are often taken for granted by people with no known disabilities. For the visually impaired, these seemingly simple things can be a serious challenge.

But imagine a city equipped with technology that enables the visually impaired to recognise people, places or even bank notes, helping them to live more independently whether indoors or in a public place. That’s the promise of so-called smart cities, which use things like internet-connected devices and artificial intelligence to improve services and the quality of life for their residents.

To improve the efficiency their municipal services, many Indian cities have started enabling government-service requests, which involves collecting and sharing citizen data with government officials and, potentially, the public. But there’s also a national push to protect citizen privacy, potentially restricting data usage. Cities are now beginning to question how much citizen data, if any, they can use to track government operations..

‘20-year Artificial Intelligence Roadmap’ is  co-authored by Yolanda Gil, a University of Southern California (USC) computer science research professor and research director at the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI), with computer science experts from universities across the U.S. Published by the Computing Community Consortium, funded by the National Science Foundation, the roadmap aims to identify challenges and opportunities in the AI landscape, and to inform future decisions, policies and investments in this area.

Some of the most important tools in the toolbox of modern cell biologists are special chunks of DNA that act like spies, reporting on the cell's function. The markers, known as reporter genes, allow researchers to get a sense for what cells are doing by watching genetic programs embedded in their DNA turn on and off.

With apologies to “Spinal Tap,” it appears that black can, indeed, get more black.

MIT engineers report that they have cooked up a material that is 10 times blacker than anything that has previously been reported. The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — microscopic filaments of carbon, like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees, that the team grew on a surface of chlorine-etched aluminum foil. The foil captures at least 99.995 percent* of any incoming light, making it the blackest material on record.The researchers have published their findings in the journal ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Building conventional robots typically requires carefully combining components like motors, batteries, actuators, body segments, legs and wheels. Now, researchers have taken a new approach, building a robot entirely from smaller robots known as “smarticles” to unlock the principles of a potentially new locomotion technique.

The 3D-printed smarticles — short for smart active particles — can do just one thing: flap their two arms. But when five of these smarticles are confined in a circle, they begin to nudge one another, forming a robophysical system known as a “supersmarticle” that can move by itself. Adding a light or sound sensor allows the supersmarticle to move in response to the stimulus — and even be controlled well enough to navigate a maze.

Many people see artificially grown human organs as the Holy Grail for resolving the organ shortage, and advances in 3D printing have led to a boom in using that technique to build living tissue constructs in the shape of human organs. However, all 3D-printed human tissues to date lack the cellular density and organ-level functions they need to be used in organ repair and replacement

Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center have leveraged a computational method to map protein-protein interactions between all known human-infecting viruses and the cells they infect. The method, along with the data that it generated, has spawned a wealth of information toward improving our understanding of how viruses manipulate the cells that they infect and cause disease. Among its findings, the work uncovered a role for estrogen receptor in regulating Zika Virus (ZIKV) infection, as well as links between cancer and the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a method to address failures in a promising anti-cancer drug, bringing together tools from genome engineering, protein engineering and biomaterials science to improve the efficacy, accuracy and longevity of certain cancer therapies.

Using a combination of CRISPR-based targeting, a protein “depot” that allows for sustained release of the drug and a highly potent binding system, the team showed that their new strategy could overcome three critical problems that limit the efficacy of many cancer drugs— their limited potency, their quick elimination from the body, and the ability of cancer cells to develop resistance to the drug. 

Like a janitor thumbing through a keychain to find just the right key to open a lock, the "rock-and-roll" motion of the canine parvovirus during the binding process may help explain how the virus can find the spot on a receptor to infect not just dogs, but multiple species, according to an international team of researchers. The model also could lead to a better understanding of how viruses enter a human body.

Caleb Finch of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and Alexander Kulminski of Duke University’s Social Science Research Institute have outlined a framework called the Alzheimer’s Disease Exposome to address major gaps in understanding how environmental factors interact with genetic factors to increase or reduce risk for the disease. The theoretical article appears  in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Whole genome sequencing of tumour cells could help predict the prognosis of a patient’s cancer and offer clues to identify the most effective treatment, suggests an international study published in Nature Medicine.

Our DNA, the human genome, comprises of a string of molecules known as nucleotides. These are represented by the letters A, C, G and T. Sometimes, changes occur in the ‘spelling’ of our DNA – an A becomes a G, for example. These changes, known as mutations, can be caused by a number of factors, some spontaneous, others environmental, such as exposure to tobacco smoke or to ultraviolet light, and all leave characteristic signatures on the genome.

Tools that detect cancer in its early stages can increase patient survival and quality of life. However, cancer screening approaches often call for expensive equipment and trips to the clinic, which may not be feasible in rural or developing areas with little medical infrastructure.

By taking advantage of this chemical reaction that produces a colour change, this test can be administered without the need for expensive and hard-to-use lab instruments.

We have all felt it—the uncomfortable feeling in our nether regions that has us heading to the nearest washroom to empty our bladder. While many of us can hold it until we reach a toilet, those with urinary incontinence, or the inability to prevent the leakage of urine from the bladder, face a severe social and hygiene issue. This condition can be caused by a variety of factors, such as urinary tract infections, kidney stones or neurological disorders. A recent study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) and the University of Birmingham, UK may hold hopes for a better understanding of urinary incontinence and possible interventions for those suffering from this condition

MIT and Dartmouth College researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, a tool that detects new characteristics of environmental “noise” that can destroy the fragile quantum state of qubits, the fundamental components of quantum computers. The advance may provide insights into microscopic noise mechanisms to help engineer new ways of protecting qubits.  

Qubits can represent the two states corresponding to the classic binary bits, a 0 or 1. But, they can also maintain a “quantum superposition” of both states simultaneously, enabling quantum computers to solve complex problems that are practically impossible for classical computers.

In a paper in the journal Nature, researchers from Purdue University and the University of Rochester, including John Nichol, an assistant professor of physics, and Rochester PhD students Yadav P. Kandel and Haifeng Qiao, demonstrate their method of relaying information by transferring the state of electrons. The research brings scientists one step closer to creating fully functional quantum computers and is the latest example of  Rochester’s initiative to better understand quantum behavior and develop novel quantum systems. The University recently received a $4 million grant from the Department of Energy to explore quantum materials.

Mechanical engineers at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering, leading collaboration with biologists from Harvard University, have created the first robotic fish proven to mimic the speed and movements of live yellowfin tuna.

Their peer-reviewed paper was published in Science Robotics, an offshoot of the journal Science devoted to technological advancements in robotic science and engineering.