Artificial spinal disc for back pain

In our spine are certain natural shock absorbers. Known as intervertebral discs, they prevent our vertebrae from grinding against one another. These natural cushions may erode with aging or they may be damaged by injury, leading to severe back pain problems. Indeed about $100 billion are spent annually on back pain treatment in US alone. Oneapproach is to have spinal fusion operations but they lead to decrease in the flexibility of the spine. Another approach is to replace the damaged discs. Now engineering professors Anton Bowden, Larry Howell and former student Peter Halverson, at Brigham Young University (BYU) have developed a new artificial disc that promises to help millions of people that suffer from chronic back pain. The new artificial disc is elastic and durable, allowing spinal movement while withstanding the extreme pressures that it is exposed to between the spine vertebra. The technology has been licensed to Crocker Spinal Technologies, a company based in Utah, USA, and the product is expected to be marketed later this year.Back pain sufferers may now look ahead with greater hope to the end of their long sufferings.

Sensitive robotic fingers

Scientists at the University of California’s Viterbi School of Engineering have developed an amazing technology that mimics a human finger in the sense of touch. Indeed it outperforms humans in being able to recognise a material from its feel. The “Bio Tac sensor” comprises a finger-like unit that has a soft flexible skin filled with a liquid. The skin has finger-print like patterns embossed on it that give it additional sensitivity. When the robotic finger is allowed to slide over a surface, it vibrates in characteristically different ways, depending on the nature and texture of the surface. These vibrations are then sensed by a microphone and recognised. The robotic fingers use an exploratory movement when touching the surface, just as we move our fingers over an object and try to recognise it by its feel. The mathematical model of such a movement was developed by Professor Gerald Loeb, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Dr Jeremy Fishel. The technology is now being sold to manufacturers of industrial robots and prosthetic hands.

Earlier engineers at the University of California in Berkeley had developed a pressure-sensitive artificial skin made from semi-conductor nanowires. This was done by growing germanium/silicon nanowires on a cylindrical drum. The material was then rolled across a sticky polyimide film to afford the basic material of the “e-skin”. The sheet was then coated with a pressure sensitive rubber.

So the next time you happen to shake hands with a robot, remember that his fingers are just as sensitive as yours, if not more so!

Voyager 1 at edge of solar system

Voyager 1 is a US space craft that was launched about 34 years ago. It has been hurtling across space all this time and is now about 11 billion miles away from us. The data that it sends takes almost 17 hours to reach us. It is on the verge of becoming the first man-made object to leave our little section of this universe and enter into inter-stellar space. As it hurtles outwards, it is now experiencing a significant increase in the intensity of the cosmic rays that are bombarding it. In this hitherto unexplored region of space Voyager 1 is likely to come across new experiences as it enters the very edge of the solar system.

Another spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched in 1977. It is now about 8.8 billion miles from the sun. The two spacecraft have been traveling along different trajectories in order to provide information about different sections of our solar system. Voyager 1 is traveling somewhat faster, at a speed of about 38,000mph, while Voyager 2’s velocity is about 35,000mph.

Will these spacecraft be able to provide us with information about those mysterious forces that lurk in outer space — dubbed as “dark matter” and “dark energy” by scientists, because of their ignorance of what they really are. The fact that about 95 per cent of our visible universe is made up of these strange forces illustrates how little we know about ourselves.

In the meanwhile the elusive “Higgs boson” (often referred to as the “God particle” as it is believed to impart mass to all other particles) is on the verge of discovery at CERN near Geneva. Scientists expect that within the next three to four months they should be able to tell with some certainty if the signals that they detected were indeed due to this particle, opening up an exciting new chapter in physics.

 aurahman786@gmail.com