World's tiniest Light-powered engine

                Scientists have developed the world’s tiniest engine – just a few billionths of a meter in size – which is powered by light and may help develop nano-machines that can navigate in water sense the environment around the, or even enter living cells to fight disease. The prototype device is made of tiny charged particles of gold, bound together with temperature-responsive polymers in the form of a gel.

                When the ‘nano-engine’ is heated to a certain temperature, it stores large amounts of elastic energy in a fraction of a second, as the polymer coatings expel water from the gel and collapse. “Now we can use light to power a piston engine at the nanoscale,” said Ventsislac Valev, now based at the University of Bath.

In China, a 'student bot' to sit for entrance test

                A Chinese robot is set to compete with grade 12 students during the country’s national college entrance examination next year and get a score qualifying it to enter first-class universities. The robot will appear in three exams – Math, Chinese and a comprehensive test of liberal arts, including history, politics and geography, said Lin Hui, CEO of an artificial intelligence company in Chengdu.

                The robot will have to finish the exams during designated periods like the other examinees. It will take its exams in a closed room with just proctors and a notary present. The robot will be linked to a printer before every exam, and the electronic examination paper will be loaded to the robot’s program when the examination begins, Lin said.

                It will be totally disconnected from the internet and can solve the problems with its artificial intelligence program, ‘China Daily’ reported. It is believed that Chinese and a comprehensive test of liberal arts, rather than maths, will pose challenges to the robot, since questions in maths are objective with specific answers, while in the other test subjects, there are some subjective questions, such as the reading comprehension and essay-writing. According to Lin, the robot writing technique nowadays has been increasingly mature.

Microbots that can hitch-hike on birds, butterflies

                Harvard scientists have developed flying micro-robots that can use static electricity to perch on bats, birds or butterflies to conserve energy in long-duration flights. “Many applications for small drones require them to stay in the air for extended periods,” said Moritz Graule, who conducted the research as a student at Harvard University.

                “Unfortunately, smaller drones run out of energy quickly. We want to keep them aloft longer without requiring too much additional energy,” said Graule. “A lot of different animals use perching to conserve energy, but the methods they use to perch, like sticky adhesives or latching with talons, are inappropriate for a paperclip-size microbot, as they either require intricate systems with moving parts or high forces for detachment,” said Kevin Ma, from Harvard.

                The team turned to electrostatic adhesion. “In our system, a small amount of energy is constantly supplied to maintain the attraction,” he explained. The RoboBee uses an electrode patch and a foam mount that absorbs shock. The entire mechanism weighs 13.4 mg, bringing the total weight of the robot to about 100mg. It take off and flies normally. Ehen the electrode parch is supplied with a charge, it can stick to almost any surface, from glass to wood to a leaf.

Scientists discovered traces of Iron Isotopes of Supernova on Moon

                Scientists at Technical University of Munich (TUM) discovered the traces of isotopes of 60Fe (Iron) in sample from the moon which are similar to those were found on Earth’s ocean floor. This led them to believe that these isotopes are also from the same supernova explosion. The study was published in Physics Review Letters journal on 13 April 2016. Earlier, a unique iron isotope, 60Fe, was found in deep-sea crusts and ocean sediments from the Pacific Ocean. At present, the scientists detected the same kind of isotopes 60Fe, with high concentrations on the moon as well.