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Category: engineering

Study shows how brain-to-computer ‘electroceuticals’ can help restore cognition

Research led by Thilo Womelsdorf, professor of psychology and biomedical engineering at the Vanderbilt Brain Institute, could revolutionize how brain-computer interfaces are used to treat disorders of memory and cognition.

The study, “Adaptive reinforcement learning is causally supported by and striatum,” was published June 10, 2025, in the journal Neuron.

According to researchers, neurologists use electrical (BCIs) to help patients with Parkinson’s disease and when drugs and other rehabilitative interventions are not efficient. For these disorders, researchers say brain-computer interfaces have become electroceuticals that substitute pharmaceuticals by directly modulating dysfunctional brain signals.

‘Weird shading’ tricks the brain into seeing 3D forms from simple lines

Shading brings 3D forms to life, beautifully carving out the shape of objects around us. Despite the importance of shading for perception, scientists have long been puzzled about how the brain actually uses it. Researchers from Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and Yale University recently came out with a surprising answer.

Previously, it has been assumed that one interprets shading like a physics-machine, somehow “reverse-engineering” the combination of and lighting that would recreate the shading we see. Not only is this extremely challenging for advanced computers, but the visual is not designed to solve that sort of problem. So, these researchers decided to start instead by considering what is known about the brain when it first gets signals from the eye.

“In some of the first steps of visual processing, the brain passes the image through a series of ‘edge-detectors,’ essentially tracing it like an etch-a-sketch,” Professor Roland W. Fleming of Giessen explains. “We wondered what shading patterns would look like to a brain that’s searching for lines.” This insight led to an unexpected, but clever short-cut to the shading inference problem.

New method replaces nickel and cobalt in battery for cleaner, cheaper lithium-ion batteries

A team of McGill University researchers, working with colleagues in the United States and South Korea, has developed a new way to make high-performance lithium-ion battery materials that could help phase out expensive and/or difficult-to-source metals like nickel and cobalt.

The team’s breakthrough lies in creating a better method of producing “disordered rock-salt” (DRX) cathode particles, an alternative battery material. Until now, manufacturers struggled to control the size and quality of DRX particles, which made them unstable and hard to use in manufacturing settings. The researchers addressed that problem by developing a method to produce uniformly sized, highly crystalline particles with no grinding or post-processing required.

“Our method enables mass production of DRX cathodes with consistent quality, which is essential for their adoption in and renewable energy storage,” said Jinhyuk Lee, the paper’s corresponding author and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mining and Materials Engineering.

We’ll be uploading our entire MINDS to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years, Google expert claims

Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google, has claimed that in just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become ‘digitally immortal’.

Alternating current can reduce friction by redistributing electronic density at material interfaces

A research team led by Prof. Tian-Bao Ma from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Tsinghua University has proposed a novel strategy to reduce friction and wear by inducing dynamic electronic density redistribution through the application of an alternating electric current.

This method enables flexible and instantaneous modulation of by adjusting the amplitude and frequency of the alternating current. Remarkably, it maintains low friction and wear over long durations under high contact pressure and current density, requiring only a low driving voltage.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

Need a new 3D material? Build it with DNA

When the Empire State Building was constructed, its 102 stories rose above midtown one piece at a time, with each individual element combining to become, for 40 years, the world’s tallest building. Uptown at Columbia, Oleg Gang and his chemical engineering lab aren’t building Art Deco architecture; their landmarks are incredibly small devices built from nanoscopic building blocks that arrange themselves.

“We can now build the complexly prescribed 3D organizations from self-assembled nanocomponents, a kind of nanoscale version of the Empire State Building,” said Gang, professor of chemical engineering and of applied physics and at Columbia Engineering and leader of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials’ Soft and Bio Nanomaterials Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

“The capabilities to manufacture 3D nanoscale materials by design are critical for many emerging applications, ranging from light manipulation to neuromorphic computing, and from catalytic materials to biomolecular scaffolds and reactors,” said Gang.

When stem cells feel the squeeze, they start building bone

In a discovery that could reshape approaches to regenerative medicine and bone repair, researchers have found that human stem cells can be prompted to begin turning into bone cells simply by squeezing through narrow spaces.

The study suggests that the physical act of moving through tight, confining spaces, like those between tissues, can influence how stem cells develop. This could open new possibilities for engineering materials and therapies by guiding using physical, rather than chemical, signals.

The research was led by Assistant Professor Andrew Holle from the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at NUS, and was published on 8 May 2025 in the journal Advanced Science.

Engineers stunned by revolutionary wood that’s stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminum

Imagine a world where our skyscrapers gleam with the warmth of timber instead of the chill of steel. Superwood, the latest breakthrough from InventWood, promises just that—combining the best of nature and engineering to outstrip traditional metals.

The future of engineering biology — with Angela McLean

Join Dame Angela McLean, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, as she discusses the transformative potential of the field of engineering biology.

This Discourse was recorded at the Ri on 25 April 2025. Find out more about Discourses here: https://www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/blog/history-fr…-discourse.

Watch the Q&A here (exclusively for subscribers): https://youtu.be/GKRTtoEpFeI
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The field of engineering biology uses the whole span of biological sciences in conjunction with technology and engineering to benefit multiple sectors and our society more broadly.

But as a relatively new field, scientists still have many unanswered questions. What are the key opportunities and risks it presents? What barriers stand in the way of engineering biology revolutionising society?

Dame Angela McLean, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, has been considering the scientific evidence behind the many claims – both utopian and dystopian – associated with research and innovation in engineering biology. In this Discourse, Dame Angela shares what she has learned from her “Year of Engineering Biology”, describing her vision for this suite of technologies and the applications she expects to emerge over the next decade and beyond.

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