Making artificial limbs that can perform gross motor functions is relatively easy. Fine motor actions are harder, and wiring the limbs into the nervous system is harder still. But researchers at Berkeley and Stanford are crossing the real frontier: making artificial skin that can touch and feel.

Research teams at Berkeley and Stanford recently announced breakthroughs in producing highly-touch-sensitive artificial skin. In both cases, an extremely thin layer of plastic or rubber are bonded to electronic elements arranged in micropatterns, so the skin can retain flexibility and elasticity while still transmitting a strong signal. Both papers appear in an forthcoming issue of the journal Nature Materials.

At Berkeley, the team used germanium/silicon nanowires, which they compare to microscopic ‘hairs

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Even as the United States has been borrowing trillions to pursue its wars in the Middle East, the government of Iraq has posted a tidy surplus, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The report makes a direct link between U.S. government spending — including $642 billion on U.S. military operations there and $24 billion for training and equipping the Iraqi security forces — and Iraq’s cumulative surplus of $52.1 billion through the end of 2009.

For comparison purposes, Iraq’s annual gross domestic product is $65.8 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt has soared from $6.4 trillion to $13.4 trillion since former president George W. Bush invaded Iraq and decided to borrow the money for wars and slash taxes.

The GAO report concludes with an understated recommendation that ‘Congress may wish to consider Iraq’s available financial resources’ when reviewing future funding requests to support the Iraqi security forces.

The report notes that the Obama administration is currently requesting $2 billion in additional U.S. funding in its fiscal year 2011 budget request to support the training and equipping of Iraq’s military and police.

Discrepancies in Iraqi accounting led the GAO to report wide ranges in some areas. For instance, the report says that through the […]

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Hundreds of cars waiting in the heat to slowly pass through one of the dozens of checkpoints and searches they must endure every day. The constant roar of generators. The smell of fuel, of sewage, of kabobs. Automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles, out of SUVs with tinted windows. Mountains of garbage. Rumors of the latest assassination or explosion. Welcome to the new Iraq, same as the old Iraq — even if Barack Obama has declared George W. Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom over and announced the beginning of his own Operation New Dawn, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared Iraq sovereign and independent.

Iraq has had several declarations of sovereignty since the first one in June 2004. As with earlier milestones, it’s not clear what exactly this one means. Since the Americans have declared the end of combat operations, U.S. Stryker and MRAP vehicles can be seen conducting patrols without Iraqi escorts in parts of the country and the Americans continue to conduct unilateral military operations in Mosul and elsewhere, even if under the guise of ‘force protection’ or ‘countering improvised explosive devices.’ American military officers in Iraq told me they were irate with the […]

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Swimming in indoor chlorinated pools may induce genotoxicity (DNA damage that may lead to cancer) as well as respiratory effects, but the positive health effects of swimming can be maintained by reducing pool levels of the chemicals behind these potential health risks, according to a new study published in a set of three articles online September 12 ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). This study is the first to provide a comprehensive characterization of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in an indoor pool environment and the first to study the genotoxicity of exposure to these chemicals among swimmers in an indoor chlorinated pool.

DBPs form in pool water from reactions between disinfectants such as chlorine and organic matter that is either present naturally or is introduced by swimmers, such as sweat, skin cells, and urine. Previous epidemiologic studies have found an association between exposure to DBPs in drinking water and risk of bladder cancer, and one such study has found this association for dermal/inhalational exposure such as occurs during showering, bathing, or swimming.

The new study details a comprehensive investigation of DBPs and mutagenicity of water samples collected from two indoor pools, one disinfected with chlorine, the other with […]

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ALBANY — Pollution in coal-fired power-plant emissions will cause an estimated 13,500 premature deaths nationwide and roughly 945 in New York this year, according to a Clean Air Task Force report.

The study estimates that the total cost of health problems related to coal plants is more than $100 billion a year in the United States.

New York ranks third for total number of deaths, hospital admissions and heart attacks projected, but it doesn’t make it into the top 15 states for per capita mortality risk. But the top metropolitan area in the country affected by the pollution includes New York City and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with an expected 799 deaths, 698 hospital admissions and 1,541 heart attacks this year.

‘We’ve got all these dirty dinosaurs out there, spewing out pollutants when the technology exists to clean them up, but what we’re lacking is the regulatory power,

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