Kidela

Health

Artificial limbs – We can rebuild you

A series of important scientific and engineering firsts in recent years have established a new phase in the development of bionic limbs – precision robotic replacements for legs, feet, arms and hands, controlled by thought along the nerves and muscles that once served the missing limb.

Science

Electric cars: boom or bust?

Since the turn of the last century, Americans have been in love with their cars. They have given us a great deal of independence and allowed all of us to travel the four corners of the country while living further away from our jobs. The honeymoon ended in the 1970s and ‘80s with oil embargoes, and the fear of pollution resulting from the carbon monoxide emissions from cars powered by internal combustion engines. More recently, the recession and the cost per gallon of gasoline has encouraged us to focus on new forms of transportation — electric and hybrid cars.

Reports

The origins of primary care medicine

The discovery of the remains of a prehistoric human, called Ötzi the Iceman, in Italy’s Tyrolean Alps in 1991, provided evidence that at least one person from 5,300 years ago knew about the healing properties of a certain fungus. To say that primary healthcare has changed dramatically since the Middle Ages would be an understatement.

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Tech

The creation of Nokia

The Finnish telecommunications company Nokia is most famous for its line of cell phones and communication devices. It currently serves markets in Europe, Asia-Pacific, China, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and North America. The company, as it exists today, was born from a merger of three companies in 1967, and to understand its current manifestation, it’s helpful to look at its predecessors.

Companies

BirdBrain Technologies offers educational robots to schools

One small company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — BirdBrain Technologies LLC — is providing a pathway to commercialization for robotics research taking place in the CREATE (Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment) Lab, at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute also in Pittsburgh.