Author: WeWorldMedia-admin

How a 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics

Published: 17 April 2025
Categories: MIT Tech Review

RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

As a child of an electronic engineer, I spent a lot of time in our local Radio Shack as a kid. While my dad was locating capacitors and resistors, I was in the toy section. It was there, in 1984, that I discovered the best toy of my childhood: the Armatron robotic arm. 

A drawing from the patent application for the Armatron robotic arm.COURTESY OF TAKARA TOMY

Described as a “robot-like arm to aid young masterminds in scientific and laboratory experiments,” it was the rare toy that lived up to the hype printed on the front of the box. This was a legit robotic arm. You could rotate the arm to spin around its base, tilt it up and down, bend it at the “elbow” joint, rotate the “wrist,” and open and close the bright-­orange articulated hand in elegant chords of

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.

Nature Careers | Science jobs

Published: 16 April 2025
Categories: Nature Jobs

RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Nature Career Guides

Browse collections of career guides. Learn about the mission and achievements of the world’s leading research organisations, find out more about their job roles, courses, and events, alongside independently written editorials that cover advancements and career opportunities in your field. 

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.

Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP)

Published: 14 April 2025
Categories: NSF Due Dates

RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

Synopsis

Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools. These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to “discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost,” and conduct research through iterative “closed-loop” efforts among the areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific ecosystem,

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.

Arctic Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (Arctic DDRIG) Arctic Social Sciences, Arctic System Sciences, and Arctic Observing Network (DDRIG)

Published: 14 April 2025
Categories: NSF Due Dates

RSS Feed Source: MIT Technology Review

NSF Financial Assistance awards (grants and cooperative agreements) made on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the applicable set of award conditions, dated October 1, 2024, available on the NSF website. These terms and conditions are consistent with the revised guidance specified in the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2024.

Click this link to continue reading the article on the source website.