Top TechTop Tech #110: Printed Pill, Jumpin’ Bug-Bots, Faster Optics
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Tuesday’s Top Tech:
• FDA approves 3D-printed pill
• Bug-like robot jumps on water
• 10x faster optical communications
FDA approves 3D-printed pill
The US Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for a 3D-printed pill to be produced, reports Aprecia Pharmaceuticals.
Advantages include adjusting doses for individual patients, tightly packaged layers of medication in precise dosages, and easier-to-swallow high-dose medications.
The first drug, Spritam, helps control epilepsy seizures.
The firm says it is “a specialty pharmaceutical company” that has developed an “innovative and proprietary three-dimensional printing technology platform.” It is the “first and only company in the world utilizing this cutting-edge 3DP technology platform to develop and manufacture pharmaceutical products on a commercial scale. We believe our platform will generate multiple product-enhancing drug delivery technologies that can be used in a variety of therapeutic categories.”
Bug-like robot jumps on water
We’ve all seen insects walk and jump on water. Now get ready for robots to do the same.
Scientists have built a thumb-sized, 68-milligram weighing “jumping robotic insect” that “jumps on water with maximum momentum transfer.”
The Harvard and Seoul scientists add that “Jumping on water is a unique locomotion mode found in semi-aquatic arthropods, such as water striders… To reproduce this feat in a surface tension–dominant jumping robot, we elucidated the hydrodynamics involved and applied them to develop a bio-inspired impulsive mechanism that maximizes momentum transfer to water.”
Here’s more information, including a cool video.
10x faster optical communications
A new material could accelerate optical communications 10 times faster than conventional technologies, Purdue University reports.
Researchers there say their “plasmonic oxide” made of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is able to modulate how much light is reflected by 40 percent, while requiring less power than other methods. “We were surprised that it was this fast,” they add.
