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A method for making remote controlled cyborg cockroaches has been developed by an international team lead by scientists at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR). The system includes a tiny wireless control module that is powered by a rechargeable battery coupled to a solar cell. Despite the mechanical gadgets, the insects may move freely thanks to flexible materials and ultrathin electronics. These developments, which were published on September 5 in the academic journal npj Flexible Electronics, will contribute to the widespread use of artificial insects. In order to aid check dangerous regions or monitor the environment, scientists have been attempting to create cyborg insects, which are partially insects and partially machines. The ability to control cyborg insects remotely for extended periods of time is necessary for their use to be viable, though. This necessitates cordless, rechargeable battery-powered control of their leg segments. Nobody wants a team of robotic cock...

Mohammad Samizadeh Nikoo, a Ph.D. candidate at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics Research Laboratory (POWERlab), made an unexpected discovery while doing research on phase transitions in vanadium dioxide (VO2). Around ambient temperature, VO2 has an insulating phase and, at 68 °C, undergoes a rapid transition from an insulator to a metal, changing its lattice structure. Samizadeh Nikoo asserts that VO2 has a volatile memory because "it immediately returns to the insulating state after the excitation is removed." For his thesis, he set out to determine how long it takes for VO2 to transition between states. His research, however, took an unexpected turn when, after taking hundreds of measurements, he identified a memory effect in the composition of the material. Samizadeh Nikoo used an electric current to treat VO2 samples in his research. According to him, "the current traveled through the substance, following a path,...