Science and technology magazine - NEWS

A system will permit to move the wheelchair by the mental control.

A group of investigators of the University of Malaga has done a system based in the registration of the cerebral activity that permit to control some machine by the mind. The mechanism is done for that the disabled person realize actions if only this person think it. It is based in a interfaz which connect the brain to a computer by superficial electrodes. The user must put on a cap and train before, whit the helpful of a psychologist, until he understand to control his/her encephalographic
sign. Moreover of curious applications like to pilot a plane in a game computer or a car, this system will permit to get that several disabled people which can't control their muscles, they will able to drive a wheelchair or to send easy messages like for example "I have got thirst". The teacher and investigator Ricardo Ron has already thunk in the development of a virtual keyboard whit a better broadband which permit to the disabled to write words faster that the existing applications nowadays.

The University of Malaga exhibits its advances in robotics.

"˜The new cybernetic slaves' is the title of the exhibition at the Principia Science Centre where scientists and researchers from the University of Malaga (UMA) are displaying their latest applications of robotics in the fields of medicine, security, education and the home. One of the most remarkable is the ERM, a surgical robot developed by a research group from the Department of Systems and Automatic Engineering and which is used at the Teaching Hospital in Malaga. It is the first robotic assistant for laparoscopic surgery to be entirely developed and manufactured in Spain.

Science Fiction reaches the operating theatre.

Since developing the ERM robot, whose patent was bought by the Spanish firm SENER which now sells it all over the world, the UMA group doing research into Medical Robotics has started work on a new prototype. This time they are working in collaboration with the Miguel Hernández University in Alicante and the Cartif Technological centre. The prototype looks like an articulated worm which is inserted into the patient and which then makes its way to the area affected by illness. Once there, the worm casts off its "˜head'- really another abdominal microrobot- that can move within tiny spaces either independently or under external control. It is this latter device that will be developed at the University of Malaga and equipped with all the instruments necessary to carry out surgery.

Motorbike designed by students from the University of Malaga wins prize for the best engineering design in an international competition.

A group of 15 students and 5 teachers from the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Malaga (UMA) took part in the final phase of Motostudent, a competition for Spanish and other European universities whose aim was to design, develop and manufacture prototypes of motorbikes with low c.c. engines.

Student from Malaga wins Bronze medal at the International Physics Olympiad

Juan Carlos Criado ílamo, a pupil at the I.E.S. Los Manantiales, Torremolinos, had already won the gold medal at the 2010 National Physics Olympiad and the silver one at the National Mathematics Olympiad.
La Opinión de Málaga, 16.09.2010

Investigators of the University of Málaga obtain a prestigious international prize thanks to a work that imitates solar radiation.

In a gala celebrated in San Francisco, a group of professors of the Department of Computer Architecture of the University of Málaga have obtained by the Itanium consortium the prestigious prize "Itanium Innovation Award" that it's granted annually to these companies or agencies that achieves to extract the maximum efficiency to supercomputers based in HP-Intel Itanium processors. To resolve the problem, some days of ejecution in the powerful Picasso Supercomputer of the University of Málaga, of 128 Itanium2 processors, were required. The investigation group, constituted by Emilio L. Zapata, Siham Tabik and Luis Felipe Romero (group director), also obtained the Spin-Off prize of the University of Málaga and achieved the Eurocities 2009 of Innovation prize for Málaga.
Diario Sur, 15.09.2010

Grafeno, the material of the future.

Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov got the Nobel prize of physics in 2010 for the discovery of grafeno. They saw how carbon is going to be the material of the future.

Grafeno is a laminar plane structure. It is the basic component of the rest of graphitic elements included graphite, carbon nanotubes and the fullerenes. In grafeno, the carbon atoms are put in a plane way. For that reason, it is an excelent conductor, it is almost unbreakable and it is very flexible.

Thanks to this material you can have a portable of grafeno that can roll up and fold up and ¡It has only an atom of thickness!. It can multiply any kind of signal.

The inmortal jellyfish

It is called "Turritopsis nutricula". It is a small jellyfish that never die, only half a centimetre long. This species is colonizing all the oceans because it has a gift for movement. The Turritopsis nutricula can return to a state of polyp.
This jellyfish has been known for more than a decade. However, scientists couldn't obtain the secret of its immortality.

Antro Electric Car

The car of the future, now coming from: Hungary. It sounds like communist propaganda circa 1967, but the Hungarian designer Antro might just have made a superefficient, supercheap car that could put Western manufactures to shame.

The antro Solo can hold up to three people who pedal to help drive the ultralight car. The rest of the forward motion comes from an electric motor that's partly powered by solar panels. If you need a bigger car, Antro has a solution: two Solos can be combined to create the family-friendly Duo. Look for it in 2012. Its price will be around 20.000 dolars.

Clock Tecnology

It is a firm of Malaga which was established by Raúl Santana in 2007, while he was in 2º of telecommunications and he was only 19.

Three years later, in 2010, he was already having 25 employees and earned about 1,5 millions of euros. By the end of last year, he signed a contract whit BBVA for provide a system of access of employees to every his offices. Others customers his are hospitals, residences of ancients, mines, etc.

The principal activity of Clock Tecnology treat about the design, making and integration of teams and solutions RFID (identification by radio frequency), that it is a system of storage and recuperation of dates remote.

The technology RFID's fundamental aim is transmit the identity of a object (similar to a number of unique sequence) by radio's wave.

The radiofrequency is one of the technologies more asked in the currently by the firms because it permit to know to distance specific conditions of the products which have this system.
Everybody has heard to speak of shopping carts that beside it says the total and individual prize of the products, it says other important characteristics like origin, nutritional content, mark, etc.

Genosa

Genosa is a scientific research company with biotechnological character which is located at the The Malaga Technology Park, since 2001. Its main objective is develop a technology patented internationally for the obtaining of natural hydroxytyrosol from olive.

It carry out its projects in collaboration with professionals and specializing centres like the University of Malaga and the Institute of the Fat of Seville.

It is a leader international company specializing in the identification, description and obtaining of compounds and actives principles which are beneficial for the health coming from olive grove, in particular, of the olive.

The applications of hydroxytyrosol are numerous. It is used for the protection of food and for the increasing of the useful life of the foodstuffs (freshness, texture, organoleptic qualities) of a natural form. It is used for the nutritional enrichment of food, for the elaboration of cosmetic solutions using hydroxytyrosol like agent opposite the consequences that free radicals produce in our organism (ageing and skin deterioration), damages caused by the time (aging creams) and rays UVA and UVB (solar creams). Also It is used in animal diet and in a lot of applications of confidential character in which Genosa is working nowadays.

In short, hydroxytyrosol provides more protection and stability of any kind of matter, decreasing its deterioration.

Memory Biolabs

The investigation group which this company settled in Málaga comes from in the Malaga Technology Park aims develop and commercialize a memory enhancer medicament recently discovered by the investigation group where it comes from.

This investigation result very interesting because the diseases related with memory affects to a 8% of the Spanish population and it's said to improve mental capabilities and avoid memory aging effects in old ones and prevent memory loss in young ones.

To this stage will follow a second test in monkeys, before begin with administration to humans.

All this process is expected to last 3 or 4 ages, so it will take almost a lustrum (5 years) before this medicament can be marketed.

Naetura

Naetura is a firm which was established in Malaga in 2001. It offers really naturals cosmetic products like alternative to the industrial cosmetic, synthetic and chemist predominantly in the market.
It started distributing its products in special establishment , herbalist's and perfumeries. In 2006 is when the firm started its expansion in surfaces of market, whit the intention of put near the public the natural and ecology cosmetic which until this moment it was considerer like a more exclusive product.
Naetura start from its botanic, anthropology and ethics investigation for select plants and fruits which are used since millenniums by customs and civilizations of the world like the aloe vera, the jojoba, the karite's walnut, the coco or the taire's flower which have got actives principles whit a lot of therapeutic properties and proved efficacy of scientific way, in laboratories.
In 2007 it presented the first Spanish completely ecological products and in 2008 it was first Spanish ecological cosmetic which get the certification of natural and ecological quality by Ecocert, independent and the world record organism in ecological certification.

Brain-Dynamics

Constituted in Juny of 2008 by eight doctors teachers of the University of Málaga (UMA), belonging to different areas of Human Brain Knowledge. It received one of the Spin-Off'08 Prizes called by the Vice-chancellor of University-Company Collaboration of the UMA.

It has a wide and intensive activity R&D: the results of the basic investigation, the investigation, the technological develop to create services and products, and the innovation. All this business activity leads to a series of products and services with a evident educational, care and researcher objective.

Its mission is to process all type of information about neurological and psychiatric diseases, to transform in knowledge and manage it, creating products and services for professionals and citizens. Among its main utilities is the brain knowledge and help us to "age healthy".

They pretend to be the world leaders in the knowledge management about the structure and function of human brain (normal and pathological) and in the application of new technologies relacionated with the mental health maintenance, as well as to search solutions to neurological and psychiatric problems.

Archaeobacteria and its advantages

This kind of living thing has been proved to be very efficient to work agaist pollution, because some of their strains feed on heavy metals and poisonous compounds for human beings.
Genetically quite different from bacteria, the common feature that helps us to identify archeae is mainly the membrane composition, which make them to be resilient to high temperatures, big pressures under the Earth' crust, frozen environments and even uranium rocks are home enough to some of the most amazing living creatures in our planet.

We are studying this archeae as one of our subjects, not only because we think these are about to be mainstream investigation all over the world, but also reckoning on the possibility of getting, for the some of our student, a work we are sure is going to be necessary at a medium time.

A world demanding less pollution, among other needs, would prioritize this sort of investigations and enterprises focused on this kind of living things and the ways in which they can make our planet a better place for us, cleaning it from the scads of chemicals spread on atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere, consequently affecting to biosphere, and that includes us, as a species. So it is with plants, the first step on feeding chains.

We can find other examples of iniciatives to exploit these new universe of possibilities. There are already companies operating on products related to reinforce our health, by means of creating a drink, without odour, nor flavour, than could, as they are testing it is able to make, reinforce our phisical energy, rehydrate our bodies, and help us to absorb minerals.

Scientists are also coming to surprising discoveries on those fields we need to have some progress. Nowadays we have seen the explosion of four nuclear reactors in Japan, so, you can imagine if we had had at this point of scientifical and technological progress, enough amount of the called Deinococcus Radiodurans archeae, which is able to feed on radioactive material, and as fit as possible to fight against the radiactive escapes, reassuring the nuclear production all over the world. So it would eliminate a danger that it could be here for thousands of years, not only by thinking of energy production, but taking care of waste elimination.

You can go to key words for links: extremophile, archeae, pollution consumer, sulphur, methane, extreme pressure, extreme temperature, outer bodies solar system, etc, combining them, for more info.

A brazilian beetle has got the secret for the new generation of computers

This beetle is called Augustus Lamprocyphus. At the chitin of its shell it has got the ideal structure for making photonic crystals. This crystals can manipulate the visible light, that permits making optical ultra-fast computers.
Researchers are interested in getting these crystals for making computers that use light and not electricity. They are also researching in to amplify the light and to improve solar cells.

Measures to save energy

This year 2011 a plan of energy saving is going to be carried out. It will consist of a series of measures approved by the government. This plan has got twenty measures to decrease a 5% of the Spanish imports of petrol and to save 2,300 millions of euros a year. Some measures are the following:

• Temporal reduction of the speed limit up to 110 km/h.
• Promotion of public transport in cities.
• Reduction of the price of railway tickets.
• Promotion of car pooling.
• Renovation of street lighting.
• Replacement of the optics of traffic lights with LED.