Tag Archive for Soft

Canada: Report calls for decriminalizing both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ drugs

From the Vancouver Sun By Peter O’Neil, Vancouver May 23, 2013

OTTAWA — The personal use of illegal drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine, should be decriminalized as part of a federal-provincial strategy to tackle drug abuse, a B.C.-based national coalition of drug policy experts argue.

In a report to be released Thursday, the coalition denounces the Harper government’s aggressive war on drugs, which puts the emphasis on law enforcement while steering money away from harm-reduction initiatives like Vancouver’s supervised injection site. . . .Read Complete Report

Soft Autonomous Robot Inches Along Like an Earthworm: Flexible Design Enables Body-Morphing Capability (w/video)

from Science News

ScienceDaily (Aug. 9, 2012) — Earthworms creep along the ground by alternately squeezing and stretching muscles along the length of their bodies, inching forward with each wave of contractions. Snails and sea cucumbers also use this mechanism, called peristalsis, to get around, and our own gastrointestinal tracts operate by a similar action, squeezing muscles along the esophagus to push food to the stomach.

Now researchers at MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University have engineered a soft autonomous robot that moves via peristalsis, crawling across surfaces by contracting segments of its body, much like an earthworm. The robot, made almost entirely of soft materials, is remarkably resilient: Even when stepped upon or bludgeoned with a hammer, the robot is able to inch away, unscathed . . . Read Complete Report

from youtube

Published on Aug 10, 2012 by 

Researchers at MIT, Harvard and Seoul National University have created a soft autonomous robot that moves by contracting segments of its body, much like an earthworm.