The university's mechanical engineering department was given the bus by the federal government early this year for research and development, said mechanical engineering professor Vernon Roan.

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The trick is to replace graphite with tin for the anode, which is one of the two main components in a battery cell, said Grant Norton, who headed the research and is a professor of mechanical and materials engineering at the university.

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There are only a handful of other laboratories in the world doing similar research, and none of those labs has as many mechanical creatures to work with as Mataric has.

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The research includes three new tests, two chemical ones and one mechanical one.

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If Mechanical Turk becomes a low-cost disruptor to the pricy world of market research, however, everything makes a lot more sense.

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