#Study finds dramatic increase in concurrent droughts, heat waves Droughts and heat waves are happening simultaneously with much greater frequency than in the past, according to research by climate experts at the University of California, Irvine.
A team from UCI Center for Hydrometeorology & Remote Sensing examined data gathered from ground sensors and gauges during a 50-year period beginning in 1960.
Identification takes place within a microscopically small channel in a chip made from glass and silicone polymer.
or other electronic equipment. he process for the color change would take about 24 hours from
and form a scattering pattern on the detector a signal the team used to determine the monolayer structure.
and produce a signal on a detector that scientists use to determine where atoms are located in the monolayer.
Multiplexers are devices that enable separate streams of data to travel through a single medium.
As a result, many of the components for a terahertz wireless network including multiplexers have not yet been developed.
The multiplexer that Mittleman and his colleagues have been working on makes use of what known as a leaky wave antenna.
In this case, the antenna is made from two metal plates placed in parallel to form a waveguide.
On the other end, a receiver could be tuned to accept radiation at a particular angle,
Ghodbane and six Rutgers researchers recently published their results in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Lab on a Chip.
The lab-on-chip device, which employs microfluidics technology, along with making tests more affordable for patients
The Rutgers team has combined several capabilities for the first time in the device theye dubbed LISA-on-a-chip (for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.
have been refining cell-surface sensors known as chimeric antigen receptors, or CARS. Once inserted into T cells,
Wee needed a remote control system that retains the power of these engineered T cells, but allows us to communicate specifically with them
Controlling Through Drug Dosagethe drug-based remote control system devised by Lim and colleagues does more than merely switch CAR T cells between nand ffstates.
but he believes that the research provides the foundation for practical remote control of CAR T cells on the near horizon.
The remote control strategy developed by Lim group may permit researchers to develop more powerful versions of CAR T cells that could attack these solid tumors,
and is an inexpensive lab on a chip. he current benchtop cell sorters are too expensive, too unsafe,
Because the device is built on a lab-on-a chip system, it is both compact and inexpensive about the size and cost of a cell phone in its current configuration.
Lung and Blood Institute of the National institutes of health, published their work in a recent issue of Lab on a Chip. ell sorting is used widely in many areas of biology to characterize
(or traffic) at the surface of a sensor, which drastically reduced the signal of our tests,
and limits the ability of this DNA to hybridize to its complementary strand located on the surface of a gold electrode.
Analyst firm Alite Group estimates that this vulnerability is adding up to $8 billion in incurred losses per year in the U s. Solutions have been proposeduch as integrated circuit cards and mobile wallets systems.
During the experiments, they used a bank application, cell phone application and magnetic credit card chip.
(or traffic) at the surface of a sensor, which drastically reduced the signal of our tests,
and limits the ability of this DNA to hybridize to its complementary strand located on the surface of a gold electrode.
#First Optical Rectenna Combined Rectifier and Antenna Converts Light to DC Current Using nanometer scale components,
a device that combines the functions of an antenna and a rectifier diode to convert light directly into DC current.
the carbon nanotubes act as antennas to capture light from the sun or other sources. As the waves of light hit the nanotube antennas,
they create an oscillating charge that moves through rectifier devices attached to them. The rectifiers switch on
and that is to me an opportunity to change the world in a very big waysaid Baratunde Cola, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. s a robust, high-temperature detector,
making the antennas small enough to couple optical wavelengths, and fabricating a matching rectifier diode small enough and able to operate fast enough to capture the electromagnetic wave oscillations.
enough to drive electrons out of the carbon nanotube antennas when they are excited by light. In operation, oscillating waves of light pass through the transparent calcium-aluminum electrode
and interact with the nanotubes. The metal-insulator-metal junctions at the nanotube tips serve as rectifiers switching on and off at femtosecond intervals,
allowing electrons generated by the antenna to flow one way into the top electrode. Ultra-low capacitance, on the order of a few attofarads, enables the 10-nanometer diameter diode to operate at these exceptional frequencies. rectenna is basically an antenna coupled to a diode
but when you move into the optical spectrum, that usually means a nanoscale antenna coupled to a metal-insulator-metal diode,
Cola explained. he closer you can get the antenna to the diode, the more efficient it is.
So the ideal structure uses the antenna as one of the metals in the diode
which is the structure we made. The rectennas fabricated by Cola group are grown on rigid substrates,
and made it a light sensor, says Catherine Drennan, a professor of chemistry and biology at MIT.
and capacity fades from electrode damage occurs from that point on. The mushroom carbon anode technology could,
Embedded Optical Sensors Could Make Robotic Hands More Dexterous Optical sensors may be suited uniquely for use in robotic hands,
according to Carnegie mellon University researchers who have developed a three-fingered soft robotic hand with multiple embedded fiber optic sensors.
They also have created a new type of stretchable optical sensor. By using fiber optics, the researchers were embed able to 14 strain sensors into each of the fingers in the robotic hand,
giving it the ability to determine where its fingertips are in contact and to detect forces of less than a tenth of a newton.
you need robotic hands that have more sensors than is said typical today Yong-Lae Park,
but even a state-of-the-art humanoid such as NASA Robonaut has only 42 sensors in its hand and wrist.
or force sensors is problematic because wiring can be complicated, prone to breaking and susceptible to interference from electric motors and other electromagnetic devices.
But a single optical fiber can contain several sensors; all of the sensors in each of the fingers of the CMU hand are connected with four fibers,
although, theoretically, a single fiber could do the job, Park said. And the optical sensors are impervious to electromagnetic interference.
The Carnegie mellon researchers will discuss the robotic hand, developed together with researchers at Intelligent Fiber optic Systems Corp.,with support from NASA, Sept. 29 at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2015, in Hamburg, Germany.
A report on the highly stretchable optical sensors will be presented Oct 1 at the same conference. f you want robots to work autonomously
you need robotic hands that have more sensors than is typical today. Yong-Lae Park Industrial robots, working in a controlled environment where people don venture,
are capable of extremely precise manipulation with only limited sensors. But as roboticists at CMU and elsewhere work to develop soft robots that can interact routinely and safely with humans,
The skeletal onesare 3-D-printed hard plastic and incorporate eight sensors for detecting force.
Each of the three sections is covered with a soft silicone rubber skin embedded with a total of six sensors that detect where contact has been made.
and Kevin Low, incorporates commercially available fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors, which detect strain by measuring shifts in the wavelength of light reflected by the optical fiber.
Despite their advantages, conventional optical sensors don stretch much glass fibers stretch hardly at all and even polymer fibers stretch typically only 20-25 percent, Park noted.
Park has developed previously highly stretchable microfluidic soft sensors membranes that measure strain via liquid-conductor-filled channels
So Park, working with mechanical engineering students Celeste To from CMU and Tess Lee Hellebrekers from the University of Texas, invented a highly stretchable and flexible optical sensor, using a combination of commercially available silicone rubbers.
Park said this type of flexible optical sensor could be incorporated into soft skins. Such a skin would
he said. ou could make electronic devices from these semiconductor crystals and grow them precisely in intricate patterns required for the device you want, such as thin-film transistors or light-emitting diodes. a
if perfected, could lead to a novel tabletop magnetic measurement technique and new, nanoscale electronic devices based on electrical spin, rather than charge.
which is lost in fully digital display systems. It also retains the imaging environment familiar to surgeons,
including inexpensive printed electronics, intelligent packaging and disposable sensors. Developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Cambridge-based technology company Novalia,
In addition to cheaper printable electronics, this technology opens up potential application areas such as smart packaging and disposable sensors,
#A New Type of Memristors for Less Rigid Computing Two IT giants, Intel and HP, have entered a race to produce a commercial version of memristors (the fourth basic component of electronic circuits alongside resistors,
#Bioengineers cut in half time needed to make high-tech flexible sensors Bioengineers at the University of California,
San diego, have developed a method that cuts down by half the time needed to make high-tech flexible sensors for medical applications.
The advance brings the sensors, which can be used to monitor vital signs and brain activity, one step closer to mass-market manufacturing.
It also makes it possible to manufacture the sensors with a process similar to the printing press
a bioengineering professor at the Jacobs School of engineering at UC San diego. Researchers describe their work in the journal Sensors. clinical need is
Their sensors have been used to monitor premature babies, pregnant women, patients in Intensive care units and patients suffering from sleep disorders.
Coleman and colleagues quickly found out that nurses wanted the sensors to come in a peel-and-stick form,
The medium on which the sensors were placed also needed to be approved FDA. The sensorsoriginal fabrication process involved 10 stepsive of which had to take place in a clean room.
Also, the steps to remove the sensors from the silicon wafer theye built on alone took anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes.
And the sensors remained fragile and susceptible to rips and tears. But what if you could use the adhesive properties of a Band aid-like medium to help peel off the sensors from the silicon wafer easily and quickly?
Wouldn that make the process much simplernd faster? That was the question that Dae Kang,
to easily remove the sensors, made of gold and chromium, from the silicon wafer. This was tricky work.
The coating had be sticky enough to allow researchers to build the sensors in the first place but loose enough to allow them to peel off the wafer. t a Goldilocks problem,
That means the sensors can be peeled off with any kind of adhesive, from scotch tape to a lint roller,
Coleman team also showed that the sensors could be fabricated on a curved, flexible film typically used to manufacture flexible printed circuits and the outside layer of spacesuits.
Researchers were able to easily peel off the sensors from the curved film without compromising their functioning.
In order to make the sensors more like peel off stickers researchers essentially had to build the sensors upside down
so that their functioning part would be exposed after they were removed from the wafer. This was key to allow for easy processing with a single peel off step.
Researchers also demonstrated that the sensors they built with the new fabrication process were functional.
They placed a sensor on a subject forehead and hooked it up to an electroencephalography machine.
The sensors were able to detect a special brain signal present only when the subject eyes were closed classic electroencephalogram testing procedure.
The researchers also demonstrated that these sensors are able to detect other electrical rhythms of the body
such as the heart electrical activity detected during an electrocardiogram or EKG e
#Bacterial hole puncher could be new broad-spectrum antibiotic Bacteria have many methods of adapting to resist antibiotics,
Future applications of such a DNA walker might include a cancer detector that could roam the human body searching for cancerous cells
The service will become available by attaching a special antenna to the roof of a user building.
They are used in such commonly used products as compact disc players, smoke detectors, remote control devices and many more.
such as digital cameras, night-vision goggles, smoke detectors, surveillance systems, satellites and other devices that rely on electronic light sensors.
Of course, electronic devices work differently phototransistors in digital cameras sense light, which is converted then into a long line of 1s and 0s,
Scientists placed electrodes under this ultrathin silicon nanomembrane layer. This resulted in the metal layer and electrodes acting as reflectors,
which improved light absorption. This means that an external amplifier is needed not. Scientists say that there is an integrated capability to sense weak light,
which is beneficial for a variety of applications. Professor Zhenqiang ackma, one of the developers of this project
and influence entire industry of electronic devices. In fact, since flexible phototransistor are used in cameras, it is likely that very soon we will soon see the results of this achievement in shape of better quality photos and videos y
The new sensor his group recently unveiled weighs only two milligrams and takes up only two cubic millimeters,
and they can be programmed into small chips to compute things like distance to objects or the time until a potential collision.
The sensor could be useful for other things besides flying robots. For demonstration the group created
but its thermostat and smoke detector likely don sell in huge volumes. And although Google X Loon balloon project for Internet access is at the point of testing with wireless carriers
Kumu founders developed hardware and software that enables a radio receiver to filter out interference from outgoing signals.
Kumu is also working on a chip that will make it possible to shrink down the package containing the company technology from roughly the size of a hardback book to something more akin to a credit card.
Earlier this year, Krishnaswamy group at Columbia demonstrated a full-duplex chip smaller than a fingertip.
The test represents the first time that signals collected in the brain have been conveyed directly to electrodes placed inside someone arm to restore movement,
and close his hand using strips of external electrodes placed around his forearm. That effort, called Neurobridge, is led by Ohio State university and Battelle Memorial Institute.
Electrical impulses sent to those electrodes cause different muscles to contract, creating movement in the shoulder, elbow,
First, security experts assumed direct, remote control of a new Jeep cherokee, causing parent company Fiat Chrysler to recall 1. 4 million vehicles.
That's changing, thanks to engineers at Duke university, who are developing a microphone with the same ability to zone out background noise.
on cameras of all shapes and sizes from all the biggest brands, headphones, fitness bands, speakers.
we and others in the field have been able to make sensitive touch sensors, but the electrical signal that comes out from the sensor is not the right format for the brain to be able to interpret it,
study coauthor Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer at Stanford university, told BBC News. ur sensor is coupled now with a printed, simple electronic circuit.
That circuit allows our sensor to generate electrical pulses that can communicate with the brain.
We see this as the first step towards using plastic materials for artificial skin on prosthetic limbs.
Bao and her colleagues demonstrated that the sensors could relay pressure signals to the mammalian nervous system by linking them to a blue LED light that in turn stimulated slices of mouse brain that had been engineered to respond to those wavelengths.
the sensors could serve as the basis of wearable technology. hey are very thin and flexible,
So you could mount a sensor on your skin and use it to detect vital signs like heartbeat and blood pressure. e
and head of the research team at Berkley. owever, the physics needed to create long-term storage are not compatible with integrated circuits.
However, packing them extremely close together on a chip negated this effect. In its latest research, the team discovered that by tilting the nanomagnets slightly
#obo-whiskers build picture of surroundings Researchers at the University of Illinoisadvanced Digital Sciences Centre in Singapore have developed a whisker-like sensor array that measures the fluid flow of its surroundings
#ew memory materials could boost storage density It comprises a layered structure of tantalum, nanoporous tantalum oxide and multilayer graphene between two platinum electrodes.
While current flash technology requires three electrodes per circuit, the device developed by the team at Rice needs just two.
#Metamaterials assist in'cocktail party'voice recognition Engineers at Duke university have developed a new type of sensor that enhances a computer ability to identify individual sounds that are overlapping,
The sound is picked up by a microphone on the other side of the device, then transmitted to a computer that is able to separate the overlapping noises based on the unique distortion patterns.
the researchers believe it has a wide range of potential applications, from consumer electronics and medical sensing devices,
designed to hold a camera, LED light, an integrated circuit for receiving control instructions and transmitting data, antenna, 1. 5v button battery and, at the rear, the drive unit, to
Further tests using a pig stomach proved that the capsule could be manoeuvred around using an IR remote control
The patient would then be sent home with a sensor pad strapped to their abdomen while the capsule negiotiated the twists and turns of the intestine,
#New electrode improves solar efficiency to split water Scientists from the Universities of Chicago and Wisconsin have developed a new type of electrode for splitting water with sunlight,
harvesting the hydrogen to be used as clean fuel. Sun-capturing electrodes are designed to absorb as much of the solar spectrum as possible to maximise efficiency.
However, they also need to facilitate the easy movement of electrons. Until now, scientists have had to use separate manipulations to increase photon absorption and electron transfer.
The new electrode, described in Nature Communications, is made primarily from the semiconducting compound bismuth vanadate.
some of which was incorporated into the electrode. This increased the efficiency of both photon absorption and electron transport.
This meant that more solar energy could be used by the electrode. ow we understand what going on at the microscopic level,
The researchers hope that their work on the new electrode may act as a building block for other scientists working in the same area. ur study will encourage researchers in the field to develop ways to improve multiple processes using a single treatment,
so it has the potential for use in flexible electronic devices. Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium. p
but also air quality sensor data and images from cameras. n its own, each is of low value,
or there would need to be infrastructure sensors to check the whole platoon is through.
Cocoon uses a microphone to detect sounds outside of the hearing range of humans to alert in case of intruders in the home.
At the heart of the Cocoon unit is a microphone which can detect infrasound waves,
32. ou can put a sensor in a building and you can then hear those inaudible sounds that are created by things happening in that building.
But costs prohibited the sensors being used widely in home alarms, as did the fact that an unsophisticated infrasound microphone would pick up unwanted sound waves,
such as people walking by outside or a lorry going past. The five cofounders of Cocoon have used smartphones
Before you rush for the thermostat in a green-fueled frenzy, it's worth pointing out that this study only involved 16 female test subjects,
#Boffins have made optical transistors that can reach 4 TERAHERTZ Aluminum-doped zinc oxide is the key to building faster, optical chips, according to researchers at Purdue University, Indiana.
such as an adder, multiplier, or a gate poses problems, Kinsey explained, as the"things you're discussing you need light of the same wavelength in the signal and the control,
The manufacturing process is used similar to that for traditional CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor chips. The transparent conducting oxides Perdue is working with are CMOS-compatible materials with low optical loss. ur materials are deposited using standard techniques,
An array of electrodes was placed in the volunteer's sensory cortex (part of the brain that identifies touch)
and connected to pressure sensors on a prosthetic hand, with electrical signals sent from the hand to the brain.
The report also notes that certain phones failed to fully secure their fingerprint sensor, potentially allowing apps to step in
the device, recognizes emotional states in subjects by comparing detected sensor input against a database of human/primate gestures/expressions,
the patent reads. eedback is provided to the wearer after interpretation of the sensor input. Once the database determines the emotional response,
#Samsung will debut new round Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch in Berlin early next month Samsung teased its new round smartwatch, the Samsung Gear S2, at its press event
The time is nigh for smartwatch makers to come up with some kind of answer to the Apple Watch.
The rumor mill says the new Tizen watch will ship with an Exynos 3472 dual-core chip, a 360 x 360 pixel display resolution, 768mb of RAM, 4gb of storage,
In a new paper they describe a sensor that sends radio signals through a wall and can identify people.
The team expects the sensor to be able to see through multiple walls and look as far as 40 feet.
and smart-home sensors. Nest, for example, monitors the movements of residents so that it can adjust temperatures and keep utility bills low.
Currently the sensor needs a person to be walking directly at it to function. A person walking at an angle is harder to pick up.
In a new paper out of MIT Computer science and Artificial intelligence Lab, the researchers describe a sensor that sends radio signals through a wall
The team expects the sensor to be able to see through multiple walls and look as far as 40 feet.
and smart-home sensors. Nest, for example, monitors the movements of residents so that it can adjust temperatures and keep utility bills low.
Currently the sensor needs a person to be walking directly at it to function. A person walking at an angle is harder to pick up.
and other electronic devices eliminating the clunky brick that is commonly comes with a device's power cord.
So why aren't we seeing a flood of electronic devices on the market made from Gan now?
and reduces the size and cost of electronic devices. Massachusetts institute of technology, the brain trust from which CEI was hatched believes using Gan in data servers, electric vehicle inverters
solar power inverters, industrial motor controllers, and other electronics will produce $900 billion in energy savings annually by 2025.
That's impressive. But don't count silicon out just yet. That's our next story.
Performance of sol-gel thin film electrodes at Georgia Tech's laboratories has exceeded all existing commercial electrolytic capacitors and thin-film lithium-ion batteries.
whether it's web data or sensor data. They have these instances, they have these databases
Through mobile innovations and sensor technologies, today's doctors can report on key health indicators to prevent illnesses altogether
The observation reported today provides a new property for two-dimensional materials such as molybdenum disulfide opening the potential for new types of mechanically controlled electronic devices.
and power wearable sensors or medical devices or perhaps supply enough energy to charge your cell phone in your pocket says James Hone professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia and co-leader of the research.
They then patterned metal electrodes onto the flakes. In research done at Georgia Tech Wang's group installed measurement electrodes on samples provided by Hone's group then measured current flows as the samples were deformed mechanically.
They monitored the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy and observed voltage and current outputs. The researchers also noted that the output voltage reversed sign
and novel semiconductors researchers at the Department of energy's Oak ridge National Laboratory have created a power inverter that could make electric vehicles lighter more powerful and more efficient.
Power inverters convert direct current into the alternating current that powers the vehicle. The Oak ridge inverter achieves much higher power density with a significant reduction in weight and volume.
Wide bandgap technology enables devices to perform more efficiently at a greater range of temperatures than conventional semiconductor materials said ORNL's Madhu Chinthavali who led the Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Group on this project.
This is especially useful in a power inverter which is the heart of an electric vehicle. Specific advantages of wide bandgap devices include:
and reduce weight and waste while building ORNL's 30-kilowatt prototype inverter. With additive manufacturing complexity is basically free so any shape
Using additive manufacturing researchers optimized the inverter's heat sink allowing for better heat transfer throughout the unit.
The research group's first prototype a liquid-cooled all-silicon carbide traction drive inverter features 50 percent printed parts.
and setting the stage for building an inverter using entirely additive manufacturing techniques. Building on the success of this prototype researchers are working on an inverter with an even greater percentage of 3-D printed parts that's half the size of inverters in commercially available vehicles.
Chinthavali encouraged by the team's results envisions an inverter with four times the power density of their prototype.
Others involved in this work which was to be presented today at the Second Institute of Electrical
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