#Ant-size radios could help create Internet of things A new radio the size of an ant can gather all the power it needs from the same electromagnetic waves that carry signals to its receiving antenna no batteries required.
and relay commands this tiny wireless chip costs pennies to Make it's cheap enough to become the missing link between the internet as we know it
and the linked-together smart gadgets envisioned in the nternet of Things. he next exponential growth in connectivity will be connecting objects together and giving us remote control through the websays Amin Arbabian an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford university who recently demonstrated this ant
Much of the infrastructure needed to enable us to control sensors and devices remotely already exists:
We have the internet to carry commands around the globe and computers and smartphones to issue the commands.
What's missing is a wireless controller cheap enough to so that it can be installed on any gadget anywhere. ow do you put a bidirectional wireless control system on every lightbulb?
Arbabian asks. y putting all the essential elements of a radio on a single chip that costs pennies to make. ost is critical
because as Arbabian observes e re ultimately talking about connecting trillions of devices. rbabian started the project in 2011
and working with Professor Ali Niknejad director of Wireless Research center at University of California Berkeley.
Everything hinged on squeezing all the electronics found in say the typical Bluetooth device down into a single ant-sized silicon chip.
This approach to miniaturization would have another benefit dramatically reducing power consumption because a single chip draws so much less power than conventional radios.
In fact if Arbabian's radio chip needed a battery which it doesn't a single AAA contains enough power to run it for more than a century.
The antenna had to be small one-tenth the size of a Wi-fi antenna and operate at the incredibly fast rate of 24 billion cycles per second.
Standard transistors could not easily process signals that oscillate that fast. So his team had to improve basic circuit and electronic design.
but in the end Arbabian managed to put all the necessary components on one chip: a receiving antenna that also scavenges energy from incoming electromagnetic waves;
a transmitting antenna to broadcast replies and relay signals over short distances; and a central processor to interpret
and execute instructions. No external components or power are needed. And this ant-sized radio can be made for pennies.
Based on his designs The french semiconductor manufacturer STMICROELECTRONICS fabricated 100 of these radios-on-a-chip.
Arbabian has used these prototypes to prove that the devices work they can receive signals harvest energy from incoming radio signals
Now Arbabian envisions networks of these radio chips deployed every meter or so throughout a house (they would have to be set close to one another
because high-frequency signals don t travel far). He thinks this technology can provide the web of connectivity
and control between the global internet and smart household devices. heap tiny self-powered radio controllers are an essential requirement for the Internet of Thingssays Arbabian.
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#Detector could vastly improve night-vision goggles Monash University right Original Studyposted by Glynis Smalley-Monash on September 8 2014 Researchers have developed a light detector that could revolutionize chemical-sensing equipment and night-vision technology.
The detector which is interconnected based on the carbon atoms in graphene can sense light over an unusually broad range of wavelengths including terahertz waves between infrared
and microwave radiation where sensitive light detection is most difficult. e have demonstrated light detection from terahertz to near-infrared frequencies a range about 100 times larger than the visible spectrumsays Professor Michael Fuhrer of the School of Physics
at Monash University. The research could lead to a generation of light detectors that could see below the surface of walls
and other objects. etection of infrared and terahertz light has numerous uses from chemical analysis to night-vision goggles
and body scanners used in airport security. he research is published in Nature Nanotechnology. Current technological applications for terahertz detection are limited as they need to be kept extremely cold to maintain sensitivity.
Existing detectors that work at room temperature are bulky slow and expensive. Fuhrer says the new detector worked at room temperature
and was already as sensitive as any existing room-temperature detector technology in the terahertz range
but was also more than a million times faster. he combination of sensitivity and speed for terahertz detection is simply unprecedentedhe says.
Source: Monash Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license o
#This smartphone case is 3x harder than steel Yale university Posted by Jim Shelton-Yale on September 5 2014a new smartphone case is lightweight thin harder than steel
and as easy to shape as plastic. What s theâ catch? Â You can t purchase one#not yet anyway.
and materials science at Yale university developed the technology for the cases in his lab and wants to bring the product into mass production. his material is 50 times harder than plastic nearly 10 times harder than aluminum
Electronics casings in particular have been identified as a desirable application. Yet past attempts at finding a shaping process were unsuccessful.
With this technique which Schroers calls thermoplastic forming BMGS can be shaped like plastics. As a consequence thermoplastic forming BMGS don t require massive amounts of energy.
From there Schroers focused on producing BMGS in sheets. That form he reasoned is the most conducive to practical manufacturing applications. eveloping a fabrication method for BMG sheets has been extremely difficult
which can be carried out as easily as the process for blow-molding plastics. Seeing the commercial potential for his technique Schroers launched his own company Supercool Metals.
The company has exclusive licensing rights to the technology which is owned by Yale. e re taking a great scientific idea and making it viable in the larger worldsays Tobias Noesekabel Supercool Metals intern and an MBA candidate at the Yale School of management.
Until now Schroers has focused on smaller-scale specialty production items including watch components and sensors. Smartphone cases were a natural
but challenging next step. t s obvious. The important properties in a cell phone case are hardness
and weightschroers says. He and his team produce the cases by blow-molding BMG sheets into brass molds to precise specifications.
Of particular note is the ability to design metal buttons into the sides of the case
which constitutes a huge advance in making smartphones more waterproof. With the right manufacturing partner Schroers says he could scale up production by late 2015.
He added that design work and production could remain local. e see ourselves doing this close to Yaleschroers adds.
Source: Yale Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license i
#Sensor device grabs energy in odd places University of Washington Posted by Michelle Ma-Washington on September 4 2014scientists have built a new power harvester that uses natural fluctuations in temperature
The device harvests energy in any location where these temperature changes naturally occur powering sensors that can check for water leaks
and alerting users by sending out a wireless signal. ressure changes and temperature fluctuations happen around us all the time in the environment
which could provide another source of energy for certain applicationssays Shwetak Patel associate professor of computer science and engineering and of electrical engineering at the University of Washington.
The team got inspiration from a 17th-century clock made for a king that got its power fromâ changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure.
which can run for years without needing to be wound manually. The new system works like this:
A metal bellows about the size of a cantaloupe is filled with a temperature-sensitive gas.
and cools in response to the outside air temperature it expands and contracts causing the bellows to do the same.
Small cantilever motion harvesters are placed on the bellows and convert this kinetic energy into electrical energy. This powers sensors that also are placed on the bellows
and data collected by the sensors is sent wirelessly to a receiver. A number of battery-free technologies exist that are powered by solar and ambient radio frequency waves.
The researchers say this technology would be useful in places where sun and radio waves can t always penetrate such as inside walls
or bridges and below ground where there might be at least small temperature fluctuations. For instance the device could be placed in an attic
or inside a wall and sensors would be tuned to check for water leaks. Similarly when used inside a bridge the sensors could detect any cracks forming or structural deficiencies.
In both cases the sensors would send a signal to the nearby powered receiver. A temperature change of only 0. 25 degrees Celsius creates enough energy to power the sensor node to read
and send data wirelessly to a receiver 5 meters away. That means any slight shift in an office building s air conditioning or the natural outside air temperature during the course of a day would be more than enough to activate the chemical in the bellows.
The technology uses temperature changes over time as its power source. Devices called thermoelectric generators also leverage varying temperatures for power
but these instruments require a temperature difference at an exact moment such as in a place where one side is hot
and the other is cool. The researchers have filed patents for the technology and plan to make it smaller about the size of A d battery.
A future version would include four chemicals that activate in different temperature ranges so the same device could be used in various climates. think our approach is uniquesays Chen Zhao lead author
and doctoral student in electrical engineering. e provide a simple design that includes some 3d printed and off-the-shelf components.
With our web page and source code others can download and build their own power harvesters. dditional researchers from University of Washington
and Southern Methodist University contributed to the project. The team will present its research at the Association for Computing Machinery s International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous computing this month in Seattle.
The Intel Science and Technology Center for Pervasive Computing at the University of Washington and the Sloan Foundation supported the work.
Source: University of Washingtonyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license n
#An assembly line 3x thinner than a human hair Original Studyposted by Peter Ruegg-ETH Zurich on September 2 2014 Researchers have realized a long-held dream of building a nanoscale ssembly line.?
It would enable us to assemble new complex substances or materials for specific applicationssays Professor Viola Vogel head of the Laboratory of Applied Mechanobiology at ETH Zurich Switzerland.
The concept was inspired by the industrial assembly lines that churn out vehicles and electronics. A critical part of any assembly line is the mobile assembly carrier onto
which an object is fixed. In a paper published in the latest issue of Lab on a Chip Vogel
and her team presented a molecular assembly line featuring all the elements of a conventional production line: a mobile assembly carrier an assembly object assembly components attached at various assembly stations
and a motor (including fuel) for the assembly carrier to transport the object from one assembly station to the next.
At the nano level the assembly line takes the form of a microfluid platform into which an aqueous solution is pumped.
This platform is essentially a canal system with the main canal just 30 micrometres wide three times thinner than a human hair.
The platform was developed by Vogel s Phd student Dirk Steuerwald and the prototype was created in the clean room at the IBM Research Centre in Ruschlikon Switzerland.
The canal system is fitted with a carpet made of the motor protein kinesin. This protein has two mobile heads that are moved by the energy-rich molecule ATP
which supplies the cells of humans and other life forms with energy and therefore make it the fuel of choice in this artificial system.
The researchers used microtubules as assembly carriers. Microtubules are string-like protein polymers that together with kinesin transport cargo around the cells.
With its mobile heads kinesin binds to the microtubules and propels them forward along the surface of the device.
In their most recent work they tested the system using Neutravidin the first molecule that binds to the nanoshuttle.
A second component a single short strand of genetic material (DNA) then binds to the Neutravidin creating a small molecular complex. he system is still in its infancy.
We re still far away from a technical applicationsays Vogel who believes they have shown merely that the principle works.
The creation of a functional unit from individual components remains a big challenge. e have put a lot of thought into how to design the mechanical properties of bonds to bind the cargo to the shuttles
and then unload it again in the right place. he use of biological motors for technical applications is not easy.
Molecular engines such as kinesin have to be removed from their biological context and integrated into an artificial entity without any loss of their functionality.
and DNA the assembly of nanotechnological components or small organic polymers or the chemical alteration of carbon nanotubes. e need to continue to optimize the system
#Neurons reveal the brain s learning limit Scientists have discovered a fundamental constraint in the brain that may explain why it s easier to learn a skill that s related to an ability you already have.
Understanding how the brain s activity can be lexedduring learning could eventually be used to develop better treatments for stroke and other brain injuries.
Lead author Patrick T. Sadtler a Ph d. candidate in the University of Pittsburgh department of bioengineering compared the study s findings to cooking. uppose you have flour sugar baking soda eggs salt and milk.
and cookies but it would be difficult to make hamburger patties with the existing ingredientssadtler says. e found that the brain works in a similar way during learning.
or the study the research team trained animals (Rhesus macaques) to use a brain-computer interface (BCI) similar to ones that have shown recent promise in clinical trials for assisting quadriplegics
and Stroke (NINDS) part of the National institutes of health. t helps scientists study the dynamics of brain circuits that may explain the neural basis of learning. he researchers recorded neural activity in the subject s motor cortex
and directed the recordings into a computer which translated the activity into movement of a cursor on
the computer screen. This technique allowed the team to specify the activity patterns that would move the cursor.
The test subjects goal was to move the cursor to targets on the screen which required them to generate the patterns of neural activity that the experimenters had requested.
Because the existing brain patterns likely reflect how the neurons are interconnected the results suggest that the connectivity among neurons shapes learning. e wanted to study how the brain changes its activity
and we wanted to find out what that limit looks like in terms of neuronssays Aaron P. Batista assistant professor of bioengineering at University of Pittsburgh.
Byron M. Yu assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Carnegie mellon believes this work demonstrates the utility of BCI for basic scientific studies that will eventually impact people s lives. hese findings could be the basis
what were used in this study to coach patients to generate proper neural activity. he researchers are part of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) a joint program between Carnegie mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Additional researchers from University of Pittsburgh Carnegie mellon and Stanford university and Palo alto Medical Foundation contributed to the work.
and other important medicines such as oxycodone are derived. Now bioengineers have hacked the DNA of yeast and reprogrammed these simple cells to make opioid-based medicines via a sophisticated extension of the basic brewing process that makes beer.
Led by bioengineering Associate professor Christina Smolke the Stanford team has spent already a decade genetically engineering yeast cells to reproduce the biochemistry of poppies with the ultimate goal of producing opium-based medicines from start to finish in fermentation vats. e are now very close to replicating the entire
opioid production process in a way that eliminates the need to grow poppies allowing us to reliably manufacture essential medicines
while mitigating the potential for diversion to illegal usesays Smolke who outlines her work in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.
In the new report Smolke and her collaborators Kate Thodey a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and Stephanie Galanie a doctoral student in chemistry detail how they added five genes from two different organisms to yeast cells.
Three of these genes came from the poppy itself and the others from a bacterium that lives on poppy plant stalks.
This multi-species gene mashup was required to turn yeast into cellular factories that replicate two now separate processes:
how nature produces opium in poppies and then how pharmacologists use chemical processes to further refine opium derivatives into modern opioid drugs such as hydrocodone.
which is refined further by chemical processes to create higher-value therapeutics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone better known by brand names such as Oxycontin and Vicodin respectively.
Today legal poppy farming is restricted to a few countries including Australia France Hungary India Spain and Turkey supervised by the International Narcotics Control board
which seeks to prevent opiates like morphine for instance from being refined into illegal heroin. The biggest market for legal opiates and their opioid derivatives is the United states where pharmaceutical factories use chemical processes to create the refined products that are used as painkilling pills.
However poppies are grown not in significant quantities in the United states creating various international dependencies and vulnerabilities in the supply of these important medicines.
The thrust of Smolke s work for a decade has been to pack the entire production chain from the fields of poppies through all the subsequent steps of chemical refining into yeast cells using the tools of bioengineering.
What Smolke s team has done now is to carefully reprogram the yeast genome the master instruction set that tells every organism how to live to behave like a poppy
when it comes to making opiates. The process involved more than simply adding new genes into yeast.
and the remaining via synthetic chemical processes in factories. Smolke s team wanted all the steps to happen inside yeast cells within a single vat including using yeast to carry out chemical processes that poppies never evolved to perform such as refining opiates like thebaine into more valuable semisynthetic opioids
Since she wanted to produce several different opioids her team hacked the yeast genome in slightly different ways to produce each of the slightly different opioid formulations such as oxycodone or hydrocodone.
in order to achieve the goal of pouring sugar into a stainless steel vat of bioengineered yeast and skimming off specific opioids at the end of the process.
They must perform another set of bioengineering hacks to connect the two major advances they have made over the past decade.
When she began the work in 2004 Smolke started early in the process and went about halfway through these chemical steps.
Once she forges this missing link in the chain of biochemical synthesis she will have produced a bioengineered yeast that can perform all 17 steps from sugar to specific opioid drugs in a single vat. e are already working on thisshe says.
and are refined in factories. his will allow us to create a reliable supply of these essential medicines in a way that doesn t depend on years leading up to good
or bad crop yieldssmolke says. e ll have more sustainable cost-effective and secure production methods for these important drugs. h
Cephalopods like octopus and squid are masters of camouflage but they are also color-blind. Scientists suspect that cephalopods may detect color directly through their skin.
Based on that hypothesis Bob Zheng a graduate student at Rice university set out to design a photonic system that could detect colored light.
The photodetector which sees colors in much the same way the human eye does uses an aluminum grating that can be added to silicon photodetectors with the silicon microchip industry s mainstay technology omplementary metal-oxide
This color filtering is done commonly using off-chip dielectric or dye color filters which degrade under exposure to sunlight
and can also be difficult to align with imaging sensors. oday s color filtering mechanisms often involve materials that are not CMOS-compatible
but this new approach has advantages beyond on-chip integrationsays LANP Director Naomi Halas the lead scientist of the study. t s also more compact and simple
The metallic nanostructures use surface plasmons waves of electrons that flow like a fluid across metal surfaces.
Light of a specific wavelength can excite a plasmon and LANP researchers often create devices where plasmons interact sometimes with dramatic effects. ith plasmonic gratings
not only do you get color tunability you can also enhance near fieldszheng says. he near-field interaction increases the absorption cross section
The Office of Naval Research the Department of defense s National security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship Program and the Robert A. Welch Foundation supported the research.
Scientists from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole Massachusetts and the University of Maryland Baltimore County collaborated on the project.
#Rapeseed genes could take the bite out of broccoli Scientists have unraveled the genetic code of the rapeseed plant
which could lead to better canola oil and possibly to less bitter broccoli. Published in the journal Science the findings will help scientists understand how plant genomes evolve in the context of domestication.
Brassica plants have been bred all over the world for centuries and resulted in produce and products diverse enough to show up in several different supermarket aisles.
Broccoli cauliflower Brussels sprouts Chinese cabbage turnip collared greens mustard canola oil all these are different incarnations of the same plant genus Brassica. hole-genome sequencing efforts like this one allow us to address two fundamental
questionssays Eric Lyons assistant professor in the School of Plant Sciences at University of Arizona. ow does stored the genetic information in the genome help us understand the functions of the organism
and what does the structure of the genome tell us about the evolution of genomes in general?
(or Brassica napus) genome contains a large number of genes more than 100000 due to the fact that it arose from a merger between two parent species Brassica rapa (Chinese cabbage)
and others. he rapeseed genome has a very interesting historysays Haibao Tang a senior scientist of bioinformatics. s a result of the merger event it ended up with four copies of each gene.
The genome defines what Brassicas are.?It also defines what kids hate to eatlyons says. he bitterness in some cultivars such as broccoli
and we find that precisely those genes that code for those compounds were lost from the rapeseed genome. he sequencing effort provides scientists
and breeders with a map they can use to home in on certain genes and by extension the plant s metabolic pathways.
or tweak the lipid biosynthesis pathway to favorably modify the oil content in rapeseed. Being able to modify the content of bitter-tasting compounds has implications beyond
what meets the tongue because in most plants those chemicals also confer defense against pests. epending on the cultivar in question breeders may want to change the biochemistrylyons says. ou could knock down chemicals you don t want
but the size and shape of the leaves and how they taste. With rapeseed it s the other way around. he National Science Foundation funds the iplant Collaborative of University of Arizona s BIO5 Institute
which provided computational power and cyber-infrastructure for running the analyses n
#AAA BATTERY powers cheap water splitter A new device uses a regular AAA BATTERY to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The hydrogen gas could power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas.
Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel
and iron. sing nickel and iron which are cheap materials we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1. 5-volt batterysays Hongjie Dai a chemistry
professor at Stanford university. his is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low.
It s quite remarkable because normally you need expensive metals like platinum or iridium to achieve that voltage. n addition to producing hydrogen the new water splitter could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide an important industrial chemical according to Dai.
He and his colleagues describe the new device in a study in Nature Communications. Automakers have considered long the hydrogen fuel cell a promising alternative to the gasoline engine.
Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity
which powers the car. The only byproduct is water unlike gasoline combustion which emits carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas.
Most of these vehicles will run on fuel manufactured at large industrial plants that produce hydrogen by combining very hot steam and natural gas an energy-intensive process that releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
In 2015 American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers.
Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.
Splitting water to make hydrogen requires no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. But scientists have yet to develop an affordable active water splitter with catalysts capable of working at industrial scales. t s been a constant pursuit for decades to make low-cost electrocatalysts with high activity
and long durabilitydai says. hen we found out that a nickel-based catalyst is as effective as platinum it came as a complete surprise. tanford graduate student Ming Gong co-lead author of the study made the discovery. ing discovered a nickel-metal
/nickel-oxide structure that turns out to be more active than pure nickel metal or pure nickel oxide alonedai says. his novel structure favors hydrogen electrocatalysis
but we still don t fully understand the science behind it. he nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst significantly lowers the voltage required to split water which
could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device. he electrodes are fairly stable
but they do slowly decay over timehe says. he current device would probably run for days
but weeks or months would be preferable. That goal is achievable based on my most recent resultshe researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy. ydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles buildings
and storing renewable energy on the gridsays Dai. e re very glad that we were able to make a catalyst that s very active and low cost.
This shows that through nanoscale engineering of materials we can really make a difference in how we make fuels
and consume energy. dditional researchers from Oak ridge National Laboratory Stanford National Taiwan University of Science
and Technology Canadian Light source Inc. and University of Tennessee contributed to the study. Principal funding came from by the Global climate and Energy project the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford and by the US Department of energy.
Source: Stanford Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license A
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