#RMIT Wearable Sensor Patches Can Detect Harmful UV Radiation and Toxic Gases RMIT University researchers have created wearable sensor patches that detect harmful UV radiation and dangerous, toxic gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen dioxide.
These transparent, flexible electronics which can be worn as skin patches or incorporated into clothing-are bringing science fiction gadgets closer to real life.
Dr Madhu Bhaskaran, project leader and co-leader of the RMIT Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, said the sensors can be placed on work
and safety gear to detect dangerous gases. ydrogen leaks can lead to explosions as happened with the Hindenburg disaster
and nitrogen dioxide is a major contributor to smog, she said. he ability to monitor such gases in production facilities
and coal fired power stations gives vital early warning of explosions, while the ability to sense nitrogen dioxide allows for a constant monitoring of pollution levels in crowded cities.
The latest development follows RMIT Micronano Research Facility breakthrough in bendable electronics which has paved the way for flexible mobile phones.
Lead author, Phd researcher Philipp Gutruf, says the unbreakable, stretchy electronic sensors are also capable of detecting harmful levels of UV radiation known to trigger melanoma.
Much like a nicotine patch, they can be worn on the skin. In future they will be able to link to electronic devices to continuously monitor UV-levels
and alert the user when radiation hits harmful levels. Gutruf said the research used zinc oxide-present in most sunscreens as a fine powder mixed into a lotion-as the UV sensing material.
Zinc oxide was used in the form of very thin coatings over a hundred times thinner than a sheet of paper. his thin zinc oxide layer is engineered with a platelike structure that we call micro-tectonics,
these plates can slide across each other bit like geological plates that form the earth crust allowing for high sensitivity
and the ability to bend and flex the devices, he said. Dr Bhaskaran said the sensors are cheap and durable attributes
which will see flexible electronics and sensors become an integral part of everyday life. The research,
which has just been published in leading micro/nanoscience journal Small, was supported by the Australian Research Council
#Synchronous Computer Operates on Water Droplets Infused with Magnetic nanoparticles The computer is nearly a decade in the making,
incubated from an idea that struck Prakash when he was a graduate student. The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science an operating clock."
"In this work, we finally demonstrate a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control, "Prakash said. Because of its universal nature, the droplet computer can theoretically perform any operation that a conventional electronic computer can crunch,
although at significantly slower rates. Prakash and his colleagues, however, have a more ambitious application in mind."
"We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers
or to operate word processors on this, "Prakash said.""Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control
and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed
but physical matter is manipulated algorithmically as well. We have made just this possible at the mesoscale.""The ability to precisely control droplets using fluidic computation could have a number of applications in high-throughput biology and chemistry,
and possibly new applications in scalable digital manufacturing. The results are published in the current edition of Nature Physics.
The crucial clockfor nearly a decade since he was in graduate school, an idea has been nagging at Prakash:
What if he could use little droplets as bits of information and utilize the precise movement of those drops to process both information and physical materials simultaneously.
Eventually, Prakash decided to build a rotating magnetic field that could act as clock to synchronize all the droplets.
The idea showed promise, and in the early stages of the project, Prakash recruited a graduate student, Georgios"Yorgos"Katsikis,
who is the first author on the paper. Computer clocks are responsible for nearly every modern convenience.
Smartphones, DVRS, airplanes, the Internet without a clock, none of these could operate without frequent and serious complications.
Nearly every computer program requires several simultaneous operations each conducted in a perfect step-by-step manner. A clock makes sure that these operations start
and stop at the same times, thus ensuring that the information synchronizes. The results are dire if a clock isn't present.
It's like soldiers marching in formation: If one person falls dramatically out of time, it won't be long before the whole group falls apart.
The same is true if multiple simultaneous computer operations run without a clock to synchronize them,
Prakash explained.""The reason computers work so precisely is that every operation happens synchronously; it's
what made digital logic so powerful in the first place, "Prakash said. A magnetic clockdeveloping a clock for a fluid-based computer required some creative thinking.
It needed to be easy to manipulate, and also able to influence multiple droplets at a time.
The system needed to be scalable so that in the future, a large number of droplets could communicate amongst each other without skipping a beat.
Prakash realized that a rotating magnetic field might do the trick. Katsikis and Prakash built arrays of tiny iron bars on glass slides that look something like a Pac-Man maze.
Then they carefully injected into the mix individual water droplets that had been infused with tiny magnetic nanoparticles.
Next, they turned on the magnetic field. Every time the field flips, the polarity of the bars reverses, drawing the magnetized droplets in a new, predetermined direction, like slot cars on a track.
Every rotation of the field counts as one clock cycle, like a second hand making a full circle on a clock face,
allowing observation of computation as it occurs in real time. The presence or absence of a droplet represents the 1s and 0s of binary code
and the clock ensures that all the droplets move in perfect synchrony, and thus the system can run virtually forever without any errors."
we've demonstrated that we can make all the universal logic gates used in electronics, simply by changing the layout of the bars on the chip,
"said Katsikis.""The actual design space in our platform is incredibly rich. Give us any Boolean logic circuit in the world,
and demonstrates building blocks for synchronous logic gates, feedback and cascadability hallmarks of scalable computation. A simple-state machine including 1-bit memory storage (known as"flip-flop")is demonstrated also using the above basic building blocks.
A new way to manipulate matterthe current chips are about half the size of a postage stamp,
and the droplets are smaller than poppy seeds, but Katsikis said that the physics of the system suggests it can be made even smaller.
Combined with the fact that the magnetic field can control millions of droplets simultaneously this makes the system exceptionally scalable."
and do more number of operations on a chip, "said graduate student and co-author Jim Cybulski."
"That lends itself very well to a variety of applications.""Prakash said the most immediate application might involve turning the computer into a high-throughput chemistry and biology laboratory.
Instead of running reactions in bulk test tubes, each droplet can carry some chemicals and become its own test tube,
and the droplet computer offers unprecedented control over these interactions. From the perspective of basic science, part of why the work is so exciting,
Prakash said, is that it opens up a new way of thinking of computation in the physical world.
Although the physics of computation has been applied previously to understand the limits of computation the physical aspects of bits of information has never been exploited as a new way to manipulate matter at the mesoscale (10 microns to 1 millimeter.
Because the system is extremely robust and the team has uncovered universal design rules, Prakash plans to make a design tool for these droplet circuits available to the public.
to enable everyone to design new circuits based on building blocks we describe in this paper or discover new blocks.
Right now, anyone can put these circuits together to form a complex droplet processor with no external control something that was a very difficult challenge previously,
computation takes a special place. We are trying to bring the same kind of exponential scale up because of computation we saw in the digital world into the physical world."
"Source: http://www. stanford. edu n
#Ultracompact Highly sensitive Nanomechanical Sensor Can Detect Viral Disease Markers Two young researchers working at the MIPT Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics,
Dmitry Fedyanin and Yury Stebunov, have developed an ultracompact highly sensitive nanomechanical sensor for analyzing the chemical composition of substances and detecting biological objects,
such as viral disease markers, which appear when the immune system responds to incurable or hard-to-cure diseases,
including HIV, hepatitis, herpes, and many others. The sensor will enable doctors to identify tumor markers,
whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumors. The sensitivity of the new device is characterized best by one key feature:
according to its developers, the sensor can track changes of just a few kilodaltons in the mass of a cantilever in real time.
One Dalton is roughly the mass of a proton or neutron, and several thousand Daltons are the mass of individual proteins and DNA molecules.
So the new optical sensor will allow for diagnosing diseases long before they can be detected by any other method,
which will pave the way for a new-generation of diagnostics. The device, described in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports,
is an optical or, more precisely, optomechanical chip.""We've been following the progress made in the development of micro
-and nanomechanical biosensors for quite a while now and can say that no one has been able to introduce a simple and scalable technology for parallel monitoring that would be ready to use outside a laboratory.
So our goal was not only to achieve the high sensitivity of the sensor and make it compact,
but also make it scalabile and compatibile with standard microelectronics technologies, "the researchers said. Unlike similar devices, the new sensor has no complex junctions
and can be produced through a standard CMOS process technology used in microelectronics. The sensor doesn't have a single circuit
and its design is very simple. It consists of two parts: a photonic (or plasmonic) nanowave guide to control the optical signal,
and a cantilever hanging over the waveguide. A cantilever, or beam, is a long and thin strip of microscopic dimensions (5 micrometers long,
1 micrometer wide and 90 nanometers thick), connected tightly to a chip. To get an idea how it works,
imagine you press one end of a ruler tightly to the edge of a table
and allow the other end to hang freely in the air. If you touch the latter with your other hand
That's how the cantilever works. The difference between the oscillations of the ruler and the cantilever is only the frequency,
There are two optical signals going through the waveguide during oscillations: the first one sets the cantilever in motion,
The inhomogeneous electromagnetic field of the control signal's optical mode transmits a dipole moment to the cantilever,
impacting the dipole at the same time so that the cantilever starts to oscillate. The sinusoidally modulated control signal makes the cantilever oscillate at an amplitude of up to 20 nanometers.
The oscillations determine the parameters of the second signal, the output power of which depends on the cantilever's position.
which create a strong electric field intensity gradient, are key to inducing cantilever oscillations. Because the changes of the electromagnetic field in such systems are measured in tens of nanometers,
researchers use the term"nanophotonics"-so the prefix"nano"is used not here just as a fad!
Without the nanoscale waveguide and the cantilever, the chip simply wouldn't work. Abig cantilever cannot be made to oscillate by freely propagating light,
Cantilever oscillations make it possible to determine the chemical composition of the environment in which the chip is placed.
which changes during a chemical reaction between the cantilever and the environment. By placing different reagents on the cantilever,
researchers make it react with specific substances or even biological objects. If you place antibodies to certain viruses on the cantilever,
it'll capture the viral particles in the analyzed environment. Oscillations will occur at a lower
or higher amplitude depending on the virus or the layer of chemically reactive substances on the cantilever,
and the electromagnetic wave passing through the waveguide will be dispersed by the cantilever differently, which can be seen in the changes of the intensity of the readout signal.
Calculations done by the researchers showed that the new sensor will combine high sensitivity with a comparative ease of production
and miniature dimensions, allowing it to be used in all portable devices, such as smartphones, wearable electronics, etc.
One chip, several millimeters in size, will be able to accommodate several thousand such sensors, configured to detect different particles or molecules.
The price, thanks to the simplicity of the design will most likely depend on the number of sensors,
being much more affordable than its competitors. Source: http://mipt. ru/en n
#Nanoparticles Arrest Destruction of Beta Cells and Avoid Diabetes Development This work led to more studies with the support of the Spanish Government, Catalan Government and private patrons with a keen interest in it.
Thanks to this, the article published today in PLOS ONE describes a new step towards the creation of a vaccine,
which in the medium-term could be capable of preventing and even curing the disease in humans.
Initially the researchers avoided the destruction of the insulin-producing pancreatic cells (beta cells) in the body by modifying the individual's immune cells, known as dendritic cells.
This important step requires the extraction of the subjects'dendritic cells for their subsequent manipulation and re-injection.
Nanoparticles called liposomes are created in the laboratory; when they are introduced into the body they arrest the destruction of the beta cells
and avoid Diabetes development. This technique could be a much better candidate for a human vaccine.
The invention is protected commercially and an international patent has been applied for. Droplets of fat and water which can be produced on a large scaleliposomes have been used in several medical treatments.
They are not cells, but droplets with an external fat membrane, similar to cell membranes. They can be made using a very specialized process,
beta cells in process of natural deathto complete this study Germans Trias researchers have worked together with a ICREA group from the Catalan Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2.
and its mission is to seek nanotechnology solutions to challenges in the fields of biology, energy or technology.
They were generated specifically to imitate beta cells of the pancreas that are programmed in the process of cell death (apoptosis). As the researchers showed during the previous studies,
The Catalan researchers are the first group in the world to use liposomes that imitate naturally dying cells to fight against Diabetes.
The Universities of Barcelona and Lleida also contributed to this work. Next stepsafter showing that liposomes prevent the onset of Type 1 Diabetes in mice,
the next steps are to test it in human cells in vitro, to start clinical trials on human candidates for preventive vaccination
and to cure the disease by combining the vaccine with regenerative therapies. The Germans Trias Institute plans to carry out these steps with patients at the hospital
and to optimize the product by dosage and guideline studies. It is planned also to optimize the product for personalization.
To achieve these objectives more competitive funding will be necessary from public agencies. The group is also studying collaborations and investment opportunities from the pharmaceutical industry.
Private funding continues to be important and the Germans Trias Institute is studying the possibility of organizing a local campaign.
Growing incidence and complex consequencestype 1 Diabetes is an illness where the body does not recognize the beta cells of the pancreas as its own
and destroys them. The organ produces less and less insulin, the hormone that allows us to process the sugar we eat.
Patients must prick their fingers several times a day to check blood sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin in the stomach or other parts of the body.
The most serious is that in the long term hyperglycemia provokes retinal damage that can lead to blindness renal insufficiency, destruction of nerve fibers or
what is called"Diabetics Foot"where ulcers form, leading eventually to the need to amputate. The causes of the disease are unknown,
although there are both genetic and environmental factors involved. About 0. 3%of the population is affected
This immunotherapy presents a possible solution for Type 1 Diabetes. Source: http://www. uab. es e
#Graphene Used for World's Thinnest Light bulb This clip shows the emission of light from graphene,
attached small graphene strips to metal electrodes and suspended the strips over a substrate. When a current was passed through the filaments, they heated up."
"This new type of'broadband'light emitter can be integrated into chips and will pave the way towards the realization of atomically thin, flexible,
and transparent displays, and graphene-based on-chip optical communications,"said Hone, Wang Fon-Jen Professor of Mechanical engineering at Columbia Engineering and co-author of the study.
In order to develop fully integrated'photonic'circuits, it is necessary to produce light in small structures over the surface of a chip.
Although researchers have taken several different approaches this, it has not yet been possible to put the incandescent light bulb-the simplest and oldest artificial light source-onto a chip.
This is mainly due to the heat of light bulb filaments which must be thousands of degrees Celsius
in order to radiate in the visible range. Metal wires in the micro-scale cannot withstand such high temperatures.
Further, the high efficiency of heat transfer from the filament to its surroundings at the microscale can cause damage to the surrounding chip,
making such structures impractical. The team showed that the graphene reached temperatured over 2500#C by measuring the spectrum of emitted light.
"Graphene's ability to reach such high temperatures without melting the metal electrodes or the substrate is due an interesting characteristic:
so that less energy is needed to attain temperatures needed for visible light emission. These unique thermal properties allow us to heat the suspended graphene up to half of temperature of the sun,
"explained Myung-Ho Bae, a senior researcher at KRISS and co-lead author. By creating large-scale of arrays of chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) graphene light emitters,
co-lead author and professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Seoul National University said,
"Edison originally used carbon as a filament for his light bulb and here we are going back to the same element,
titled'Bright visible light emission from graphene',was published in the Advance Online Publication (AOP) on Nature Nanotechnology's website.
The work was supported by the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science as a part of the project'Convergent Science and Technology for Measurements at the Nanoscale,
. a professor of chemistry at Tufts and senior author on the paper, worked with iodine-125 radioactive isotope that is routinely used in cancer therapies.
giving off vast amounts of energy and becoming the isotope of tellurium, with half of the atoms decaying every 59 days.
An international collaboration with Angelos Michaelides, Ph d.,a professor of theoretical chemistry at UCL, and Philipp Pedevilla, a doctoral candidate at UCL, helped interpret these images
they studied one of the samples over several months with an X-ray photoelectron spectrometer to determine its exact chemical makeup. y taking the measurement every week or two,
Gold-Plated Cancer Fighters? Then Alex Pronschinske, Ph d.,first author on the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in Sykeslab, suggested that they measure the electrons emitted by the sample without prodding from X-rays in the photoelectron spectrometer.
He was interested particularly in the emission of low energy electrons, which have been shown to be very effective in radiation oncology
because they break cancer cellsdna into pieces. Because these electrons can travel only 1 to 2 nanometers human hair is about 60,000 nanometers widehey do not affect healthy tissue and organs nearby.
The team calculated the number of low energy electrons they expected would be emitted by the sample
based partly on data from simulations used by the medical community. They found that the gold-bonded iodine-125 emitted six times as many low energy electrons as plain iodine-125.
The gold, says Sykes, as acting like a reflector and an amplifier. Every surface scientist knows that
if you shine any kind of radiation on a metal, you get this big flux of low energy electrons coming out. he finding suggests a new avenue for radiation oncology:
make nanoparticles of gold, bond iodine-125 to them, then affix the nanoparticles to antibodies targeting malignant tumors
and put them in a liquid that cancer patients could take via a single injection.
Theoretically, the nanoparticles would attach to the tumor and emit low energy electrons, destroying the tumor DNA.
The gold-based nanoparticles would be flushed out of the body, Sykes says, unlike free iodine-125,
which can accumulate in the thyroid gland and cause cancer. If proven, this approach could be a potential improvement over current radiation therapy protocols, in
which doctors treat some cancers by putting radioisotopes, including iodine-125, into tiny titanium capsules and implanting them in tumors.
Instead of emitting large amounts of low energy electrons as the gold-bound iodine does, the titanium capsules inhibit radiation,
Sykes says, making such therapies less effective than they could be. He has applied for a patent on the new technique.
Researchers in Sykes'lab are now assessing precisely how the low energy electrons travel through biological fluids.
In addition to Sykes, Pronschinske, Pedevilla and Michaelides, authors on the paper are Colin J. Murphy, who received his doctorate in chemistry from Tufts in May 2015;
Emily A. Lewis, who received a Ph d. in chemistry from Tufts in 2014; Felicia R. Lucci, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at Tufts;
and Garth Brown and George Pappas, of Perkinelmer, Inc, . which supplied the iodine-125. The work at Tufts was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants CHE-0844343/CHE-1412402
and the US Department of energy under grant FG02-10er16170. The work at UCL was supported by the European Research Council and the Royal Society."
Tufts University, located on three Massachusetts campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United states. Tufts enjoy a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions.
A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university's schools is encouraged widely.
Source: http://www. tufts. edu r
#mcube Introduces Accelerometers Optimized for the nternet of Moving Thingsmcube, provider of the world smallest MEMS motion sensors,
today introduced the company first family of accelerometers optimized for wearables and the nternet of Moving Things (Iomt) The MC3600 family of ultra-low power,
high-performance 3-axis accelerometers is built upon mcube award-winning monolithic single-chip MEMS technology platform,
widely adopted in mobile handsets with over 100 million units shipped. This technology platform enables very small,
single-chip MEMS+ASIC devices that are cost effective, while consuming very little power and offering very high performance.
health monitoring and activity tracking devices that require ultra-low power and very small sensors. The new MC3600 family of accelerometers will consume only 0. 6ua of current,
which is up to 3x less power consumption than competitive accelerometers. Additionally, the mcube accelerometer comes in a 2 x 2 mm package
and occupies a small footprint on the printed circuit board, making it in some cases 3x smaller than other solutions on the market today for wearable devices.
Cube original family of motion sensors was designed for smartphones and tablets which have relatively large batteries,
said Ben Lee, president and CEO, mcube, Inc. ith key input from leading device manufacturers, we developed the MC3600 family of accelerometers to extend battery life
while keeping the footprint as small as possible, making them truly optimized for the wearables and Iomt market.
Internet of Moving Things By 2020, analysts predict more than 50 billion1 devices will be connected to the Internet
and a large percentage of those devices will be in motion. From smartphones and tablets to smart clothing and wearables, mcube is enabling a new era called the nternet of Moving Things where the movement
and context of everyday objects and devices can be measured, monitored and analyzed, generating valuable data
and insights that will transform consumer experiences. n the highly competitive consumer market of inertial sensors,
that will represent a market value of $4. 33b in 20202, mcube has yet again proven its monolithic single-chip technology can deliver significant advancements in reducing sensor battery life
and size, said Jean-Christophe Eloy, President & CEO of Yole Développement. perfect fit for the promising market of wearable devices requiring extremely optimized chips in terms of size and power consumption.
Having successfully shipped over 100 million units in smartphones and tablets, mcube is now taking its proven technology
and developing products specifically optimized for the Internet of Moving Things. With the MC3600 product family
mcube is delivering innovative, tiny sensors to address the unique needs of the wearable device market.
MC3610 Accelerometer Featuring an industry-leading small die size, the first commercially available device of the family is the MC3610 accelerometer, an ultra-low power,
integrated digital output 3-axis device, shipping in a 2 x 2 x 0. 94 mm 12-pin package.
The MC3610 device has a configurable sample rate that can be set between 0. 4 to 200 samples per second at 8-,10,
-or 12-bit resolution with a 32-sample FIFO, or 14-bits for single samples.
Its ultra-low power operating modes include a 0. 6ua sniff mode a 1. 1ua 25hz single-sample mode,
enable Iomt devices to power-down other components during user inactivity, dramatically extending battery life. The MC3610 is sampling now
and features mcube proven monolithic single-chip motion sensor technology. With the mcube approach, the MEMS sensors are fabricated directly on top of IC electronics in a standard CMOS fabrication facility.
Advantages of this monolithic approach include smaller size, higher performance, lower cost, and the ability to integrate multiple sensors onto a single-chip. mcube will continue to utilize this approach as it introduces more products in the MC3600 accelerometer family later this year.
EV3610A Evaluation Board To help customers accelerate product prototyping, mcube is offering an easy-to-use evaluation board.
The EV3610A provides the complete MC3610 pinout and can be plugged into a standard DIL 10 socket.
It comes ready-to-use with the required decoupling capacitor integrated into the board. It is available for purchase online at Mouser Electronics.
Visit http://www. mouser. com/mcube for more details s
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