a detector made up of more than a million individual infrared pixels each less than 1/12th the thickness of a human hair.
The new detector, called uperhawk is able to capture better than HD-quality images in total darkness by detecting temperature differences as small as 1/50th of a degree.
while a sharper image would show that the object is a shovel rather than a rifle hugely important
Because Selex ES pixels are 8-microns in size, you can fit more of them in a normal-sized detector,
essentially meaning that you can obtain a sharper image for the same size, weight and,
Small pixels usually means that more signal leaks into neighbouring pixels a problem currently facing many competitors working to reduce their pixel sizes leading to blurred, rather than sharper, images.
Superhawk pixels feature a structure unique to Selex ES-theye physically isolated from each other so that the signal cannot blur at all,
The secret behind the new technology is a process of growing infrared-detecting crystals called Metal Organic Vapour Phase Epitaxial (or OVPE
MOVPE has allowed the development of 8-micron blur-free pixels in the new, production ready, Superhawk detector.
will use the new detector to reduce system size, weight and costs while achieving equivalent ranges,
#Fingerprint Sensor Ensures Dispensing of Medication to the Correct Patient Which is exactly the point.
The U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated that drug overdoses kill more than 44,000 Americans annually,
Concerned about these alarming statistics, experts at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health Center for Injury Research and Policy challenged a team of Johns Hopkins undergraduate mechanical engineers to design
Credit: Johns hopkins university) e needed this personal pill afeto have tamper resistance, personal identification capabilities, and a locking mechanism that allows only a pharmacist to load the device with pills,
said Kavi Bhalla, assistant professor at the university Bloomberg School of Public health and one of the team mentors for the project.
Classmates Megan Carney, Joseph Hajj, Joseph Heaney and Welles Sakmar each 22 years old and graduated from Johns Hopkins last month spent their senior year researching,
Weighing in at 2. 57 pounds and standing 9. 25 inches tall, the electronic prototype is equipped with a fingerprint sensor
and circuitry to ensure that drugs are dispensed only to the prescribed patient at the prescribed intervals and in the prescribed dosage.
The cylindrical device is built of the same kind of super-tough steel alloy used in aircraft landing gear
and is equipped with the same kind of fingerprint sensor used in some iphones. The sensor ensures that the medication is dispensed only to the correct patient;
a timer ensures that no dose is dispensed too soon. he device starts to work when the patient scans in his or her fingerprint.
the most challenging part of the whole project was etting the electronic circuit that powers the fingerprint detector to work right. he device can hold 60 tablets (a standard month dose) of Oxycontin,
a potent narcotic pain reliever that was selected for the project because it tops the list of the most commonly abused prescription drugs.
they then challenged a student to try to break into their invention. e took a hammer and other tools to it, from a hacksaw to a drill,
Andrea Gielen, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Bloomberg School of Public health and one of the team mentors, said she
#Scott & White Memorial Implants Miniaturized, Wireless Monitoring Sensor to Help Manage Heart failure Scott & White Memorial is one of six hospitals in Texas
and the first hospital in the Baylor Scott & White Health system to offer the device.
For more information watch this short video, click New Tech Helping Heart failure Patientse are always looking for new and innovative ways to treat our patient disease process
and improve outcomes for heart failure patients, said Robert Scott III, MD, Director for Advanced Heart failure at Scott & White Memorial. his device will give us the ability to anticipate problems with our patients before they occur,
decreasing their chance of being readmitted to the hospital, and improving their quality of life. emorial implemented the Cardiomems HF System
which is the first and only FDA-approved heart failure monitoring device proven to significantly reduce hospital admissions.
The device is a sensor that is implanted in the pulmonary artery (PA) during a minimally invasive procedure.
Once implanted, the device can measure and transmit PA pressure from the patient back to their healthcare team.
Elevation in PA pressure appears even before changes in weight and blood pressure in the patient,
which are used traditionally as indirect measures of worsening heart failure. The new system allows patients to transmit daily sensor readings from their homes to their health care providers allowing for personalized
and proactive management to reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and onset of debilitating symptoms. eart failure can rob patientsquality of life
and frequently results in repeated hospitalizations, said John Erwin III, MD, cardiologist at Scott & White Memorial. e think that we can provide significantly improved quality of life by partnering with the patient in acting preventatively as opposed to responding
when an adverse event occurs. eart failure occurs when the heart is unable to pump enough blood to meet the body demands.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5. 1 million Americans have heart failure
with 670,000 new cases diagnosed each year. Patients with heart failure are hospitalized frequently, have reduced a quality of life and face a higher risk of death.
Source: http://www. sw. org
#New Smart Insulin Patch May Replace Injections for Diabetics By Beth Ellisonthe mart insulin patchis a thin square a couple of millimetres large.
Its surface is made up of over 100 miniscule needles which store insulin and enzymes that sense glucose in microscopic storage units.
These icroneedlespainlessly penetrate the skin and make contact with the blood flowing in capillaries just below the surface.
The research team found that the new patch could reduce blood glucose levels in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes for as long as nine hours.
This suggests great promise for human use with further preclinical tests and human clinical trials to come.
The future potential of the device is highlighted by co-senior author Zhen Gu, Phd, a professor in the Joint UNC/NC State department of Biomedical engineering:"
"The whole system can be personalized to account for a diabetic's weight and sensitivity to insulin,
so we could make the smart patch even smarter.""He adds that the patch orks fast,
and is made from nontoxic, biocompatible materials.""Affecting more than 387 million people worldwide, diabetes is maintained currently with frequent finger prick tests
and insulin shots to control blood glucose levels. This process is painful and can be imprecise.
"Injecting the wrong amount of medication can lead to significant complications like blindness and limb amputations,
or even more disastrous consequences such as diabetic comas and death.""This research team have removed the risk of human error by emulating the natural insulin generators of the body beta cells.
Jiching Yu, PNAS first author and a Phd student in Gu labhyaluronic acid and 2-nitromidazole were connected to create a new double ended molecule, with one side hydrophilic and the other hydrophobic.
A core of solid insulin and glucose-sensing enzymes were inserted into these vesicles. These spheres of glucose-sensing, insulin-releasing material were formed then into an array of microneedles using a rigid form of hyaluronic acid.
The team tested the patch on a mouse model of type 1 diabetes and compared it to injecting insulin as standard.
Regular insulin injections can cause blood glucose levels to plummet dangerously low the patch has been found not to pose this risk.
#New MIT Power Converter Chip Harvests More than 80%of Energy Realizing that vision, however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better,
that can extract energy from the environment to recharge. Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it,
even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous ultralow-power converters that used the same approach had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Moreover the researcherschip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where most of its ultralow-power predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery
or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
but increases the circuit complexity even further. Nonetheless, the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability,
and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage, says Dina Reda El-Damak, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and first author on the new paper. e need to regulate the input to extract the maximum power,
and we really want to do all these tasks with inductor sharing and see which operational mode is the best.
And we want to do it without compromising the performance, at very limited input power levels 10 nanowatts to 1 microwatt for the Internet of things. he prototype chip was manufactured through the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's University Shuttle Program.
Ups and downsthe circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell the battery,
and the device the cell is powering. If the battery operates for too long at a voltage that either too high or too low, for instance, its chemical reactants break down,
and it loses the ability to hold a charge. To control the current flow across their chip, El-Damak and her advisor, Anantha Chandrakasan,
the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor in Electrical engineering, use an inductor, which is a wire wound into a coil.
When a current passes through an inductor, it generates a magnetic field, which in turn resists any change in the current.
Throwing switches in the inductor path causes it to alternately charge and discharge so that the current flowing through it continuously ramps up
and then drops back down to zero. Keeping a lid on the current improves the circuit efficiency,
since the rate at which it dissipates energy as heat is proportional to the square of the current.
Once the current drops to zero, however, the switches in the inductor path need to be thrown immediately;
otherwise, current could begin to flow through the circuit in the wrong direction, which would drastically diminish its efficiency.
The complication is that the rate at which the current rises and falls depends on the voltage generated by the solar cell,
which is highly variable. So the timing of the switch throws has to vary, too.
Electric hourglassto control the switchestiming, El-Damak and Chandrakasan use an electrical component called a capacitor,
which can store electrical charge. The higher the current, the more rapidly the capacitor fills.
When it full, the circuit stops charging the inductor. The rate at which the current drops off
however, depends on the output voltage, whose regulation is the very purpose of the chip. Since that voltage is fixed,
the variation in timing has to come from variation in capacitance. El-Damak and Chandrakasan thus equip their chip with a bank of capacitors of different sizes.
As the current drops, it charges a subset of those capacitors, whose selection is determined by the solar cell voltage.
Once again, when the capacitor fills, the switches in the inductor path are flipped. n this technology space,
there usually a trend to lower efficiency as the power gets lower, because there a fixed amount of energy that consumed by doing the work,
says Brett Miwa, who leads a power conversion development project as a fellow at the chip manufacturer Maxim Integrated. f youe only coming in with a small amount,
it hard to get most of it out, because you lose more as a percentage.
El-Damak design is unusually efficient for how low a power level she at.?One of the things that most notable about it is that it really a fairly complete system,
he adds. t really kind of a full system-on-a chip for power management. And that makes it a little more complicated, a little bit larger,
and a little bit more comprehensive than some of the other designs that might be reported in the literature.
http://web. mit. edu n
#New Conductive Ink Can Print Sensors Onto Wearables Researchers at the University of Tokyo have invented a new conductive ink that can be used to print sensors onto wearable technologies.
The ink will be used in printed electronics, which will allow sensors to be incorporated into electronic apparel for measuring biological data,
including heart rate and muscle contraction. At present, printed electronics, including LEDS, solar panels and transistors, are printed mainly on hard or rigid materials, such as paper or plastics.
For wearable devices, materials would need to be soft and stretchy to be comfortable and well fitting
but it has been challenging to produce an ink that is elastic as well as conductive and can be printed in a simple, single step process.
The new work carried out by Professor Takao Someya and his team at the University of Tokyo's Graduate school of Engineering has resulted in the fabrication of an elastic
and easily printable conducting ink that can be patterned on textiles with a single printing step.
The ink was formulated using fluorine surfactant, fluorine rubber, organic solvent and silver flakes. It displayed high conductivity characteristics even after stretching it to thrice its original length-a record for stretchable conductors
which can normallbe extended to 2. 5 times their original length.""Our team aims to develop comfortable wearable devices.
This ink was developed as part of this endeavor. The biggest challenge was obtaining high conductivity and stretchability with a simple one-step printing process.
We were able to achieve this by use of a surfactant that allowed the silver flakes to self-assemble at the surface of the printed pattern,
The team used this ink to produce a wrist-band muscle activity sensor. An elastic conductor was printed onto sportswear material,
and this was combined with an organic transistor amplifier circuit. The sensor features nine electrodes that are placed 2 cm apart from one another in a 3 x 3 grid
and can detect muscle electrical potentials to measure muscle activity y
#Smart Mouth Guard with Sensors Detects Teeth Grinding The next big thing in wearable technology may show up right inside your mouth.
Researchers at the University of Florida have developed a smart mouth guard equipped with sensors that allow it to detect
if youe grinding your teeth, tell your dentist and even help you stop doing it.
What more, the next version of the guard, currently under development, may be able to tell when an athlete is becoming dehydrated
an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his colleagues. Yoon, who also is director of the Multidisciplinary Nano
and Microsystems Lab at UF, worked on the project with Fong Wong, an associate professor in UF Restorative Dental Sciences Department and Craniofacial Center.
when he was developing a set of dentures that alert the dentist to an improper fit
and can lead to damaged teeth, headaches, insomnia, and a sore jaw. Most people don even know they do it.
for the patient to stay home using a mouth guard equipped with sensors that could detect bruxism,
Wong thought the same thing. earing a mouth guard is less intrusive than spending time in a sleep clinic,
and can send the information to a computer or smart phone via Bluetooth, where a dentist or orthodontist can retrieve it,
make a diagnosis and suggest treatment. hat kind of information has been unavailable until now, Yoon said. The mouth guard is an improvement over traditional bruxism therapies,
such as behavioral modification training during clinical sessions, Wong said. he advantage is that the guard extends the treatment beyond the time spent in the clinic,
she said. his promises greater effectiveness and lower cost. Yoon said one population that could stand to benefit from the smart mouth guard is combat veterans with posttraumatic stress,
which can lead to bruxism. But the smart mouth guard potential extends beyond dentistry. The next iteration could be aimed at athletes.
Using different types of sensors, Yoon said, it could detect dehydration or dangerous core body temperature and alert a coach to pull a player off the field.
That same information could be useful for firefighters. It also could measure the strength of a blow to the head
which could give doctors early warning about the possibility of a concussion g
#Warwick Q-Eye Sensor Enables Rapid Identification of Materials in Terahertz Region A new type of sensor,
that is much faster than competing technologies used to detect and identify hidden objects, has been developed by scientists at the University of Warwick.
Called-Eye the invention senses radiation across the spectrum between microwaves and infrared, known as the Terahertz (THZ) region of the spectrum a goal that has challenged scientists for over 30 years.
It works by detecting the rise in temperature produced when electromagnetic radiation emitted by an object is absorbed by the Q-Eye sensor,
even down to the level of very small packets of quantum energy (a single photon.
The device could help address the weaknesses reported earlier this month in America airport security, where mock weapons and explosives were smuggled through airports,
undetected in 95%of cases. It may also prove useful in discovering concealed goods in the retail industry or for non-destructive monitoring, for example quality control in drugs or food.
Other applications include astronomical and climate science observations and medical diagnosis. Professors in Warwick Nano-Silicon Group, Physics department, Evan Parker and Terry Whall, led the team
which developed the device. Professor Parker commented, e were surprised very when our first very crude prototype showed such impressive speed
and detection performance and our initial calculations indicated world-beating detector capability all this and using silicon.
Made using standard silicon processes large numbers of detector chips containing designs matched to a particular application can easily be fabricated on large (300mm) wafers with great uniformity,
setting it apart from existing technologies. The patented device involves a thin film of aluminum deposited on top of a silicon layer placed under strain,
used to create an electronic cooling (e-cooling) process. The electrons in the silicon layer are isolated
This revolutionary e-cooling process is the secret to Q-Eye sensor exceptional performance, enabling fast imaging and material identification.
Professors Parker and Whall are currently working on a demonstrator of the device having been awarded a £100,
The work is moving out of academic research into the commercial world, offering opportunities for partnership
and Investment companies involved in the personnel screening market have expressed already interest in the Q-Eye device.
Warwick Ventures, Warwick technology transfer business, has helped the professors to create a spin out company, Q-Eye Ltd,
and raise funding to develop the first commercial prototypes. Melody Stokes adds: ee delighted to have distinguished Warwick alumnus Phil Oonovan advise the team.
and encrypt data. n
#DIRHA Prototype Enables People with Disabilities to use Voice as a Remote control to Access Home Devices Based on advanced voice recognition and audio signal processing technology,
the prototype was designed mainly for people with mobility impairments.""Excellent progress. The project has achieved fully its objectives and technical goals for the period,
The prototype was designed especially for people with disabilities and allows them to use their voice as a remote control to access services
and operate a number of home devices. Adjusting room temperature, opening or closing roller shutters, turning lights on and off,
opening or closing doors and windows, selecting and playing music. For these and other applications, DIRHA uses a network of microphones placed throughout the room
so it can pick up voice commands, understand them, and then transmit them to a home automation system module,
and a half million Euro funding by the European union, 900,000 of wich awarded to FBK,
and saw the participation of Athena IAMU RC (Greece) and INESC-ID (Portugal) research centers, the University of Graz (Austria),
and companies such as Domoticarea (Rovereto), STMICROELECTRONICS (Milan) and NEW AMUSER (Torino). The work was coordinated by Maurizio Omologo,
Head of the SHINE (Speech-acoustic scene analysis and interpretation) Research Unit at Fondazione Bruno Kessler ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Center, focusing on this type of advanced technology."
and through which in 2009 a TV-voice interaction system was developed. In the context of DIRHA, during the past three years, we have been able to achieve important progress, based on
which we now have technology that can be used for a voice assistant for household environments,
"The DIRHA system can be configured either through traditional microphones, or thorugh MEMS (microelectromechanical) microphones in the order of magnitude of a few millimeters, small enough to blend with the furnishings of the home.
It can be set to operate 24 hours a day, always listening and waiting for any requests from the user,
and there is no need to press any buttons to activate it. It can recognize the occupantsvoices from other background noises
and interact with the user only when needed, for example by asking request feedback questions. One can talk to DIRHA even at several meters from the microphones
and it does need not Internet connection, as opposed to most of the solutions available on the market,
which require access and audio transmission to a remote service, resulting in limitations in terms of privacy.
Moreover, thanks to DIRHA, multiple users located in different rooms of the house can interact with the system simultaneously and independently.
#Researchers Report Completely Transparent Absorbers at Nonoperational Frequencies The manipulation of light has led to many applications that have revolutionized society through communications, medicine and entertainment.
Devices consuming the energy of electromagnetic radiation, such as absorbers and sensors, play an essential role in the using
The researchers at the Aalto University Department of Radio Science and Engineering have demonstrated the first realization of absorbers that do not reflect light over a wide range of frequencies.
For example, they could be used in screens that can filter any cell phone signals and pass through Wi-fi and other microwaves."
"This research will also open new venues for general light control and enable novel devices such as flat lenses
and light beam transformers",explains Asadchy y
#FLIR GF320 Thermal Camera for Offshore Oil & Gas Leak Detection The FLIR GF320 thermal camera from FLIR Systems is a preventative maintenance tool purpose designed to spot leaks in piping
Offshore oil and gas facilities require state of the art technology to achieve results that are safe for the environment and safe for business.
The FLIR GF320 will significantly improve your work safety environmental and regulatory compliance, not to mention helping to improve the bottom line by finding leaks that essentially decrease profits.
The latest version of the GF320 now embeds GPS data into the image allowing workers to pinpoint the location of the leak
or hot spot. For further information on offshore oil and gas leak detection please visit www. flir. co. uk/ogi/display/?
/id=49559 or contact FLIR Systems on+32-3665-5100/gasimaging@flir. com. Media inquiries can be directed to Dr Bill Bradbury on+44-208-546-0869
and marketing of sensor systems that enhance perception and awareness. FLIR advanced thermal imaging and threat detection systems are used for a wide variety of imaging, thermography,
and security applications, including airborne and ground-based surveillance, condition monitoring, research and development, manufacturing process control, search and rescue, drug interdiction, navigation, transportation safety, border
environmental monitoring, and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) detection. For more information, go to FLIR web site at www. FLIR. com o
#New White paper Provides Overview of IIOT, M2m, and Smart Technologies The term Industrial Internet of things (IIOT), also known as Industrial Internet and Industry 4. 0, refers to the integration of physical industrial machinery with software, internet,
along with network sensors, actuators, and other industrial machines and equipment. Moreover, the new white paper from AIS provides an in depth overview of the latest trends and developments of the new emerging technologies.
The white paper also touches on several related topics surrounding these technologies and their impact on industrial automation, control and monitoring.
Most notably, the convergence of Information technologies (IT) and Operational Technologies (OT) within industrial plants factories and facilities.
As the Visualization, Control and Monitoring Gateway, AIS's Industrial Panel PCS (IPCS) and Embedded Computers Help Enable IIOT
and Smart Technology Applicationsthe Industrial Internet of things (IIOT) white paper also addresses the vital role AIS's open, human machine interfaces and visualization technologies play in enabling IIOT, Industry
and gateway from the factory floor to the digital enterprise level, across different global facilities and plant operations.
AIS's portfolio of Smart HMI solutions are deployed currently in IIOT, Smart cities, Smart Transportation, Smart Factories, Smart Buildings and Digital Oil fields.
and Lead to a New Era of Economic growth and Competitivenessthe Industrial Internet is not some far off technology or vague futuristic concept.
Some technology trends which are expected to have a huge impact on IIOT evolution are IPV6, sensor proliferation, cloud computing, Big data,
and faster communication standards such as 4G LTE and beyond. Conservative estimates suggest worldwide Industrial Internet spending is set to increase from $20 billion in 2012 to $500 billion by 2020.
Massive Growth of Data Volumes Created by Computing Technologies Commonly Referred To as"Big data"is Driving the Growth of the Industrial Internetthe term"Big data"is essentially the collection of giant data sets so large and complex it is difficult to capture
curate, manage and process with traditional data processing applications. What constitutes"Big data Size"is obviously a continually growing number every day--from figures starting with a few dozen terabytes to double-digit, petabytes of data in a digital enterprise today.
Key factors driving"Big data"is the access of previously inaccessible data, now available wirelessly and cloud technologies.
Furthermore new technologies in analytics offer improved Asset management Performance (AMP. Operational Efficiency, Flexible Production Techniques and Predictive Analytics are Key Objectives of Industrial Companies Utilizing Industrial Iotearly adopters of the Industrial Internet
and Smart technologies have focused on improving operational efficiency as a key goal for leveraging IIOT.
%Using sensors, analytics and real-time data helps industrial automation companies anticipate failures and respond more quickly to critical situations
and can reduce breakdowns by up to 70%in some cases. By avoiding downtime and plant facility shutdowns,
production throughput increases significantly resulting in higher profits. The Promise of the Industrial Iot and Smart Technologies is in Boosting Revenues with New Digital Products
& Servicescompanies will generate entirely new sources of revenues and profits from new digital products and services.
These digital services are offerings that combine information, transactional and professional services. Some companies are already converting products into product-service hybrids
which are connected, intelligent physical products capable of producing data for use in digital services. The information companies harvest can become new products that they sell
or can be combined with how they market other new products. Customers will purchase their digital services to increase production and efficiency.
if it generates data and becomes a digital service within its supply chain. Source: http://www. aispro. com m
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011