#Battery swap charges moped in 10 seconds Smartscooter from Gogoro is moped an electric that charges in under 10s
because it has swappable batteries. As such it needs special battery swap stations particularly as home charging is said to be impossible the first infrastructure for
which is being installed in Taipei. Drive up to the charge station, pull two Li-ion batteries out of the Smartscooter, dump them into shaped holes in the charger,
and it automatically pops up two charged batteries to replace them. The batteries include slide-in connectors on the bottom,
so there is no separate disconnection or connection procedure. And the batteries fit in any way around
so long as the handle is at the top. martscooter gathers, analyses, and shares riding behaviours ten times a second to help riders determine what best for their Smartscooter energy consumption
while getting the same performance, said the firm. his riding data is updated to the cloud, every 10 minutes,
from the Gogoro mobile app on the riders smartphone or when a battery is exchanged at a Gostation via NFC. iders get to select specific ride feel,
throttle acceleration and dashboard colour. Smartscooter at a glanc o
#University embeds RFID chips in yarn Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have come up with a way of embedding RFID chips in yarns
which can then be woven or knitted to make fabrics for clothing. Professor Tilak Dias of the Advanced Textiles Research Group of the School of art & Design, claims that the embedded chips annot be seen in situ by the naked eye He has patented the technology,
which he believes has the potential to be used for security in stores and also for clothes that are donated to charity to be tracked around the world.
Professor Dias writes: f an RFID chip is embedded into a shirt, for instance, it will provide a much greater level of anti-theft
and anti-counterfeiting protection. As people will not be able to easily identify where a chip is located in a garment,
shoplifters won be able to cut it off to steal it. Sealed inside resin micro pods within yarns, the fabrics incorporating RFIDS can be run through washing machines
and tumble driers without incurring any damage. Short thin copper strands attached to the either side of the chips are embedded in yarn fibres
and act as an antenna. Measuring one millimetre by 0. 5 millimetre in size when bought in bulk the chips can cost only a few pence each.
Similar to the RFID devices now used in bank cards for contactless payments, the tiny chips can contain all the information
which is communicated usually via barcode. n relation to recycled clothes, charities would be able to sort garments much quicker perhaps even in an automated way to identify the types of clothing that are suitable for different countries according to their requirements,
said Professor Dias. Professor Dias also believes that in the distant future this technology could be used in conjunction with smart washing machines to warn consumers of mixed colours or inappropriate temperatures.
Research fellow Anura Rathnayake who is involved with the project, added: n the long run this technology could be of tremendous benefit to charitable organisations
which spend a great deal of time directing donated clothing to people around the world. The study was supported by a £50, 000 grant from Sustainable Society Network,
+as part of the RCUK Digital economy Them C
#Black arsenic phosphorus could replace silicon Layered semiconducting black arsenic phosphorus could be an alternative to silicon,
say researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). TUM chemists have developed a semiconducting material in
which individual phosphorus atoms are replaced by arsenic. In a collaborative international effort, American colleagues have built the first field-effect transistors from the new material.
Black arsenic forms extremely thin layers. The array of possible applications ranges from transistors and sensors to mechanically flexible semiconductor devices.
Unlike graphene, whose electronic properties are similar to those of metals, black arsenic phosphorus behaves like a semiconductor.
A co-operation between the TUM, the University of Regensburg, the University of Southern California (USC) and Yale has produced a field effect transistors (fet) made of black arsenic phosphorus. The compounds were synthesised by Marianne Koepf
at the laboratory of the research group for Synthesis and Characterization of Innovative Materials (SCIM at the TUM.
The fet were built and characterized by a group headed by professor Zhou and Dr Liu at the Department of Electrical engineering at USC.
The new technology developed at TUM allows the synthesis of black arsenic phosphorus without high pressure,
which requires less energy and is cheaper. The gap between valence and conduction bands can be tuned precisely by adjusting the arsenic concentration. his allows us to produce materials with previously unattainable electronic and optical properties in an energy window that was hitherto inaccessible,
says professor Tom Nilges, head of the research group for SCIM. With an arsenic concentration of 83%the material exhibits an extremely small band gap of only 0. 15 electron volts
making it predestined for sensors which can detect long wavelength infrared radiation. Lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors operate in this wavelength range, for example.
They are used, among other things, as distance sensors in cars. Another application is the measurement of dust particles and trace gases in environmental monitoring.
A further interesting aspect of these new, two-dimensional semiconductors is their anisotropic electronic and optical behavior.
The material exhibits different characteristics along the x-and y-axes in the same plane.
To produce graphene-like films the material can be peeled off in ultra thin layers. The thinnest films obtained so far are only two atomic layers thick.
The work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR the Air force Office of Scientific research (AFOSR), the Center of Excellence for Nanotechnologies (CEGN) of King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), the German Research Council (DFG) and the TUM
#Graphene film can super cool LEDS Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed a method for efficiently cooling electronics using graphene-based film.
According to the researchers, the graphene film has a thermal conductivity capacity that is four times that of copper. Significantly the team has developed a graphene film that can be attached to silicon substrates.
Research team leader Johan Liu, professor at Chalmers University of Technology, writes: The stronger bonds result from so-called functionalisation of the graphene,
i e. the addition of a property-altering molecule. Having tested several different additives, the Chalmers researchers concluded that an addition of (3-Aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) molecules has desired the most effect.
When heated and put through hydrolysis, it creates so-called silane bonds between the graphene and the electronic component (see picture).
The researchers have shown that the in-plane thermal conductivity of the graphene-based film, with 20 micrometer thickness, can reach a thermal conductivity value of 1600 W/mk,
which is four times that of copper. A likely application says Johan Liu is the integration of graphene-based film into LEDS, lasers and radio frequency components for cooling purposes. s
#Black arsenic phosphorus could replace silicon Layered semiconducting black arsenic phosphorus could be an alternative to silicon,
say researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). TUM chemists have developed a semiconducting material in
which individual phosphorus atoms are replaced by arsenic. In a collaborative international effort, American colleagues have built the first field-effect transistors from the new material.
Black arsenic forms extremely thin layers. The array of possible applications ranges from transistors and sensors to mechanically flexible semiconductor devices.
Unlike graphene, whose electronic properties are similar to those of metals, black arsenic phosphorus behaves like a semiconductor.
A co-operation between the TUM, the University of Regensburg, the University of Southern California (USC) and Yale has produced a field effect transistors (fet) made of black arsenic phosphorus. The compounds were synthesised by Marianne Koepf
at the laboratory of the research group for Synthesis and Characterization of Innovative Materials (SCIM at the TUM.
The fet were built and characterized by a group headed by professor Zhou and Dr Liu at the Department of Electrical engineering at USC.
The new technology developed at TUM allows the synthesis of black arsenic phosphorus without high pressure,
which requires less energy and is cheaper. The gap between valence and conduction bands can be tuned precisely by adjusting the arsenic concentration. his allows us to produce materials with previously unattainable electronic and optical properties in an energy window that was hitherto inaccessible,
says professor Tom Nilges, head of the research group for SCIM. With an arsenic concentration of 83%the material exhibits an extremely small band gap of only 0. 15 electron volts
making it predestined for sensors which can detect long wavelength infrared radiation. Lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors operate in this wavelength range, for example.
They are used, among other things, as distance sensors in cars. Another application is the measurement of dust particles and trace gases in environmental monitoring.
A further interesting aspect of these new, two-dimensional semiconductors is their anisotropic electronic and optical behavior.
The material exhibits different characteristics along the x-and y-axes in the same plane.
To produce graphene-like films the material can be peeled off in ultra thin layers. The thinnest films obtained so far are only two atomic layers thick.
The work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR the Air force Office of Scientific research (AFOSR), the Center of Excellence for Nanotechnologies (CEGN) of King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), the German Research Council (DFG) and the TUM
#Graphene-based film can super cool LEDS Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed a method for efficiently cooling electronics using graphene-based film.
According to the researchers, the graphene film has a thermal conductivity capacity that is four times that of copper. Significantly the team has developed a graphene film that can be attached to silicon substrates.
Research team leader Johan Liu, professor at Chalmers University of Technology, writes: ut the methods that have been in place so far have presented the researchers with problems
and it has become evident that those methods cannot be used to rid electronic devices off great amounts of heat,
because they have consisted only of a few layers of thermal conductive atoms. hen you try to add more layers of graphene,
another problem arises, a problem with adhesiveness. After having increased the amount of layers, the graphene no longer will adhere to the surface,
since the adhesion is held together only by weak Van der waals bonds. e have solved now this problem by managing to create strong covalent bonds between the graphene film and the surface,
which is made an electronic component of silicon, he continues. The stronger bonds result from so-called functionalisation of the graphene,
i e. the addition of a property-altering molecule. Having tested several different additives, the Chalmers researchers concluded that an addition of (3-Aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) molecules has desired the most effect.
When heated and put through hydrolysis, it creates so-called silane bonds between the graphene and the electronic component (see picture).
The researchers have shown that the in-plane thermal conductivity of the graphene-based film, with 20 micrometer thickness, can reach a thermal conductivity value of 1600 W/mk,
which is four times that of copper. A likely application says Johan Liu is the integration of graphene-based film into LEDS, lasers and radio frequency components for cooling purposes n
#Weightless-N Smart city networks deployed in Denmark Weightless-N Smart city networks from Nwave Technologies have been in Copenhagen and Esbjerg, Denmark.
Operating in sub-1ghz, licence-exempt ISM spectrum using ultra narrow band (UNB) technology, Weightless-N offers a range of several kilometres, even in c urban environments.
Very low power consumption provides for exceptionally long battery life measured in years from small conventional cells.
It is the first public network deployments from Nwave since the publication of the Weightless-N open standard.
Weightless-N is designed around a differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK) digital modulation scheme to transmit within narrow frequency bands using a frequency hopping algorithm for interference mitigation and enhanced security.
It provides for encryption and implicit authentication using a shared secret key regime to encode transmitted information via a 128 bit AES algorithm.
The technology supports mobility with the network automatically routing terminal messages to the correct destination.
Multiple networks, typically operated by different companies, are enabled and can be located co. Each base station queries a central database to determine which network the terminal is registered to
in order to decode and route data accordingly y
#Wize Mirror reads back vital signs Mirror mirror on the wall, am I at risk of heart disease?
One day soon your mirror might actually be able to give you the answer. Wize Mirror looks like a mirror,
but incorporates 3d scanners, multispectral cameras and gas sensors to assess the health of someone looking into it.
It does this by examining the person face, looking at fatty tissue, facial expressions and how flushed
or pale they are. Facial recognition software looks for telltale markers of stress or anxiety, while the gas sensors take samples of the user breath looking for compounds that give an indication of how much they drink or smoke.
The 3d scanners analyse face shape to spot weight gain or loss while the multispectral cameras can estimate heart rate or haemoglobin levels.
After the software has analysed the face which only takes about a minute the mirror produces a score that tells the user how healthy they seem.
It also displays personalised advice on how to improve their health. Wize Mirror is being developed by a consortium of researchers
and industry partners from seven European union countries, with EU funding. Sara Colantonio and colleagues from the National Research Council of Italy,
which coordinates the project, want to use Wize Mirror to address common long-term health issues that are difficult to treat once something has gone already wrong,
like heart disease or diabetes. revention is the most viable approach to reduce the socioeconomic burden of chronic and widespread diseases,
such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, they write. Clinical trials of the device will begin next year at three sites in France
and Italy, aiming to compare its readings with those from traditional medical devices. Facing the consumer Consumer technology that can read signals from the body to interpret underlying physical
and mental health is on the cusp of becoming part of everyday life. For example, Cardiio, originally developed at the Massachusetts institute of technology
is an app that uses a smartphone camera to monitor blood levels in the face
and tell you your heart rate. At MIT Media Lab, Javier Hernandez has looked at using mirrors for health monitoring.
He also developed a program called Senseglass, which uses Google glass and other wearables to measure someone mood
and help them manage emotions. Hernandez says that although mirrors are great for health monitoring
because we use them every day, putting them to use in this way is trickier than it sounds. ccurate health assessments in natural settings are quite challenging due to many factors such as illumination changes,
occlusions and excessive motion, he says i
#Will car makers become internet companies? Connected vehicles will create a new business opportunity proving the internet-based mobile services to the driver.
Car manufacturers will soon be competing against technology companies to provide the online services to connected cars. Autonomous connected vehicles are seen as the first major market for so-called internet of things (Iot.
This will be an important market for IC and hardware system suppliers. But arguably the biggest market opportunity will be in the provision v of online services that support the Iot devices in the car.
Car manufacturers see this as their domain and they want a major slice of the business. But to do this they will have to compete with IT firms
and partner with software suppliers. According to chip supplier NXP: Existing automotive technologies and business models that have worked for the car industry for a century are not so well suited to a changing car market with autonomous vehicles and Iot-connected cars.
In order to address the connected vehicle opportunity it will be necessary to form cross-industry groups. This will combine car makers with electronics firms and software services suppliers.
No single sector will be able to capitalise on this market, due to its diversity and the range of technologies required.
Putting electronics management systems in cars was only the beginning. Connecting vehicles to the internet will add a far greater level of complexity to the automotive business model.
NXP believes car makers will find themselves fighting on two major battlefronts. Their core activity will be designing new forms of autonomous connected vehicles,
but to be successful in the connected vehicles market they will need to develop and sell internet based services.
Whether they are successful in doing this will determine they business growth in the years ahead.
#Raising Millions With Equity Crowdfunding Will Cost You, But How much? The recently released Regulation A is the first section of the JOBS Act that allows a company to raise capital from the general public.
By opening up private company investments to the rowd, Regulation A+promises to be a game changer for how emerging companies are funded.
It's the first nationally available form of equity crowdfunding to non-accredited investors. This will not be as easy as a Kickstarter campaign, however.
Raising capital with Regulation A+will involve more than going online, creating a crowdfunding campaign and watching the money flow in.
Regulation A+involves the sale of equity or debt in your company and is governed by securities laws.
This means (cue maniacal laughter) attorneysfees accountantsfees and compliance costs. Raising $50 million under Regulation A is going to require your company to invest money in the process.
The question is: Can Regulation A+be used affordably by startups and small businesses? Related: Regulation A is Not the Savior of Cash-Seeking Startupsthe first thing to understand is that there are two iersof Regulation A+.Tier 1 allows a company to raise between $1 million and $20 million,
and there are no limits on the amount that an individual non-accredited investor can invest.
Tier 2 allows a company to raise between $1 million and $50 million, but non-accredited investors can only invest 10 percent of their income or net worth in each tier 2 offering.
There are different rules and costs associated with each tier. Both tiers will have sizeable costs for SEC compliance and legal fees (damn those lawyers.
Tier 1 will have costs for compliance with state securities laws or"blue sky laws.""While tier 2 doesn require you to comply with the blue sky laws for each state,
it will have more onerous accounting, auditing and ongoing SEC reporting requirements. Both tiers have legal fees and SEC compliance costs,
so let tackle that ugly subject first. When the law becomes effective on June 19, expect most of the big securities law firms
and lawyers to quote ridiculously large bills of more than $100, 000 in legal fees and compliance costs.
The reality is there are minded competent entrepreneurial lawyers who will charge far less, so shop around,
but be sure to check credentials and hire someone who knows the JOBS Act and the Regulation A+process.
Also as time goes on, expect to see legal fees and compliance costs come down, particularly as innovative companies find ways to automate the compliance process,
and as lawyers become more comfortable with the new law. The two remaining factors are the cost of complying with state blue sky laws (in tier 1)
and the cost of two years of audited financial statements (in tier 2). Related: Tax Trouble?
Avoid These 10 Common--and Costly--Mistakes. The tier 1 cost of complying with blue sky laws in all 50 states could run in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Some big law firms may even quote six-figure fees. Worse than the cost, the time wasted by having to deal with 50 different state securities regulators could make this process akin to having all of your teeth pulled, one at a time, without Novocain.
Because of blue sky compliance, tier 1 only makes sense for a business that is raising money in a contained geographic area
and does need not to comply with more than one or two state blue sky laws. Other than that I believe most companies will use tier 2. The major expense of tier 2,
two years of audited financials records, seems like a deal killer for many small businesses.
CPA audit costs of more than $25, 000 per year are not uncommon for a revenue producing, young business.
One CPA I discussed this with says innovators in the accounting industry will find ways to make these audits work. f a startup is new,
and does not have significant financial history, there is no reason an audit should be so expensive,
says Craig Denlinger, who left a big six firm to start an accounting business geared towards the JOBS Act market.
Denlinger is right. I have seen quotes from entrepreneurial-minded CPA firms willing to do startup audits for as little as $2, 500.
the right accountant and the right compliance company, will be at least $50, 000. While that seems like a lot for a startup to swallow,
The best news is Regulation A+allows a company to est the watersbefore spending a ton of money.
This means you can approach potential investors and gauge their interest before you spend thousands on putting together all of your filings with the SEC.
Reduce These 9 Startup Risks for a Better Shot at Investor Fundin r
#Beauty Is Only (3-D Printed) Skin Deep Global cosmetics giant L'oréal has waged a battle against gravity for more than a century, with countless creams, peels and potions as its weapons.
Now the global beauty brand is pulling out the latest, greatest, high-tech guns in the age-old war on wrinkles:
3-D printers that make real human skin. L'oréal USA, the largest arm of The french cosmetics company, recently announced that it is teaming up with a San diego-based bioprinting startup called Organovo Holdings to print actual skin tissue.
Not only will the new partnership mean gobs more man-made skin for L'oréal to experiment with,
it will also accelerate its shift away from testing cosmetics and other products on animals, reports The Washington post.
the company has researched reconstructed skin for the past three decades, growing thousands of human skin specimens in a uman skin factory,
though never via 3-D bioprinters before. Now, it looking to Organovo --which has worked with Merck to successfully 3-D print multicellular human liver
The 3-D printed skin tissue will be produced using Organovo Novogen Bioprinting Platform. Using microscopic building blocks from human skin cells,
the printing process involves a skin io inkthat is blended with a filler gel and tested in a tray.
Aside from using bioprinted skin to improve product assessments, 3-D printed skin tissue is already being tested in clinical trials as a treatment for burns
#Meet the Machine That's Turning Grocery stores'Food waste Into Fertilizer Larry Lesueur is used to former peers from the software world asking him,
considering the decidedly different turn he and his former Microsoft colleague Jose Lugo took in 2010 when they founded Redmond, Wash.
-based WISERG, anxious to solve the growing problem of food waste in America. That righthe duo went from high-tech to food scraps,
hoping to address the fact that 40 percent of food in the U s. bout $165 billion worth per yearoes uneaten, with most ending up in landfills, according to a 2012 report from the Natural resources Defense Council.
let first and foremost try to understand why food waste was being generated. If I can understand it, we can figure out what we can do to alter behavior,
adds Diana Chapman, director of sustainability for PCC Natural Markets, which has 10 stores in Washington Puget sound region.
spent two years using a PCC store as a iving laboratory to understand how food waste is created in a retail grocery environment. n 2010 the WISERG teamith the help of biologists, computer programmers and engineerseveloped a solution:
the Harvester, a machine that, in six to 24 hours, turns food matter into a high-nutrient liquid that can be converted to organic fertilizer.
It works with anything from fish scales and carrot tops to wine. After food waste is converted,
the resulting liquid is picked up by a pumping company and delivered to a WISERG processing facility (there one in the Pacific Northwest;
The final product, WISERGANIC fertilizer, is sold both to farmers and to consumers at the stores that scrapped the leftover potato salad in the first place.
The company is processing 15,000 gallons of fertilizer per month. The Harvester also delivers data to help stores cut down their food waste. t not about just how much goes out the back door
but why it goes out the back door, Lesueur says. y job is to make that product go out the front of the store
Its conceptnd early successas helped WISERG secure $14 million from investors, including $11 million in Series B funding in March.
For now, Lesueur and company are focused on grocery stores ecause theye large and have a high quantity of waste.
But theye working to develop Harvesters that would fit in restaurants or homes, as well as eighborhood-based solutionsthat Lesueur says would work n an urban setting where a grocery store may be on the bottom floor
but they may share a facility with a couple of restaurants. CC meanwhile, is putting data culled from the Harvester to work to improve ordering
and reduce shrink. As the software gets smarter, Harvesters will help markets parse down to the item level to figure out
whether theye tossing more cookies or muffins. That datand the high-quality fertilizeras turned Chapman into a WISERG evangelist. e will put them in as many stores as we possibly can,
restaurant or artisan food maker and get a debit card stocked with dible credits, while helping their favorite business get the money it needs to grow.
Freight Farms transforms shipping containers into self-contained farms that grow fresh produce using LEDS and hydroponics,
while an app controls metrics like humidity and temperature remotely. The flagship Leafy Green Machine starts at $76, 000.
The Foodily virtual recipe book allows users to search, save and share digital recipes on their smartphones or tablets and,
via partnerships with retailers like Freshdirect, turn recipes into shopping lists and order ingredients online for delivery.
The Smartgrill by Lynx, programmable via smartphone, is activated voice to cook on user command or automatically via a database of more than 200 preprogrammed recipes.
Instead of reviewing restaurants, Foodspotting users recommend dishes. The app is searchable by specific foods. Move over lattes.
The hottest hot beverages in Manhattan are the sippable one brothsfrom Brodo single-service window, with add-ins like Calabrian chili oil, shiitake mushroom tea and fermented beet juice.
Enjoyfresh online marketplace allows users to search and sign up for unique off-menu dishes and exclusive events at local restaurants.
The Scio handheld spectrometer instantly analyzes foods and pharmaceuticals at a molecular level; a quick scan provides nutritional info,
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