#Boron Turns Graphene into Blue light Emitter FRANKFURT, Germany, July 14, 2015 Chemists at Goethe University Frankfurt have developed a new class of organic luminescent materials through the targeted introduction of boron
consequently, are of interest for use as organic LEDS (OLEDS). Within graphene, benzene rings are fused to form a honeycomb structure.
Sections of this structure, referred to as nanographenes or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS), play an integral role in organic electronics.
Within the study, boron atoms specifically replaced the two meso carbon atoms within the PAH, which resulted in its ability to transform a near-infrared dye into a blue luminophore.
mechanically flexible electronic components adapted to individual applications, such as LEDS. Courtesy of Goethe University Frankfurt. The boron-containing nanographenes have an impact on two key properties of an OLED luminophore
the researchers said: the color of fluorescence shifts into the highly desirable, blue spectral range and the capacity to transport electrons is improved substantially.
To date, only limited use could be made of boron-containing PAHS, as most of the exponents are sensitive to air and moisture."
"said professor Matthias Wagner. In recent years, he said, researchers have become much more capable in their abilities to modify the inner structures by embedding foreign atoms within the carbon network."
Hertz and Wagner anticipate that such materials like the graphene flakes they developed will be particularly suitable for use in portable electronic devices,
including future generations of film displays for smartphones and tablets e
#Laser-Writing of DVDS May have a Speed limit Phase-change materials used in DVDS and other digital storage media pass through a previously unknown intermediate atomic state under laser pulses.
The discovery could lead to faster computer memory systems with larger storage capacity but may also point to an unavoidable limit to data recording speeds, according to researchers at the California Institute of technology.
The atomic structure of phase-change materials changes from an ordered crystalline arrangement to a more disordered,
or amorphous, configuration when illuminated with laser pulses. These two states represent the ones and zeroes of digital data.
The speed with which data can be recorded is determined both by the laser's pulse width
and by how quickly the material can shift from one state to the other. With a nanosecond laser,"the fastest you can record information is one information unit, one 0 or 1,
every nanosecond,"said postdoctoral scholar Jianbo Hu.""To go even faster, people have started to use femtosecond lasers,
"To study this, the researchers developed ultrafast electron crystallography (UEC), which allowed them to observe directly the transitioning atomic configuration of a prototypical phase-change material, germanium telluride (Gete), under femtosecond laser pulses.
and to how fast data can be recorded, regardless of the laser speeds used.""Even if there is a laser faster than a femtosecond laser,
just because of the physics of these phase-change materials,"said postdoctoral scholar Giovanni Vanacore.""It's something that cannot be solved technologically it's fundamental."
the research could one day aid the development of better data storage for computers, the researchers said.
when a rewritable DVD is erased i
#Optical Glucose Sensors on Commercial Path Optical Glucose Sensors on Commercial Pathleeds, England, July 17, 2015 A University of Leeds spin out company is seeking to commercialize an optical glucose sensor that could make finger
-prick blood tests unnecessary for people with diabetes. Glucosense Diagnostics Ltd. intends to make tabletop and wearable versions of the device,
which is now in clinical trials. The sensor uses a nanoengineered silica chip with an active layer of ions that fluoresce
when illuminated by a low-power near-infrared diode laser. The fluorescence decay changes when the glass comes in contact with skin due to glucose in the bloodstream absorbing
this technology opens up the potential for people with diabetes to receive continuous readings, meaning they are alerted instantly
"said Leeds professor Gin Jose, who developed the technology.""This will allow people to self-regulate
which sends alerts to smartphones or readings directly to doctors, allowing them to profile how a person is managing their diabetes over time."
"The results of a pilot clinical study, carried out at the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine under the supervision of professor Peter Grant,
suggest that the new monitor has the potential to perform as well as conventional technologies. More clinical trials and product optimization are required for regulatory approvals
and before the technology can be put on the market.""Noninvasive monitoring will be particularly valuable in young people with Type 1 diabetes,
"Grant said.""Within this group, those who are attempting very tight control, such as young women going through pregnancy
and funded by the University of Leeds and Netscientific PLC, a biomedical and health care technology group specializing in commercializing technologies from universities and research institutes.
Funding for the initial feasibility study came from the National Institute for Health Research; the work was supported also by the U k. Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council and University of Leeds Research and Innovation Services c
#Microlens Array Spawns Massive Microscope Image A new multispectral device is said to have produced the largest microscope image ever,
Able to rapidly process very large amounts of biomedical imaging data, the system addresses what has been a major bottleneck in pharmaceutical development, according to a team of researchers from the U s. and Australia.
and smaller,"said Antony Orth, a former Harvard university researcher now at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia."
"Multispectral imaging is used for many types of medical research and not only produces an image but also provides data about the specific colors within that image.
Researchers are able to study these frequencies to learn about the composition of biological samples and chemical processes taking place within them.
Observing how cells and tissues respond to specific chemicals and experimental drugs is essential for pharmaceutical research and particularly for cancer treatment.
To demonstrate their design, the researchers applied fluorescent dyes to specific molecules within a cell sample.
The raw data produced by this was a series of small images, each roughly 1200 × 200 pixels wide.
Taking inspiration from modern computing methods, Orth and colleagues at Harvard and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. of Pittsburgh worked to overcome the limitations imposed by current multispectral microscopes.
Veering away from the use of multicore processors capable of simultaneously handling massive amounts of data and instructions,
Slices of a spectral data cube. Human epithelial cells are imaged at 11 wavelengths from blue to red.
The bottom right panel is a composite of all wavelength channels. Based on single-lens designs, today's multispectral microscopes survey a single point at a time,
The team plans to expand its technique to billion-pixel, time-lapse movies of cells moving
New Digital Conference Explores Biophotonics Imaging Fluorescent, Magnetic nanoparticles Aid Bioimaging System Combines Optical Microscopy, MRI Bioimaging Technique Isolates Moving Tissu i
#A BATTERY MADE FROM RHUBARB (SORT OF) The next step for renewable energy is to figure out how to store all the power we create.
Harvard researchers have used a molecule nearly identical to one in rhubarb to make a battery that can store more energy
or less moneyhan solid-state and traditional flow batteries. e have something that could change the way we deal with electricity,
By 2017, they hope to release a commercial version big enough to hold a day worth of energy from a typical three-kilowatt home rooftop solar array.
Many existing flow batteries use expensive rare earth metals like vanadium. This new battery is modeled on photosynthesis and uses quinones
small molecules that store energy in plants and animals. They cause a beautiful color change from yellow to red-brown during charging,
and are cheap and naturally abundant. Aziz hopes one day to store elec tricity from solar farmsithout depending on scarce, costly materials t
Japanese electronics company Ricoh says the rubber generates electricity while it stretches. When crystalline materials such as quartz and ceramics are stretched or compressed,
they generate an electric charge. That's called piezoelectricity, and it's the same force at work in this rubber--the exact identity
of which remains unknown. The rubber, which could potentially be used to power sensors, is lighter and less fragile than other piezoelectrics
while still maintaining efficiency. Ricoh claims it has conducted already everal million periodsof extensive testing on the rubber,
but it does not have an estimate as to when it might become commercially available. Beyond flexible sensors, the company is interested in using the technology to ontribute to the age of the Internet of things,
a concept that typically refers to the connection of a wide array of everyday devices--including thermostats, light bulbs,
and refrigerators--to the Internet so they can work in concert with one another and be controlled remotely
#BRAIN-CONTROLLED BIONIC LEGS ARE FINALLY HERE For a full decade, Gudmundur Olafsson was unable to move his right ankle.
That's because it wasn't there. Olafsson's amputated lower leg was delayed the casualty of an accident from his childhood in Iceland,
For years after the operation he wore a Proprio Foot, a prosthetic with a motorized, battery-powered ankle, sold by the Reykjavik-based company Ossur.
with algorithms and sensors that automatically adjust the angle of the foot during different points in its wearer's stride.
Olafsson's ankle moved on autopilot. But 14 months ago Ossur upgraded his hardware. Now, at age 48, Olafsson can move his right ankle by thinking about it.
When the electrical impulse from his brain reaches the base of his leg, a pair of sensors embedded in his muscle tissue connect the neural dots,
and wirelessly transmit that signal to the Proprio Foot. Since the command reaches the foot before the wearer's residual muscles actually contract
Ossur unveiled its implanted myoelectric sensor (IMES) technology today at an event in Copenhagen, and is now preparing large-scale clinical trials,
and many require complex surgery, such as transplanting muscle tissue or implanting electrodes in a subject's brain.
These devices look like the real thing in brief, sometimes compelling video clips. But so far, prosthetics that respond to thoughts are not so much a reality as a promise.
Ossur's sensor-linked limbs meanwhile, have stood up to the abuses of everyday activity in Iceland and England (where Olafsson now lives.
and collects data, but the limbs are theirs. And the surgery to implant the sensors was minimal.
According to Thorvaldur Ingvarsson, an orthopedic surgeon and head of R&d at Ossur, the procedure took 15 minutes,
and each sensor required a single-centimeter-long incision. The tiny sensors (3 millimeters-by-80 millimeters) are powered by magnetic coils embedded in the socket--the cushioned,
hollow component that fits over a user's residual limb, and connects to the prosthesis.
Since there are no integrated batteries to deal with, there's no need to replace the sensors
(unless they fail for other reasons). e believe this is a lifelong sensor, says Ingvarsson. Another thing that differentiates this mind-controlled prosthesis is its simplicity.
The sensors, which were provided to Ossur by the Alfred Mann Foundation, don't have to be attached to specific nerves.
That also means that tissue doesn't have to be harvested from other, more nerve-dense parts of the subject's body.
The prosthesis moves based on which sensorhe front or rearicks up an impulse in local muscle tissue.
If Olafsson moves his calf muscles, the robotic foot follows suit. t's really surreal, he says. he first time,
to be started honest, I to cry. You are moving the ankle, and I basically haven't had one in 11 years.
One major advantage of sensor-control, says Olafsson, is the way it redistributes your weight.
When climbing stairs or hills, or even standing up from a chair, he typically favored his ound leg.
This sort of activity is common, and part of the problematic morphology that comes with lower-limb amputations.
Advanced prosthetics can appear effortless, but even a subtle shift in balance can lead to serious joint and back problems over years and decades,
sensor-connected limbs could halt or reverse their deterioration. It's a reminder that despite the urge among the able-bodied to obsess over cybernetic enhancements,
bionic limbs are chiefly medical devices for now, designed to restore function. That a brain-controlled bionic leg would also promote muscle growth is stranger,
but it already works with the company's existing lineup of advanced prosthetic feet, knees and integrated legs.
#This Futuristic Concrete Heals Itself With Built-in Bacteria Concrete has been a go-to building material since Roman times.
and it fractures under the pressure. Regardless, cracked concrete is never something you want to see in a building, bridge, or street.
At best, it something you want to avoid stepping on (for your mother sake), and at worst, it a sign of a structural defect that could lead to big problems--and huge repair bills--down the road.
a microbiologist at Delft University of Technology, is working on a concrete with built-in bacteria that can fill in cracks as they form.
The powdery substances are mixed then into wet concrete before it gets poured into place. When a crack forms and water seeps in,
As a result, the bacteria excrete a hard limestone filler which fills in the crack
and prevents the water from doing more damage (such as rusting the steel bars that are present in a lot of concrete structures).
or plaster (not built into the concrete) has been around for a few years. But Jonkers and his team have brought actually the concrete out of the lab
and into the real world, using the concrete to build a self-healing lifeguard station. The building has already proved its resilience
cracking and quickly sealing its wounds. Jonkers hopes that eventually more buildings will be built with the biological concrete,
creating structures that will fix themselves instead of degrading into fixer-uppers s
#Computer Chips Can Now Be made From Wood Not quite what we had in mindthe woods are lovely, dark, deep,
and filled with potential computer components. In a paper published in Nature Communications this week,
researchers announced the construction of computer chips made from wood. But don't expect to see hipsters advertising hand-carved artisan computer chips.
The wood product that the scientists are using is called cellulose nanofibril, or CNF. It is thin, flexible,
and when a layer of epoxy is applied, it doesn't expand or attract moisture like wood normally does (think of a warped board--not something you want in a computer).
The researchers were able to use CNF as a substrate or base layer for electronic circuits in lab tests,
and they hope that their invention will be an eco-friendly solution to a growing electronic waste problem.
Wood is a renewable resource, unlike a lot of the petroleum-based alternatives that manufacturers use to build the bases of modern computer chips.
But wood has another advantage: it can degrade.""The majority of material in a chip is support.
We only use less than a couple of micrometers for everything else, "lead researcher Zhenqiang"Jack"Ma, said in a press release."
"Now the chips are so safe you can put them in the forest and fungus will degrade it.
They become as safe as fertilizer.""It will be years before computers containing wood-based computer chips hit store shelves,
but computers as fertilizer isn't a totally crazy idea. Society tends to treat electronics as disposable commodities.
But unlike a glass bottle that gets recycled or food that hits a compost heap,
once that broken laptop heads into the trashcan, it doesn't disappear. Every year, 3. 2 million tons of electronic waste are thrown out in the United states alone.
Organizations are trying to recycle the waste or mine it for valuable resources like gold,
but there's still a ton of electronics (well, a few million tons) headed for the landfill.
By changing the materials that we build electronics with, Ma, and others like him (another team is building dissolvable circuits) are trying to deal with the e waste problem at the start--long before your phone gets stepped on or your computer crashes.
Instead of waiting until they're headed to the trashcan to clean up the waste, they're tackling the problem at the very start of the supply chain n
#This Blood Scan Reveals Every Virus That Ever Infected You You probably remember when you had the chicken pox.
Maybe you recall a few times you caught the flu. But you might have had some infections that you never even realized
or that you don remember. Even if you don remember, your immune system doest has special antibodies to combat those viruses should they ever return.
Now researchers have developed a quick, inexpensive method called Virscan that can detect the viruses currently infecting a patient as well as those with
which she was infected in the past, all from a tiny sample of blood. Virscan could help researchers better understand how the body combats viruses and viruslasting effects.
The researchers published an article outlining their method today in Science. To see if a patient has ever been infected by a particular virus,
researchers expose antibodies in the patient blood to molecules with the virusmolecular signature. In the past, researchers could only check a sample for reactions of one type of antibody at a time.
But thanks to Next Generation genetic sequencing, researchers can use Virscan to look for hundreds of antibody reactions at once.
The researchers tested Virscan on samples from almost 600 individuals from the United states Thailand, Peru, and South africa.
After observing over 100 million antibody reactions, the researchers determined that most people had been exposed to about 10 viruses on average,
though a few had antibodies for 84 different viruses. Interestingly, the researchers also uncovered that the immune system sometimes deploys the same antibodies for different viruses that may look similar
or may tailor a sort of universal antibody to block a specific virus. With a bit more tweaking,
the researchers hope that Virscan can be used to quickly detect the bacteria and fungi to shed more light on the microbiome
#DNA Assembly Tech is Making The World Smallest Data storage Researchers at France's Institut Charles Sadron
and Aix-Marseille Universite have built binary data into a strand of synthetic polymer, a minuscule chain of chemical information about 60,000 times thinner than a strand of hair.
This technology promises to take the future of data storage down to nanometers in coming years,
says researcher Jean-Francois Lutz, deputy director of Institut Charles Sadron and researcher on the article published in Nature Communications.
Right now, storing one zettabyte (1 billion terabytes) takes roughly 1000 kilograms of cobalt alloy
the material used in hard drives. A zettabyte of Lutz's synthesized polymer would be about 10 grams.
The process of building a polymer is like stringing a pearl necklace. As its simplest level, digital information is coded into zeros and ones.
Researchers assigned certain chemical components called monomers to represent zero and one. To build the polymer,
it just a matter of chemically stringing those monomers together in a specific order, creating a polymer.
Scientists use a mass spectrometer, a device often used to sequence DNA, to read the data later.
The technology is still in its infancy. Lutz says that research has been underway for about two years
and right now researchers can chain just a handful of bytes of information together. But Lutz has high hopes that they will be able to process kilobytes of information in the next five years.
He looks to the recent advances in coding biological strands of DNA in a similar manner as a roadmap for how synthetic polymer technology can progress.
Researchers at Harvard Medical school and Technicolor have led the charge in storing data within DNA. DNA, instead of having two binary options,
has called four bases (identified by letters: G, A t, and C). So by reducing a digital file into binary,
and then matching that binary to a DNA bases, researchers have been able to encode 10 megabytes to a DNA sequence,
and then decode it later in a matter of hours. Harvard professor of genetics George Church previously used this DNA method to print 70 million copies of his book to DNA, fitting all that data in a drop of liquid,
and debuting the technology on The Colbert Report. Technicolor and Harvard are looking at this technique to store large quantities of media for archival purposes.
DNA can fit petabytes of information in a drop of liquid and survive more than 100,000 years in the right conditions,
so it much preferable than, say, a floppy disk. The biggest limitation right now, however, is time.
It currently takes days to encode 10mb, a tiny fraction of the size of a feature-length film,
and about eight hours to decode that same 10mb. They expect to be able to encode feature-length movies in two to three years,
Lutz, working on synthetic polymers, says that his process, while years away from being viable, is suited actually better for the task of storing data than DNA is.
NA was designed really by biology and evolution to work in biological situations, but if you want to work in nanotechnology it is a very different environment,
Lutz said. ur idea is that the chemistry can provide something that's easier to synthesize and cheaper than DNA. a
#Scientists Make Friction Disappear By Coating Diamonds With Graphene Diamonds are already one of the hardest natural substances known to science.
But combine them with graphene, and diamond nanoparticles are also incredibly slippery, which can be useful
if you want to reduce friction in a moving machine. Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory recently announced that the combination of tiny bits of diamond with the two-dimensional graphene created tiny structures that had superlubricity--meaning that the friction between them
and another object dropped to near zero. Friction is everywhere. It's the force between objects that resists motion
Friction between your feet and the floor lets you walk down the street without your feet slipping out from under you.
A Science article commenting on the new superlubricated surface mentions that"nearly one-third of a vehicle's fuel energy is spent on overcoming engine
transmission, and tire friction.""Reduce the friction, reduce the amount of fuel used. When the diamond nanoparticles came in contact with the thin sheets of graphene (carbon that's only an atom thick) the graphene rolled up around the diamond nanoparticles,
creating scroll or ball like structures. With the new graphene coating, the diamond particles could roll far more easily over a larger diamond-like surface that the researchers used as a testing ground.
It's specifically the interaction between graphene and diamond that makes the superlubricity possible right now,
but researchers hope that they can expand the property to other materials in the future. he knowledge gained from this study will be crucial in finding ways to reduce friction in everything from engines or turbines to computer hard disks and microelectromechanical systems,"nanoscientist Ani Sumant,
one of the authors of the study, said in a press release. There is just one hitch:
The nanoscale world is not slippery when wet; instead, water actually increases friction instead of decreasing it
#Now You Can 3d-Print Objects Made Of Wood Fibers From prosthetic hands to an entire bridge,
Now researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have found a way to 3d print objects from cellulose,
The resulting objects are an environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative to the metals and plastics that currently dominate 3d printing.
The researchers presented their work this week at a conference titled ew Materials From Trees.
Wee used to seeing objects and constructions made of wood, but it hasn been easy to put it in a form that can be 3d printed.
To work around this, the researchers mixed tiny fibers of cellulose in a liquid gel made of water.
The researchers tested their mixture on a 3d bioprinter, which had been used previously to make scaffolds where cells grew before being implanted in a patient.
The researchers were also able to insert carbon nanotubes into the dry object so that it could conduct electricity.
When they tested one conductive gel with the nanotubes and one without, they were able to create a 3d electrical circuit.
Found in the cell walls of plants and algae or secreted by bacteria, cellulose is a very abundant polymer. 3d printed objects made of cellulose would biodegradable
and could even capture carbon dioxide that would otherwise pollute the atmosphere. Paul Gatenholm a professor of biopolymer technology at Chalmers and one of the study authors, envisions a huge range of applications for products printed with cellulose."
"Potential applications range from sensors integrated with packaging, to textiles that convert body heat to electricity,
and wound dressings that can communicate with healthcare workers, "he says. In the future his team plans to experiment with other organic compounds derived from wood d
#Device That Helps Blind People See With Their Tongues Just Won FDA Approval Last week,
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that medical device company Wicab is allowed to market a new device that will help the blind ee.
The device, called the Brainport V100, can help the blind navigate by processing visual information and communicating it to the user through electrodes on his tongue.
Though this isn the first device to go on the market using sensory substitution (where information perceived by one sense is communicated through another),
and tongue-stimulating electrodes connected to a handheld battery-operated device. When cameras in the glasses pick up visual stimuli, software converts the information to electrical pulses sent as vibrations to be felt on the user tongue.
Like most sensory substitution devices, eeingwith your tongue may not be intuitive at first. But the researchers who developed the device tested it over the course of a year,
training users to interpret the vibrations. Studies showed that 69 percent of the test subjects were able to identify an object using the Brainport device after a year of training.
However the device is expensive; Wicab told Popular Science that it will cost $10, 000 per unit, the same as its price when first reported back in 2009.
Researchers have been fiddling withsensory substitution for a long time, but most of these devices are not yet widely available.
regulatory pathway for some low-to moderate-risk medical devices that are not substantially equivalent to an already legally-marketed device, according to the press release.
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