#Ambiq Micro has made a chip that consumes 10 times less energy Ambiq Micro, a semiconductor company in Austin,
Texas, has been working for the last five years to build a lower-power chip by applying to silicon a technology that has been used in quartz wristwatches.
so in high-enough densities and manufacturing volume to make it worth the consumer electronic industry time.
On Monday, it launched its Apollo microcontroller, which can lower the power consumption of the tiny chips used inside wearable devices by as much as 10 times in wake mode
and 38 times in sleep mode depending on the type of ARM core used inside the chip.
For the consumer this means a battery life for a smart watch or activity tracker that could last for weeks or months longer than the current standard.
Ambiq manages these lower wattages by never going above a certain voltages when sending power through the chip.
Most chips send their signaling information, which determines if it is sending zeros or ones, at between 1 and 1. 8 volts,
but the Ambiq chip sends its information. 5 volts. That means it uses much less energy overall.
Ambiq has built out this technology on about $30 million in funding. It does this without requiring fancy changes in manufacturing or a new way of writing software
which means it can be designed into existing products easily. Ambiq VP of Marketing Mike Salas says he expects to see Ambiq microcontrollers in shipping products by the middle of the year.
Its microcontrollers will compete with those already on the market from Atmel, ST MICROELECTRONICS and other large chipmakers.
Salas also says that for customers of Ambiq the change in power consumption mean manufacturers can advertise longer battery life,
or they could use smaller batteries and then design smaller enclosures for their electronics. As a woman who finds almost all of the smart watches on the market today to be too large
I love to see a slightly more delicate form factor using a smaller battery and more power-efficient chip h
#Clean power is on its way for data centers as a service too Using clean energy to power data centers is becoming increasingly commonplace,
and it not just the huge Internet companies like Apple, Google and Facebook that are doing this with their own infrastructure.
Colocation centers, which provide data center space as a service, are beginning to offer clean energy options, too.
On Thursday Phoenix, Arizona-based data center service provider IO announced that customers purchasing data center space in the company Arizona facility can buy 100 percent clean energy, at an incremental cost increase
through a new deal with Arizona utility Arizona Public service. IO President Anthony Wanger said that the new offering came
as a result of clear call by our customers to use cost-effective clean energy to power their data centers.
Arizona, like Nevada and California, is a strong solar state, and it has a mandate to deliver 15 percent of its electricity from clean energy by 2025.
APS has contracted to buy all of the 280 MW of solar energy from the Solana solar thermal plant 70 miles southwest of Phoenix. That could provide enough solar electricity for 70
000 average homes. APS is interested also in owning solar roofs in its territory, but has acted rather controversially in the past
when it comes to the residential solar panel industry. As clean energy options get cheaper starting with large utility solar farms,
and wind farms more companies that offer colocation and cloud services will be able to afford to offer clean energy options to customers.
While Amazon has been one of the quietest on this front, it has committed more recently to 100 percent clean energy,
starting with using wind to power a data center in Indiana. Wind is the cheapest clean energy option
but is only available at scale in certain areas of the U s. Recently IO decided to split itself into two companies,
one with the name IO that will continue to sell data center services, and the other called Baselayer that will sell data center container solutions.
The move is meant to provide more runway as the company works toward an exit, after it filed a planned IPO
#Engineers have created a smartphone HIV test that costs $35 to make Let s be honest: Smartphones aren thought#t necessarily of as devices that help to slow the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
In fact research has found that transmission rates go up when hookup sites#even ones on the tamer end like Craigslist#come to town.
But smartphones are also capable of transforming into competitive diagnostic tools as a team of biomedical engineers out of Columbia University is showing with their new attachment that can detect both HIV and syphilis in a single 15-minute test.
The dongle as the team writes in the journal Science Translational Medicine costs just $34 to make (an amount that could drop further if mass produced.
It uses the phone#s power and data collection and incorporates simple optics and fluid control to process a finger prick of blood.
While paper-based options for home testing do exist and work much in the way that a home pregnancy test does they are not nearly as sensitive
and thus reliable as those that perform the current gold standard what is called an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
This test looks for either how much of an antibody is contained within the sample or how much protein is bound by an antibody;
if HIV positive antibodies to HIV bind to the antigens on the plate. For this test the team was able to perform an objective read-out similar to an ELISA assay but without the spending the typical $18450 equipment cost involved.
And the dongle is small and light enough to fit in the palm of one#s hand making its use in remote or mobile clinics far more practical.
To whittle the device#s power consumption down#especially since electricity might be a limiting factor in parts of the world where this kind of quick accurate testing could be especially helpful#the team devised a#one-push vacuum#in place of an electrical pump;
instead the end user pushes against a negative-pressure chamber to move the sequence of reagents onto the cassette.
They say it requires minimal training and no routine maintenance. What#s more they were able to use the audio jack for both power
and data transmission enabling the dongle to connect to a range of devices (i e. both iphones and Android phones) thanks to the compatibility of the jacks themselves.
So the achievement isn#t so much in the test itself as it is in the components used to run that test simply and efficiently.
It means that similar tests screening for other diseases may be just around the corner.##Our work shows that a full laboratory-quality immunoassay can be run on a smartphone accessory#one researcher said#in the school news release.#
#Coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones.
This kind of capability can transform how health care services are delivered around the world.##The device certainly has the potential to help slow the spread of HIV around the world.
Early detection is helpful for instance in pregnant women; the sooner they start taking antiretroviral meds the less likely they are to pass the disease to their babies.
This is why HIV screening is common in all pregnant woman across the US. The CDC reports that the risk of transmission to the fetus can be reduced to 1 percent
when meds are taken as recommended.##It has huge implications#Karen Lightman executive director of the trade association MEMS Industry Group told me.#
#We are on the cusp of a lot of exciting technology being connected to smartphone devices. But security ramping up volume price all those things are really important.#
#One potential roadblock is that when it comes to STDS and HIV in particular cultural stigmas easily run the show.
Lightman points out that in the US if someone has a one-night stand and is freaked out
#but doesn#t want to go to a clinic $34 is a small price to pay for peace of mind.
so while more testing may become available in rural clinics the dongle isn#t necessarily going to mitigate#the nervousness one might feel about walking through a clinic#s doors.
while smartphones are still rare in many parts of the emerging and developing world cell phones are#ubiquitous.#
#Meanwhile in Lebanon Chile Jordan China Argentina South africa Malaysia and Venezuela at least one in three people now own a smartphone.
The team reports that it took just 30 minutes of training to fully familiarize health care workers with how to use the device
and tests for more than one disease. This kind of development is about to be the new norm as diagnostic tools begin to be compatible with our portable devices as well as capable of spitting out results screening for multiple infectious diseases in just minutes.
The key is being competitive with the most accurate tests; especially when it comes to highly-stigmatized STDS false positive
#Autodesk is now selling an open-source 3d printer Autodesk first foray into hardware is here: The Ember 3d printer is now available for anyone to order.
At $5, 995, the printer isn exactly a steal. Autodesk more so built it to be the perfect exhibitor for its open-source Spark 3d printing software,
which is currently in beta. People married to Autodesk suite of software might find that pairing of interest,
but the greater 3d printing industry might buy Ember because Autodesk plans to release exactly how it is built
and operates. Makerbot, the best known desktop 3d printer brand, gave rise to an entire class of printers
because its first machines were similarly open source. Ember could do the same for a different desktop technology.
I had the chance to see Ember in action at Autodesk Pier 9 manufacturing space in San francisco. It a digital light processing machine,
which means it uses a projector similar to those found in those bulky classroom machines.
Light hits a shallow tank of liquid plastic and cures it one layer at a time, slowly building up an entire 3d object.
Unlike most desktop machines, which print layers of melted plastic that then hardens, DLP machines print upside down.
The printed object base adheres to a flat metal sheet that slowly raises out of the tank of liquid.
The platform raises slightly between each layer to separate the already-printed layers from the liquid
a necessary step in DLP printing. The Ember printer handles that last step in an unusual way.
The tank is shaped like a cashew; a half-instead of the square shape used by every other DLP printer.
After each layer is printed, the print platform raises slightly and the tank whips around the curve of the machine before returning to its home position.
Autodesk chose the unusual tank design because it requires the machine to use a lot less force, according to Autodesk 3d printing research scientist Andreas Bastian.
Each time the projector cures a layer, it creates a huge amount of suction between the 3d printed object and the bottom of the resin tank.
Bastian likened Ember system to removing a suction cup from a window by sliding it across the surface instead of pulling directly up.
He said that has added the benefit of exerting less force on the 3d printed object, making it easier to print delicate structures that can take a lot of strain.
The Ember is expected to ship by Mid-march, pending approval from the FCC. Autodesk has yet to release the actual open-source documentation for the machine,
or even footage that shows that goofy tank in action, but my personal run-in with the printer at Pier 9 was welcome confirmation that Ember really exists,
and really works l
#How can a baby have three parents? Lasers software and a joystick After spending several years interviewing scientists
and holding public forums to debate ethics and air concerns, the U k. lower house of Parliament this week voted to allow babies to be born with three genetic parents.
While some call it a perversion, the procedure has nothing at all to do with kinky sex. Rather, it a highly advanced single-cell micro-surgery, replete with cutting-edge lasers and imaging software and, yes, even a joystick,
whereby a small number of skilled geneticists is able to remove the nucleus of a donor woman egg (the part that plays host to some 25,
000 genes) from its surrounding cytoplasm (in which reside 37 genes) and insert the intended mother nucleus in its place. t is a highly technological procedure that we couldn do 10 years ago, Shoukhrat Mitalipov,
the geneticist who pioneered the technique, told me from his office at Oregon Health and Sciences University just outside Portland. his procedure uses a very high-tech imaging system microscopes, lasers,
you name it. It actually looks like a Play station 4. The nuclear DNA from a patient egg carrying MITOCHONDRIAL DNA mutations is removed
and transplanted into an egg donated by a healthy donor which has had also its nuclear DNA removed.
The reconstructed egg cell (oocyte) is fertilized then with the partner's sperm and an embryo is transferred to a patient.
The baby will be free of risk from maternal mitochondrial mutations, but yet the biological child of the parents.
OHSU The resulting egg can then be fertilized with the intended father sperm using traditional in vitro fertilization,
and an embryo is born. o then the child born will have 99.9 percent DNA from the parents,
also called mitochondrial gene replacement therapy, is not to tweak the physical characteristics or personality traits of a child those reside in the nucleus,
& Energy with the Gigaom newsletter Subscribe Because when MITOCHONDRIAL DNA fail to provide energy to our cells,
dozens and possibly hundreds of diseases can result, causing a wide range of problems that include extreme fatigue, dementia, stunted growth, deafness, blindness, multi-organ failure, and even death.
It a newly-discovered category of diseases, most of which have only been characterized in the past decade, and a growing number of geneticists is now exploring the role of misbehaving mitochondria in basic aging.)
The US United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation and 10 other similar groups from around the world described the condition in an open letter to Parliament as nimaginably cruel. t strips our children of the skills they have learned,
inflicts pain that cannot be managed, and tires their organs one by one until their little bodies cannot go on any more,
wrote the group, which includes many parents of children who have (or who have died from) mitochondrial diseases.
Dr. Gillian Lockwood, a reproductive ethicist, told the BBC that this week vote amounts to a mall changein the legislation. he biggest problem is that this has been described as 3-parent IVF
she said. n fact it is 2. 001-parent IVF. Less than a tenth of 1%of the genome is actually going to be affected.
It is not part of what makes us genetically who we are. It doesn affect height,
eye colour, intelligence, musicality. t a revolutionary way of preventing these diseases, and wee ready after extensive animal testing.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Oregon Health and Sciences University For years Mitalipov has been working on this procedure so that mothers with faulty mitochondria (typically known to be faulty
because theye had children with mitochondrial diseases) can have babies with healthy mitochondria instead, even if that part of the egg must be donated.
He successfully performed the procedure on mice and monkeys, and five rhesus macaques are alive and healthy today because of it.
Dr. Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the California-based Center for Genetics and Society, in an open letter. nder the proposed arrangement,
but would permit clinics to begin offering a risky and experimental fertility procedure. Mitalipov counters that the UK vote to permit select clinics to offer the procedure is in reality a clinical trial
and that performing the technique on actual volunteer women is the only way to know
if the procedure is effective and safe in humans. t a revolutionary way of preventing these diseases,
Chances are the weather data you use to determine the answer comes from the roughly 20 satellites orbiting Earth that monitor weather systems.
their data isn always enough to produce a reliable forecast. Spire, a San francisco startup that is currently testing a small group of shoebox-sized satellites,
will announce Thursday that it will put its soon-to-launch fleet of commercial satellites to work collecting an unprecedented amount of weather data.
With more satellites, the experience will be more akin to pulling up Google maps on a mobile device.
The sensors are attached to satellites designed to only last a few years. There are so many that if one fails it doesn take down the entire system,
Big players like Spacex and Google are looking at satellite-based internet. Spire is the first to name weather as a major part of its business plan. e are just unwilling to accept that the way people think about the weather is just the way it is said,
#Biolite low-emission camping stove creates its own electricity Consider the humble camping stove. It requires fuel-perhaps some unwieldy bottle that air carriers object strongly to.
Maybe it needs batteries to run a fan, or billows out smoke so you smell like smoked sweatshirt for the rest of the trip.
The solution might be the Biolite stove-it's a collapsible wood-burning cook stove that uses almost any forest-found fuel
and converts its own heat energy into electricity to achieve efficient combustion with ultra-low emissions.
Fuel Since the Biolite will burn almost any biomass fuel; from wood, pine cones, leaves, pellets, rice husks, even dung, it means fuel need not be carried,
unlike bottles for petroleum or gas burners that cannot be carried on airplanes and must be sourced at destination.
The Biolite power pack captures wasted heat energy from the fire and converts it to electricity via a thermoelectric generator (TEG.
The Biolite stove is a collapsible wood-burning cook stove that uses almost any forest-fou...
and the vent open to allow oxygen flow before the fire is started using whatever forest fuels are available.
Dry leaves or starter material are placed near the heat pipe within the chamber which will collect heat
and convert it to electricity to drive the fan. The oxygen added from the chamber pores gives a clean
as rapidly as a jet boil or reactor flame. Despite this the stove exterior remains cool to the touch
or by swilling the coals in any remaining cooking water and pouring into a small hole nearby.
Benefits There are no batteries and no moving parts to break and since the TEG is made from solid state semiconductor elements,
it should be good for more than twenty years of service. The addition of oxygen means wood consumption is reduced by half,
but could also benefit a diverse array of people living without electricity-from hikers and hunters, to backpackers and festival-goers,
and hope it will be available to purchase at an affordable price soon. Biolite have pledged to commit a portion of sales from the camp stoves to support clean wood burning projects in the developing world.
PBS covered an India stove trial initiative that aims to cut the air pollution from traditional wood
and monitoring the drop in air pollution and respiratory irritation in the next two years. Additionally the company is working with the Aprovecho Research center,
Biolite won top prize in the Vodafone Innovation Project recently, as well as first prize for the design with the lowest emissions at the ETHOS conference,
when designing nuclear reactors is finding materials that can withstand the massive temperatures, radiation, physical stress and corrosive conditions of these extreme environments.
Exposure to high radiation alone produces significant damage at the nanoscale, so scientists at Los alamos National Laboratory, New mexico, have been working on a mechanism that allows nanocrystalline materials to heal themselves after suffering radiation-induced damage.
This gives hope for materials that will improve the reliability, safety and lifespan of nuclear energy systems.
Radiation can cause individual atoms or groups of atoms to be jarred out of place, leaving behind an empty space known as a vacancy.
The nanocrystalline materials the scientists have been working on are created those from nanosized particles, in this case from copper.
Nanocrystalline materials comprise a mixture of grains and the interface between those grains, called grain boundaries.
Nanocrystalline materials contain a large amount of grain boundaries which are thought to be able to absorb
But until conducting recent computer simulations, scientists lacked the ability to predict the performance of nanocrystalline materials in extreme environments.
the researchers describe a newly discovered oading-unloadingphenomenon at grain boundaries in nanocrystalline materials, which allows for effective self-healing of radiation-induced defects.
Using three different computer simulation methods the researchers studied the interaction between defects and grain boundaries on time scales ranging from picoseconds to microseconds (one-trillionth of a second to one-millionth of a second).
The healing process does require some energy to operate but at lower levels than conventional mechanisms.
or accelerate the design of highly radiation-tolerant materials for the next generation of nuclear energy applications.
Xian-Ming Bai, Richard G. Hoagland and Blas P. Uberuaga of the Materials science and Technology Division;
#Humancar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers At first glance it might look a bit like an elongated pedal car for kids,
The vehicle converts the rowing motion of the driver and any passengers into rotational thrust to charge a battery and power the vehicle in conjunction with an electric motor.
So not only is it healthy for the planet it is healthy for the occupants too.
And as an added bonus the vehicle can also be used store energy and act as a backup power generator to provide electricity to the home.
The Body Steering driver's seat of the Humancarrow, row, row your car...Humancar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers History The Humancar is the brainchild of Chief Scientist/Engineer Charles Samuel Greenwood P. E.,who first hit upon the idea for a human
powered car some 40 years ago. Sitting in a traffic jam in Silicon valley in 1968 Greenwood noticed the many overweight commuters sitting in their cars breathing in noxious exhaust fumes.
He was inspired to create a modest modification to vehicles that would reduce the need for conventional fuel,
while at the same time providing exercise. Searching for a full-body workout Greenwood eschewed a bicycle-type mechanism in favor of the rowing-like mechanism
and developed the forerunner to the Impulse PS, the FM-4 (Fully Manual 4 people.
This was a research keletoncar that was built to test the concept of a human powered vehicle
and the lessons it provided eventually led to the development of the Impulse PS (Power station).
Humancar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers NEV The innovative vehicle is dubbed an NEV because it falls into the U s. Department of transportation Neighborhood Electric vehicle (NEV) classification for low speed vehicles.
So although the Humancar is capable of reaching speeds of around 62 mph (100 km h) it is limited to 25 mph (around 40 km h) to comply with the classification.
The car includes seating for four, with rowing handlebars for each passenger. It can be powered by one, two, three or four people, the battery-powered electric motor,
or any combination of human and electric power. The battery can also be charged via a standard electrical outlet
if you feel youe had your quota of exercise for the day. To make the most out of the power generated the vehicle also incorporates a regenerative braking system
and an advanced power system to enhance overall efficiency. Because steering using the rowing handles would be too difficult to control the vehicle is steered by"Body Steering"(read leaning into turns.
According to Chuck Greenwood, Humancar Inc. CEO and son of Charles Greenwood, this is apparently much more intuitive (not to mention more fun) than using a conventional steering wheel.
The Body Steering driver's seat of the Humancar The vehicle custom CPU operates off trigger buttons on the center brake handle to engage functions such as regenerative power,
power up and cruise control. Other available features include a human/machine interface (HMI) touch-screen display with GPS and biometric data logging, ipod integrated sound systems,
and Bluetooth compatible onboard computing/communications devices. The vehicle is suited especially to generate the power required to operate these devices.
An all-weather foldout ragtop roof is also available for commuting in the rain. Team Building With much of the interest in the Humancar focusing on the environmental and physical health advantages of the car,
it easy to overlook one of the side benefits the social aspect. According to its developers the car engenders feelings of teamwork and social bonding amongst the occupants.
After all, there nothing like working together to forge some team spirit. And although that no doubt true when trips in the Humancar are still a novelty,
I can help imagining arguments emanating from the back seats on family outings with one sibling blaming another for not pulling their weight but maybe that just my family.
Universal Appeal Key to the Humancar concept is the chassis itself which has been designed to adapt as technology evolves.
The universal design of the chassis means it can use many different power systems and batteries,
controls and motors and all these components can be upgraded without needing to replace the entire vehicle.
In the near future the company also plans to integrate proximity braking systems and multi-stage airbags into production units.
And as features such as park assist and crash control become more"off the shelf"they will also be integrated.
Versions that employ ore traditional operator inputsare also in development. Electricity generation The Humancar isn just a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle either.
It can also function as an exercise-based human electric power station or in vehicle-to-grid (V2g) mode to feed electricity back into the grid.
A report on CNN showed four people rowing for a couple of minutes generated enough electricity to power a PC for well over an hour.
So if you don need to go anywhere you can jump in the car for some exercise that will generate electricity for your home
or to be fed back into the grid. DUET GEN Home Power Generator The company is also taking this idea further by planning to release a home power generator product called the DUET GEN. This is a two-person unit that is also modular to fit the chassis
system used in the Humancar vehicle and is small enough to fold up and fit in a large suitcase.
The device is perfect for anyone wanting a way to get fit and help the environment
but aren yet willing or able to take the full plunge on the Humancar vehicle.
Already the company has received more than 200 orders for the current Imagine, which are currently being produced as pure research/exotics with a price of US$75, 000.
Full commercial production of the Imagine PS will begin once the break even point of around 800 orders are reached,
which looks to be sometime this year. The vehicles will be priced at US$15 500 each. For the moment the Humancar is limited to non-highway or eighborhoodroads,
but there are higher performance versions under development that are planned for highway travel. There no doubt that in the race for green power the human body has been overlooked in favor of alternative fuel sources such as biofuels, hydrogen etc.
But the human body is a veritable powerhouse that so many of us under utilize as our expanding waistlines will attest to.
With the majority of car trips people make falling into the short, local variety the Impulse PS could well be a viable,
reasonably priced alternative that not only helps the planet, but helps the health of its occupants too.
For more info, or to place an order head to Humancar's website
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