Sun powered cell phone chargers woven into the fabric of backpacks. A new generation of organic semiconductors may allow these kinds of flexible electronics to be manufactured at low cost,
A recent U s. Department of energy report identified one of the fundamental bottlenecks to improved solar power technologies as"determining the mechanisms by
It is one of the top most viewed articles published online this summer under the Membrane Biology affinity group, according to the editorial offices of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular biology.
3d printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury.
Advanced 3d printing methods may now be the solution. In a new study, published today in the journal Advanced Functional Materials,
and 3d printing techniques to create a custom silicone guide implanted with biochemical cues to help nerve regeneration.
researchers used a 3d scanner to reverse engineer the structure of a rat's sciatic nerve. They then used a specialized,
custom-built 3d printer to print a guide for regeneration. Incorporated into the guide were 3d printed chemical cues to promote both motor and sensory nerve regeneration.
The guide was implanted then into the rat by surgically grafting it to the cut ends of the nerve.
"This represents an important proof of concept of the 3d printing of custom nerve guides for the regeneration of complex nerve injuries,
"Someday we hope that we could have a 3d scanner and printer right at the hospital to create custom nerve guides right on site to restore nerve function."
or cadavers that hospitals could use to create closely matched 3d printed guides for patients. In addition to Mcalpine, major contributors to the research team include Blake N. Johnson, Virginia Tech;
To read more about the study entitled"3d printed Anatomical Nerve Regeneration Pathways,"visit the Advanced Functional Materials website e
will be presented at the IEEE Conference on Communications and Network security which takes place next week, September 28-30, in Florence, Italy and published as paper:
and functional materials 3d printing is revolutionizing the production of lightweight structures, soft robots and flexible electronics,
a 3d printer must be able to seamlessly transition from a flexible material that moves with your joints for wearable applications,
and properties within printed objects is the next frontier in 3d printing. Towards this objective, Harvard researchers have designed new multimaterial printheads that mix
and could pave the way for entirely 3d printed wearable devices, soft robots, and electronics. The research was led by Jennifer A. Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) and a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
Finally, they showed that conductive and resistive inks could be mixed on demand to embed electrical circuitry inside 3d printed objects."
"The recent work by the Lewis Group is a significant advancement to the field of additive manufacturing,
and Lewis."Together, these active mixing and switching printheads provide an important advance for multimaterial 3d printing,
Miao and his team plan to build on their results by studying how atoms are arranged in materials that possess magnetism or energy storage functions,
"because it shunted thermal energy directly into the deep, cold void of space. In their new paper, the researchers applied that work to improve solar array performance
"We make it smart by adding molecular tags that act like addresses to send the therapeutic payload where we want it to go."
and engineering them to release their payloads.''Proof of principle'"This was a proof-of-principle experiment so there's a lot of work to be done,
sneak in and deliver an infectious payload. The new paper describes how the Stanford team designed a viruslike particle that is only a delivery vehicle with no infectious payload.
They started with the virus that causes Hepatitis b. This virus has three layers like an egg
to carry a significant medical payload. But in practice this had proven so difficult that when Swartz floated the idea to funding agencies they said no.
After that he will add the next function--further engineering the DNA code to make sure that the protein can self-assemble around a small medicinal payload."
#Building a biofuel-boosting Swiss Army knife Researchers at Michigan State university have built a molecular Swiss Army knife that streamlines the molecular machinery of cyanobacteria,
also known as blue-green algae, making biofuels and other green chemical production from these organisms more viable. The team has done in a year
organisms that have many potential uses for making green chemicals or biofuels. The new protein replaces four gene products,
Teleportation is useful in both quantum communications and quantum computing, which offer prospects for novel capabilities such as unbreakable encryption and advanced code-breaking, respectively.
nontoxic 2d nanomaterial suspension in liquid form, such as graphene oxide, as the pressure sensing element to recognise force-induced changes.
"The researchers say the single-cell genomics they used in this study --which a consortium of researchers at UCSF are applying to diverse biological and clinical questions--could have a major impact on the emerging field of precision medicine."
#A different type of 2-D semiconductor To the growing list of two-dimensional semiconductors, such as graphene, boron nitride,
#Crucial hurdle overcome in quantum computing The significant advance, by a team at the University of New south wales (UNSW) in Sydney appears in the international journal Nature."
"We've demonstrated a two-qubit logic gate--the central building block of a quantum computer--and, significantly, done it in silicon.
"This makes the building of a quantum computer much more feasible, since it is based on the same manufacturing technology as today's computer industry,
The advance represents the final physical component needed to realise the promise of super-powerful silicon quantum computers,
0 or 1. However, a quantum bit (or'qubit')can exist in both of these states at once, a condition known as a superposition.
A qubit operation exploits this quantum weirdness by allowing many computations to be performed in parallel (a two-qubit system performs the operation on 4 values, a three-qubit system on 8, and so on."
"If quantum computers are to become a reality, the ability to conduct one-and two-qubit calculations are said essential
Dzurak, who jointly led the team in 2012 who demonstrated the first ever silicon qubit,
also reported in Nature. Until now, it had not been possible to make two quantum bits'talk'to each other
--and thereby create a logic gate--using silicon. But the UNSW team--working with Professor Kohei M. Itoh of Japan's Keio University--has done just that for the first time.
The result means that all of the physical building blocks for a silicon-based quantum computer have now been constructed successfully
and building a functioning quantum computer. A key advantage of the UNSW approach is that they have reconfigured the'transistors'that are used to define the bits in existing silicon chips,
and turned them into qubits.""The silicon chip in your smartphone or tablet already has around one billion transistors on it,
"We've morphed those silicon transistors into quantum bits by ensuring that each has only one electron associated with it.
Dzurak noted that that the team had patented recently a design for a full-scale quantum computer chip that would allow for millions of our qubits,
#Big range of behaviors for tiny graphene pores The surface of a single cell contains hundreds of tiny pores,
Now researchers at MIT have created tiny pores in single sheets of graphene that have an array of preferences and characteristics similar to those of ion channels in living cells.
Each graphene pore is less than 2 nanometers wide, making them among the smallest pores through
preferring to transport certain ions over others through the graphene layer.""What we see is that there is a lot of diversity in the transport properties of these pores,
Karnik says graphene nanopores could be useful as sensors--for instance, detecting ions of mercury, potassium, or fluoride in solution.
In the future, it may be possible to make graphene nanopores capable of sifting out trace amounts of gold ions from other metal ions, like silver and aluminum.
Karnik reasoned that graphene would be a suitable material in which to create artificial ion channels:
A sheet of graphene is an ultrathin lattice of carbon atoms that is one atom thick, so pores in graphene are defined at the atomic scale.
To create pores in graphene, the group used chemical vapor deposition, a process typically used to produce thin films.
In graphene, the process naturally creates tiny defects. The researchers used the process to generate nanometer-sized pores in various sheets of graphene,
which bore a resemblance to ultrathin Swiss cheese. The researchers then isolated individual pores by placing each graphene sheet over a layer of silicon nitride that had been punctured by an ion beam
the diameter of which is slightly smaller than the spacing between graphene pores. The group reasoned that any ions flowing through the two-layer setup would have passed likely first through a single graphene pore,
and then through the larger silicon nitride hole. The group measured flows of five different salt ions through several graphene sheet setups by applying a voltage and measuring the current flowing through the pores.
The current-voltage measurements varied widely from pore to pore, and from ion to ion, with some pores remaining stable,
while others swung back and forth in conductance--an indication that the pores were diverse in their preferences for allowing certain ions through."
"The picture that emerges is that each pore is different and that the pores are dynamic,
which--given the single-atom thickness of graphene--makes them among the smallest pores through
since completing his Phd in Molecular biology in 1997.""During my post-doc at the Max-Planck Institute in Germany,
and thus tapping into increasingly efficient solar energy conversion and new pathways for CO2 reduction. Beyond this, researchers are interested in numerous other chemical reactions.
#New graphene based inks for high-speed manufacturing of printed electronics A low-cost, high-speed method for printing graphene inks using a conventional roll-to-roll printing process,
the method allows graphene and other electrically conducting materials to be added to conventional water-based inks
the first time that graphene has been used for printing on a large-scale commercial printing press at high speed.
Graphene is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, just one atom thick. Its flexibility, optical transparency and electrical conductivity make it suitable for a wide range of applications,
widespread commercial use of graphene is yet to be realised.""We are pleased to be the first to bring graphene inks close to real-world manufacturing.
There are lots of companies that have produced graphene inks, but none of them has done it on a scale close to this,
"said Dr Tawfique Hasan of the Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC), who developed the method.""Being able to produce conductive inks that could effortlessly be used for printing at a commercial scale at a very high speed will open up all kinds of different applications for graphene and other similar materials.""
""This method will allow us to put electronic systems into entirely unexpected shapes, "said Chris Jones of Novalia."
"It's an incredibly flexible enabling technology.""Hasan's method, developed at the University's Nanoscience Centre, works by suspending tiny particles of graphene in a'carrier'solvent mixture,
which is added to conductive water-based ink formulations. The ratio of the ingredients can be adjusted to control the liquid's properties,
The same method works for materials other than graphene, including metallic, semiconducting and insulating nanoparticles. Currently, printed conductive patterns use a combination of poorly conducting carbon with other materials, most commonly silver
whereas this new graphene ink formulation would be 25 times cheaper. Additionally, silver is not recyclable,
while graphene and other carbon materials can easily be recycled. The new method uses cheap, nontoxic and environmentally friendly solvents that can be dried quickly at room temperature,
The graphene-based inks have been printed at a rate of more than 100 metres per minute, which is in line with commercial production rates for graphics printing,
Two years ago, Hasan and his colleagues produced a prototype of a transparent and flexible piano using graphene-based inks,
which required no modifications in order to print with the graphene ink. In addition to the new applications the method will open up for graphene,
it could also initiate entirely new business opportunities for commercial graphics printers, who could diversify into the electronics sector."
"In the short to medium term, the researchers hope to use their method to make printed, disposable biosensors, energy harvesters and RFID tags.
A zero-index material that fits on a chip could have exciting applications, especially in the world of quantum computing."
"It could also improve entanglement between quantum bits, as incoming waves of light are effectively spread out
"In an age of advancing science and big data, we want to look at hundreds or thousands or millions of different DNA biomarker signatures."
Holey metamaterials enhance thermal energy harvesting It's estimated that the U s. fails to use more than half of the energy it generates--mostly
For the case of optimizing thermal energy harvesting, the researchers found they could"spectrally tune"a surface to emit more radiation at 1 THZ frequency.
Simulations predict that an antenna placed near the holey surface could capture 10,000 to 100,000 times more thermal energy than an antenna in open space.
The results will also help the team calculate how rectenna thermal energy harvesting might compare to other ways of harvesting waste heat,
The lenses were enclosed then in an all-plastic, 3d printed microscope housing and objective. Once constructed, the microscope provided a field of view of 1. 2 millimeters,
The main advantage of the FF-OCT system is that it can take a 2d image of the fingerprint directly, saving time and making the data processing simpler and cheaper.
Unlike an artificial heart, the LVAD doesn't replace the heart, but it can mean the difference between life
and replace it with a total artificial heart, but this strategy does not allow for the failing heart to potentially recover,
More than 200 times more sensitive than commercially available sensors The new sensor, made of graphene
"We started by trying to understand how graphene responds under the magnetic field. We found that a bilayer structure of graphene and boron nitride displays an extremely large response with magnetic fields.
This combination can be utilised for magnetic field sensing applications.""Compared to other existing sensors, which are made commonly of silicon and indium antimonide,
Another breakthrough in this research was the discovery that mobility of the graphene multilayers can be adjusted partially by tuning the voltage across the sensor
Graphene-based magnetoresistance sensors hold immense promise over existing sensors due to their stable performance over temperature variation, eliminating the necessity for expensive wafers or temperature correction circuitry.
Production cost for graphene is also much lower than silicon and indium antimonide. Potential applications for the new sensor include the automotive industry,
#Tissue cartography Today's state-of-the-art optical microscopes produce voluminous three-dimensional data sets that are difficult to analyze.
#Energy-efficient reaction drives biofuel conversion technology A new study from the Department of energy's Oak ridge National Laboratory explains the mechanism behind a technology that converts bio-based ethanol into hydrocarbon blend
Uncovering the mechanism behind the reaction helps support the potential economic viability of ORNL's direct biofuel-to-hydrocarbon conversion approach."
is a simple 3d printed device that can pinpoint the origin of a sound without the need for any sophisticated electronics.
Biosensors experts are enthusiastic about the sensor. Ben Zhong Tang from the Hong kong University of Science and Technology particularly likes the design
and envisages that his smart strategy will generate a large array of light up biosensors with outstanding performance.
#Artificial skin Sends Touching Signals to Nerve cells Prosthetic limbs can restore an amputee ability to walk
Zhenan Bao and coworkers made the artificial skin by connecting three components: microstructured resistive pressure sensors, flexible printed organic electronic circuits,
Berkeley. t could have important implications for the development of smarter prosthetics. his is just the beginning of the path toward building fully integrated artificial skin,
The team exploits the fact that people memory skills fluctuate over time depending on variables such as how much caffeine they have consumed
and a flatpack biofuel stove. What other sustainable resources could be tapped into for similar purposes
#Anyone can help with crowdsourcing future antibiotics Wee seen examples of researchers utilizing crowdsourcing to expand their datasets,
the team opted for a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The goal is US$25, 000, but the gadget has exceeded so far US$86,
but the team says it had to balance estimated costs with a realistic crowdfunding target that wouldn deter backers by appearing too lofty.
The company decided crowdfunding was the way to go due to the platform reach. Besides the validation (and money) a successful campaign brings,
#Wearable device Slows Deadly Brain tumors, Clinical Trial Finds A wearable device that emits low-level electrical fields can slow the progression of glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer,
and extend patientslifespans, a major clinical trial at the University of Virginia School of medicine and more than 80 other institutions has found.
which computers are turned loose on huge data sets to look for patterns. To make machine-learning applications easier to build,
as officials at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced today recent technology demonstrations of swarming unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) part of the Low-cost UAV Swarming Technology (LOCUST) program.
included the launch of Coyote UAVS capable of carrying varying payloads for different missions. Another technology demonstration of nine UAVS accomplished completely autonomous UAV synchronization and formation flight.
and then, powered by solar energy, convert that carbon dioxide into valuable chemical products, including biodegradable plastics, pharmaceutical drugs and even liquid fuels.
leaves harvest solar energy and carbon dioxide is reduced and combined with water for the synthesis of molecular products that form biomass,
nanowires harvest solar energy and deliver electrons to bacteria, where carbon dioxide is reduced and combined with water for the synthesis of a variety of targeted, value-added chemical products.
With this approach, the Berkeley team achieved a solar energy conversion efficiency of up to 0. 38-percent for about 200 hours under simulated sunlight,
and exploit cotton genetic diversity by tapping into the potential of genes found in the 10,000 accessions of exotic and wild cotton plants in the ARS Cotton Germplasm Collection in College Station, Texas t
#Gamers feel the glove from Rice engineers Rice university engineering students are working to make virtual reality a little more real with their invention of a glove that allows a user to feel
press or grip objects in the virtual world. hat wee made is a glove that uses air to inflate bladders underneath your fingers,
or graphene, nanoengineers at the University of California, San diego have invented a new way of fabricating nanostructures that contain well-defined, atomic-sized gaps.
A team of Ph d. students and undergraduate researchers led by UC San diego nanoengineering professor Darren Lipomi demonstrated that the key to generating a smaller nanogap between two nanostructures involves using a graphene spacer,
Graphene is the thinnest material known: it is simply a single layer of carbon atoms and measures approximately 0. 3 nanometers (nm),
which a single layer of graphene is sandwiched between two gold metal sheets. First graphene is grown on a copper substrate,
and then layered on top with a sheet of gold metal. Because graphene sticks better to gold than to copper,
the entire graphene single-layer can be removed easily and remains intact over large areas. Compared to other techniques that are used to produce similar layered structures,
this method allows graphene to be transferred to gold film with minimal defects or contamination. his new method,
which we developed in our lab, is called metal-assisted exfoliation. This is the only way so far in
which we can place single-layer graphene between two metals and ensure that it contains no rips,
and is the first author of the study. etal-assisted exfoliation can potentially be useful for industries that use large areas of graphene.
Once the gold/graphene composite is separated from the copper substrate, the newly exposed side of the graphene layer is sandwiched with another gold sheet to produce the gold:
single-layer graphene: gold thin film. The films are sliced then into 150 nm-wide nanostructures. Finally, the structures are treated with oxygen plasma to remove graphene.
Scanning electron micrographs of the structures reveal extremely small nanogaps between the gold layers. Nanogap applications One potential application for this technology is in ultra-sensitive detection of single molecules,
particularly those that are characteristic of certain diseases. When light is shined upon structures with extremely small gaps,
Raman spectroscopic measurements of the gold nanostructures reveal that small amounts of graphene still remain between the gold layers after being treated with oxygen plasma.
This means that only the graphene exposed near the surfaces of the gold nanostructures can be removed so far.
Having graphene still in the structures is not desirable for electronic devices which require an entire gap between the structures.
In the future, the team would also like to explore ways to vary the thickness of the well-defined gap between the structures by increasing the number of graphene layers. or optical applications,
a thinner layer of spinel can give better performance than glass. or weight-sensitive platforms-UAVS unmanned autonomous vehicles, head-mounted face shieldst a game-changing technology.
a metabolic product in saliva, using disposable biosensor strips. La Belle is an assistant professor in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, one of ASU Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
#Breakthrough in 3d printing of replacement body parts QUT biofabrication team has made a major breakthrough by 3d printing mechanically reinforced,
the biomedical engineers outlined how they had reinforced soft hydrogels via a 3d printed scaffold. Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher, from QUT Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said nature often used fibre reinforcement to turn weak structures into outstanding mechanically robust ones. uch
however, the hydrogels currently available for tissue regeneration of the musculoskeletal system couldn meet the mechanical and biological requirements for successful outcomes. ur international biofabrication research team has found a way to reinforce these soft hydrogels via a 3d printed scaffold structure
he said. omputational modelling has shown that we can use these 3d printed microfibres in different hydrogels and a large range of tissue engineering applications.
Products ensuring a full coverage of the affected area prior to the earthquake were available to all scientists under the Copernicus free and open data policy,
The new Kirkpatrick-Baez Optic (KBO) diagnostic is needed to obtain high-resolution images of the ot spotsat the center of target capsules during NIF inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions,
and demonstrated that the robot was able to operate safely among a number of other autonomous vehicles,
Williams says. ou could send sea vessels which send one autonomous vehicle, but that doesn show you a lot.
Next generation Cellscope uses video, automation For this latest generation of the mobile phone microscope, named Cellscope Loa, the researchers paired a smartphone with a 3d printed plastic base where the sample of blood
season and year along with weather events and increased use of intermittent renewable energy from the sun
sensing and quantum computing. emarkable progress in cooling and trapping molecules in recent years has opened up an entirely new energy regime for studying chemical reactivity at temperatures below one micro-Kelvin,
#New biosensors for managing microbial orkersresearchers at Harvard Wyss Institute have unveiled new biosensors that enable scientists to more effectively control
Critical to this process of metabolically engineering microbes is the use of biosensors. Made of a biological component such as a fluorescent protein
biosensors act as the switches and levers that turn programmed functions on and off inside the engineered cells.
But so far, scientists have had only access to a limited variety of biosensors that have little relevance to the biomanufacturing of valuable chemicals.
The Wyss team aims to leverage the new biosensors to aid in their efforts to develop renewable chemical production strategies using genetically engineered microbes.
the biosensors can be used to trigger individual cells to give off visible fluorescence in a rate directly proportional to how well they are able to produce a desired chemical commodity.
Using the new biosensors, the most efficient microbial workers are identified easily so that they can serve as the predecessors for colonies of engineered bacteria that evolve to become more efficient at producing renewable chemicals with each subsequent generation.
or toxins and could unlock new fundamental insights into metabolic pathways. ur team is developing several different ways to make even more custom biosensors,
Cima says. excited about using these sensors to bring big data to environmental monitoring
#Researchers discover cancer markers may be visible early during human development Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute have uncovered a link between the genomes of cells originating in the neural crest
when dealing with large, often unwieldly data sets. Practical tasks like speech recognition are aided by machine learning. Machine teaching turns this concept on its ear.
#Scientists find a new way to manufacture graphene nanoribbons for future electronics There is no doubt that graphene is the key to the future of electronics.
However, in order to use graphene in high-performance semiconductor electronics ultra-narrow strips of graphene are needed and scientists have struggled to create them.
Graphene nanoribbons grown using new method have desired properties of length width and smoothness of the edge.
and so there would be less of a barrier to integrating these really excellent materials into electronics in the futurewhere graphene could be in the future,
However, to use graphene in such applications is not easy and that is why nanoribbons are needed.
Such nanoribbons can be manufactured by cutting larger sheets of graphene into ribbons. But this technique is not perfect as produced ribbons have very rough edges.
These graphene ribbons can also be produced by surface-assisted organic synthesis, where molecular precursors react on a surface to polymerize nanoribbons.
they are growing graphene in this shape via process called chemical vapour deposition. Although described as a rather simple method,
Graphene is only one atom thick material, which conducts electricity and heat with such efficiency that it is likely to revolutionize electronics.
and form graphene on surface of the germanium wafer. Team of researchers made this discovery
when they were exploring dramatically slowing the growth rate of the graphene crystals by decreasing the amount of methane in the chemical vapour deposition chamber.
Scientists found that at a very slow growth rate graphene naturally grows into long nanoribbons on a specific crystal facet of germanium
these strips of graphene have very smooth, armchair edges and can be very narrow and very long, all of
graphene grows at completely random spots on the germanium wafer. Furthermore, strips are oriented in two different directions on the surface.
So now scientists will try to find a way to control the place where graphene starts growing
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