#Scientists teach robot to learn new skills via trial and error Scientists at University of California, Berkeley have taught robots to learn.
New technique, called eep learning is a system of algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error.
It is very similar concept to how humans learn behaviours and get to know how things work around them in early childhood.
It is called already a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence. Scientists posing with robot they nicknamed BRETT.
It is a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence as this is robot that can learn by itself
such as dynamic energy harvesting or responsive optical materials. DNA-directed rearrangementthis latest advance in nanoscale engineering builds on the team previous work developing ways to get nanoparticles to self-assemble into complex composite arrays,
#Taking remote control of your electricity Householders may soon be able to keep real-time track of their electricity usage
and in conjunction with Ergon Energy Retail in regional Queensland. Using an online interface on a computer,
smartphone or tablet Eddy keeps track of electricity use, collects and analyses the data, and makes recommendations to help users save money.
To reduce demand on the grid during peak periods, users can also take part in demand management programs offered by their energy company
and receive rewards in return, such as discounts on their energy bill. his unique tool is all about giving people more control over their energy
and helping them to save money, CSIRO Research Leader Glenn Platt said. sing a simple online dashboard,
people can see how their energy use is tracking and make adjustments to reduce costs. he tool really highlights how easy it is for people to make big savings on their energy bill without impacting on their lifestyle. y viewing
when their home is exporting excess energy to the grid, households with solar PV systems can save additional money by programming their system to run certain appliances
when the sun is shining. ith the option of taking part in demand management schemes, the system can also reward households for using less electricity during peak energy periods.
The technology was developed at CSIRO energy centre in Newcastle, where scientists are working with some of the most sophisticated energy technology found anywhere in the world.
The system uses cloud-based software and mini smart meters that look just like the regular circuit breakers found in your meter box.
The smart meters connect to the cloud via a small internet communication device in the house.
The technology is sophisticated based on CSIRO Energy management system, which has also been adapted for use on King Island Smart grid. e want to give households an energy management tool that is simple to use
and unlocks lasting benefits, Habidapt CEO Stephen Kubicki said. ddy gives households control over their energy
and saves them money. s well as giving households tools to understand and manage their energy,
Eddy lets people participate in the energy market by reducing peak demand in ways that, until now, have only been available to large-scale commercial consumers.
Habidapt is currently trialling the technology in homes with solar PV systems in Perth and is also rolling the system out with Ergon Energy in Townsville,
where it is being offered to customers as omesmart e
#Scientists discover key to what causes immune cell migration to wounds Immune cells play an important role in the upkeep
Superconductors are used for many applications including in magnetic resonance imaging devices and for magnetic energy storage. The basis for all superconductors is the formation of electron pairs.
Propelling the electrons in silicene requires minimal energy input, which means reducing power and cooling requirements for electronic devices. f silicene could be used to build electronic devices,
so it can be integrated it into ultra-small renewable energy devices, such as solar cells, data storage hardware and advancing quantum computing. uow195685 o one in the scientific community believed silicene paper could be made
the same design principles could be used to modify materials using other stimuli such as through application of an electric charge,
#An origami battery that generates power from bacteria An engineer at Binghamton University has created a flexible, origami-style battery.
A battery that can create energy from a drop of bacteria-containing liquid is already a fantastic achievement,
bacteria-powered battery made from paper. Just like origami sculptures. This device is not a conventional battery we all know and use.
It generates power from microbial respiration. To explain simply, it extracts power from bacteria the process delivers enough energy to run a paper-based biosensor with nothing more than a drop of bacteria-containing liquid.
The inventor himself said that ny type of organic material can be the source of bacteria for the bacterial metabolism This is great news,
Scientists hope that these new batteries would eliminate such need. Seokheun Choi has envisioned a self-powered system in
which a paper-based battery would create enough energy to run the biosensor. Such sensors do not require a lot of power few microwatts would be enough.
This paper battery costs around 5 U s. dollar cents. Only 5 cents costing device that is so innovative that can produce power from dirty water would seem as science fiction some time ago,
Such simple and cost effective device could change how we look at batteries for variety of different sensors.
However, more research will have to be done until the origami battery will find its practical application. Source:
These challenges have now been met with a new technique developed by researchers at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI
and the BP energy company. ee combined chemical catalysis with life-cycle greenhouse gas modeling to create a new process for producing bio-based aviation fuel as well as automotive lubricant base oils,
a chemical engineer with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. he recyclable catalysts we developed are capable of converting sugarcane biomass into a new class of aviation fuel and lubricants with superior cold
and lubricants from biomass optimized using life-cycle greenhouse gas assessment. Corinne Scown, a research scientist with Berkeley Lab Energy Analysis and Environmental impacts Division,
and Dean Toste, a chemist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, are the other two corresponding authors.
Biofuels synthesized from the sugars in plant biomass help mitigate climate change. However jet fuels have stringent requirements that must be met. et fuels must be oxygen-free,
because batteries and fuel cells simply aren practical. The process developed at EBI can be used to selectively upgrade alkyl methyl ketones derived from sugarcane biomass into trimer condensates with better than 95-percent yields.
These condensates are deoxygenated then hydro into a new class of cycloalkane compounds that contain a cyclohexane ring and a quaternary carbon atom.
sugar and electricity, says PNAS paper co-author Gokhale, a chemical engineer, who is managing the research project from BP side. xpanding the product slate to include aviation fuels
The rest of the waste biomass can be combusted to produce process heat and electricity to operate the refinery.
This new EBI process for making jet fuel and lubricants could also be used to make diesel
the strategy behind the process could also be applied to biomass from other non-food plants
and agricultural waste that are fermented by genetically engineered microbes. lthough there are some additional technical challenges associated with using sugars derived entirely from biomass feedstocks like Miscanthus
In contrast to the massive and energy-intensive industrial process currently used to separate rare earths, the Penn team method works nearly instantaneously at room temperature and uses standard laboratory equipment.
Connor A. Lippincott, an undergraduate student in the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research, and Patrick J. Carroll, director of the University of Pennsylvania X-ray Crystallography Facility, also contributed to the study.
whereas the neodymium magnet in a wind turbine generator only has two. Currently, whether purifying the neodymium and dysprosium out of minerals or out of an old power tool motor
the same costly and energy-intensive process is used. The technique, known as liquid-liquid extraction, involves dissolving the composite material
#UCLA chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
UCLA Chemistrythe new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
and keeping positive and negative charges separated, Tolbert said. hat separation is the key to making the process so efficient. o capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material.
There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics, rather than silicon,
but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. he two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
the process generates electrical energy. The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
But this arrangement makes it difficult to get current out of the cell because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti
Schwartz said. o there no additional work. he researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells.
#Access to electricity and artificial light shortened time of our sleep Science knows that nowadays people tend to sleep less than they used to before modern times.
and electricity has shortened the amount of sleep humans get each night. Lead author Horacio de la Iglesia, said verything we found feeds
but differ in one key aspect access to electricity. They wanted to see if such simple factor of electricity and artificial light could lead to a smaller amount of sleep during an average week in both the summer and winter.
Scientists found these two groups in Argentina. One has a 24hour access to free electricity
and can turn on the light at any desired time, while another relies only on natural sunlight.
The community that had access to electricity slept about an hour less than their counterparts with no electricity.
when electricity became available. However because both of these groups, despite one having electricity, still live in very primitive conditions.
This must mean that with our access to electricity and technology the impact on our sleep habits is even greater.
Scientists, of course, could not watch people sleep and observe their sleeping habits directly. So they used technology.
Now scientists are thinking about ways to expand the research to get more information about links between electricity and sleep patterns in such communities.
whether the later sleep onset and reduced sleep in the community with electricity is due to a shift in the biological clock by measuring melatonin levels in the two communities.
#New manufacturing approach slices lithium-ion battery cost in half An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24m,
promises to significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable batteries while also improving their performance
says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a cofounder of 24m (and previously a cofounder of battery company A123).
The existing process for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, he says, has changed hardly in the two decades
In this so-called low battery, the electrodes are suspensions of tiny particles carried by a liquid
and pumped through various compartments of the battery. The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones:
In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles.
Chiang and Carter refer to this as a emisolid battery. Simpler manufacturing process This approach greatly simplifies manufacturing,
and also makes batteries that are flexible and resistant to damage, says Chiang, who is senior author of a paper in the Journal of Power Sources analyzing the tradeoffs involved in choosing between solid
and flow-type batteries, depending on their particular applications and chemical components. This analysis demonstrates that
while a flow battery system is appropriate for battery chemistries with a low energy density (those that can only store a limited amount of energy for a given weight),
for high-energy density devices such as lithium-ion batteries, the extra complexity and components of a flow system would add unnecessary extra cost.
Almost immediately after publishing the earlier research on the flow battery, Chiang says, e realized that a better way to make use of this flowable electrode technology was to reinvent the lithium ion manufacturing process.
thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent.
Bendable and foldable In addition to streamlining manufacturing enough to cut battery costs by half, Chiang says,
the new system produces a battery that is more flexible and resilient. While conventional lithium-ion batteries are composed of brittle electrodes that can crack under stress,
the new formulation produces battery cells that can be bent, folded or even penetrated by bullets without failing.
This should improve both safety and durability, he says. The company has made so far about 10,000 batteries on its prototype assembly lines, most
of which are undergoing testing by three industrial partners, including an oil company in Thailand and Japanese heavy-equipment manufacturer IHI Corp. The process has received eight patents
The company is initially focusing on grid-scale installations, used to help smooth out power loads
By 2020, Chiang estimates that 24m will be able to produce batteries for less than $100 per kilowatt-hour of capacity.
when is it better to build a flow battery versus a static model. This paper will serve as a key tool for making design choices
Viswanathan adds that 24m new battery design ould do the same sort of disruption to lithium ion batteries manufacturing as
The nanowires respond to an electromagnetic field generated by a separate device, which can be used to control the release of a preloaded drug.
a conductive polymer material that responds to electromagnetic fields. Wen Gao, a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Paralysis Research who worked on the project with Borgens,
when the correct electromagnetic field is applied, the nanowires release small amounts of the payload. This process can be started
by using the corresponding electromagnetic field stimulating device, Borgens said. The researchers captured and transported a patch of the nanowire carpet on water droplets that were used used to deliver it to the site of injury.
The magnitude and wave form of the electromagnetic field must be tuned to obtain the optimum release of the drug
The electromagnetic field is likely affecting the interaction between the nanomaterial and the drug molecules, Borgens said. e think it is a combination of charge effects
Once the electromagnetic field is removed, the polymer snaps back to the initial architecture and retains the remaining drug molecules
. or each different drug the team would need to find the corresponding optimal electromagnetic field for its release,
Functional Drug Delivery Using Electromagnetic field-Responsive Polypyrrole Nanowires, was published in the journal Langmuir. Other team members involved in the research include John Cirillo,
who designed and constructed the electromagnetic field stimulating system; Youngnam Cho, a former faculty member at Purdue Center for Paralysis Research;
and an electromagnetic field was applied for two hours a day for one week. By the end of the week the treated mice had a weaker GFAP signal than the control groups,
but were exposed not to the electromagnetic field. In some cases, treated mice had no detectable GFAP signal.
and energy harvesting devices could be transformed by the unique properties of graphene. The extremely cost efficient procedure that we have developed for preparing graphene is of vital importance for the quick industrial exploitation of graphene.
At just one atom thick, graphene is the thinnest substance capable of conducting electricity. It is very flexible
reactive material system capable of performing computations without external energy inputs, amplification or computer mediation. Their research, Achieving synchronization with active hybrid materials:
Chemical computing systems are limited by both the lack of an internal power system and the rate of diffusion as the chemical waves spread throughout the system,
because these movements are driven not by energy from metabolic processes but solely by physical mechanisms. From a biological point of view, there no other way to achieve this.
as the latter would require significantly more energy. When the air or fluid pressure inside the cells was increased
#New nanogenerators collect friction energy from rolling tires Team of engineers from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a collaborator from China have developed a new nanogenerator that is able to generate power from friction created by rolling
In the future such technology could help harvest otherwise wasted energy to squeeze just that extra bit of efficiency out of cars and other vehicles.
The nanogenerator harvests the wasted tire friction energy by relying on the triboelectric effect. It is the electric charge that results from the contact or rubbing together of two dissimilar objects.
The generator harnesses energy from the changing electric potential between the pavement and a vehicle wheels.
Scientists said that it could become a very useful way to use the energy that is usually wasted due to friction taking advantage of this lost energy would improve efficiency,
which is a major goal in today automotive industry. Professor Xudong Wang, one of the authors of the study, noted that he friction between the tire
since that energy is wasted simply, f we can convert that energy, it could give us very good improvement in fuel efficiency Improving fuel efficiency would benefit everyone it would help automotive industry meet new strict regulations for emissions,
make traveling just that little bit cheaper and would improve energy efficiency which would benefit environmental causes as well.
The technology is depending on an electrode integrated into a segment of the tire. When it comes into contact with the ground,
the friction between those two surfaces ultimately produces an electrical charge-a type of contact electrification known as the triboelectric effect.
The friction was strong enough for the electrodes to harvest enough energy to power the lights,
which means that scientists confirmed the idea that wasted friction energy can be collected and reused.
Engineers also determined that the amount of energy harnessed is directly related to the weight of a car
It means that different vehicles would waste different amounts of energy and different percentage of it could be saved using this method.
However, scientists estimated that fuel efficiency could be improved by as much as 10%,given 50%friction energy conversion efficiency.
This is always largely about collecting wasted energy. That is why this technology has a huge potential
in addition to their elementary electric charge. Just as conventional transistors have a source of electrons, a gate to control their movement,
become randomized) and lose their information during transport, unlike electric charges. Compared to manipulating populations of moving electrons through a conventional semiconductor,
controlling electron spins consumes much less energy and has the further advantage that its information content is on-volatile
when the electricity is turned off. Spintronic devices made of inorganic materials are used today for read heads on hard disk drives
and energy band alignment of the materials differently depending on the SAM being studied. In a critical finding, the data imply that the SAMS reduced the molecular hybridization between Co and Alq3,
Brandt-Pearce said. e can transmit more data without using any additional energy. As more light fixtures get replaced with LED LIGHTS,
Their breakthrough means that data can be transmitted faster with light waves using no more energy than is required already to run the lights.
and has gotten some funding from a federal Small Business Innovation Research program through the Federal department of Energy.
energy saving solution and can provide a high-speed secure network connection for a large number of users.
Noshad said. t will offer a huge energy saving for the nation since energy is used already for lighting,
and thus does need not to be expended for communications. Noshad said that some experts have forecast the LED communications market at $6 billion by 2020. here are people working on it in Asia and Europe,
simulations of water flow in carbon nanotubes could only be carried out under unrealistically high flow-rate conditions says the Director of CNMM, Quanshui Zheng. hanks to World Community Grid,
and energy conversion using salinity gradients. They can shed new light on the fundamental processes occurring in the nanoscale biological pores that funnel essential ingredients into cells. e also developed some key data processing methods
Ultimately this will help design new carbon nanotube based membranes for water filtration with reduced energy consumption. rowd-sourced computing power was essential to the success of our project.
I believe that crowd-sourced computing will enable more important scientific advances in cancer treatment and clean energy, for example in the future,
and a member of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute, operated jointly by UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab. he microphone and loudspeaker are some of the closest devices to commercial viability,
converting over 99 percent of the energy driving the device into sound, whereas today conventional loudspeakers and headphones convert only 8 percent into sound.
keeping their batteries charged. A group of researchers at KAIST has developed a wireless-power transfer (WPT) technology that allows mobile devices to be charged at any location and in any direction,
which is entitled ix Degrees of Freedom Mobile Inductive Power Transfer by Crossed Dipole Tx (Transmitter) and Rx (Receiver) Coils.
2015 at a lab on KAIST campus. They used high-frequency magnetic materials in a dipole coil structure to build a thin,
Dipole Coil Resonance System (DCRS) The research team used the Dipole Coil Resonance System (DCRS) to induce magnetic fields,
The DCRS is composed of two (transmitting and receiving) magnetic dipole coils, placed in parallel, with each coil having a ferrite core
the dipole coil is very compact and has a less dimension. Therefore a crossed dipole structure has 2-dimension rather than 3-dimension of a crossed loop coil structure.
The DCRS has a great advantage to transfer power even when the resonance frequency changes in the range of 1%(Q factor is below 100).
Greater Flexibility and Safer Charging The research team rearranged the two dipole coils from a parallel position to cross them
the level of magnetic flux is below the safety level of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guideline (27 T) for general public exposure to electromagnetic field (EMF.
where they create clothing that kills bacteria, conducts electricity, wards off malaria, captures harmful gas and weaves transistors into shirts and dresses. otton is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood materials,
With ultrathin solar panels for trim and a USB charger tucked into the waist, the Southwest-inspired garment captured enough sunshine to charge cell phones
For the first time, Harvard researchers have created similar wakes of light-like waves moving on a metallic surface, called surface plasmons,
The creation and control of surface plasmon wakes could lead to new types of plasmonic couplers
Surface plasmons are confined to the surface of a metal. In order to create wakes through them Capasso team designed a faster-than-light running wave of charge along a one-dimensional metamaterial like a powerboat speeding across a lake.
The metamaterial, a nanostructure of rotated slits etched into a gold film, changes the phase of the surface plasmons generated at each slit relative to each other,
increasing the velocity of the running wave. The nanostructure also acts like the boat rudder, allowing the wakes to be steered by controlling the speed of the running wave.
The team discovered that the angle of incidence of the light shining onto the metamaterial provides an additional measure of control
as urface plasmons are not visible to the eye or cameras, said co-lead author Antonio Ambrosio of SEAS and the Italian Research Council (CNR).
we used an experimental technique that forces plasmons from the surface, collects them via fiber optics and records the image.
said Janssen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sumita Pennathur Lab at UC Santa barbara. With only a minimal amount of human plasma,
or vials of plasma down to technology that would require less than a single drop. He worked more than two years in industry, developing lab-on-a-chip technology for Medimate B. V,
explaining that the chip would need less energy and that obtaining results would require fewer steps than other methods.
and releases the energy by a weak pressure (60 MPA). In addition, this material stores heat energy by various approaches such as (b) electric current flow or (c) light-irradiation.
and release a large amount of heat energy (230 kj L#1). This heat energy stored is large at approximately 70%of the latent heat energy of water at its melting point.
In atomic-scale transistors, this current is extremely sensitive to single electrons hopping via discrete energy levels.
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