One way that Staphylococcus aureus and other pathogens can become resistant to antibiotics is to change the way they generate energy
But providing electric power to implants without wires or batteries has been a big obstacle. Now engineers are developing a way to send power safely
and wirelessly to smart chips programmed to perform medical tasks and report back the results.
convert the incoming sound waves into electricity process and execute medical commands and report the completed activity via a tiny built-in radio antenna."
The implant chip is powered by piezoelectricity which is caused electricity by pressure. In a piezoelectric material pressure compresses its molecular structure much like a child jumping on a bed compresses the mattress.
When the pressure abates the piezoelectric material's molecular structure like the mattress springs back into shape.
Every time a piezoelectric structure is compressed and decompressed a small electrical charge is created. Researchers created pressure by aiming ultrasound waves at a tiny piece of piezoelectric material mounted on the device."
"The implant is like an electrical spring that compresses and decompresses a million times a second providing electrical charge to the chip"says Marcus Weber who worked on the team with fellow graduate students Jayant Charthad and Ting Chia Chang.
The piezoelectric effect is the power delivery mechanism. In the future the team plans to extend the capabilities of the implant chip to perform medical tasks such as running sensors
or delivering therapeutic jolts of electricity right where a patient feels pain. Finally the"smart chip"contains a radio antenna to beam back sensor readings or signal the completion of its therapeutic task.
The current prototype is the size of the head of a ballpoint pen. Researchers hope to design a next-generation implant one-tenth that size.
Mitochondria are structures within cells that produce energy and that contain their own DNA. any mitochondrial diseases affect more than one system in the human body,
professor of biology at Penn State and one of the study primary investigators. hey affect organs that require a lot of energy,
Mitochondria are the microscopic energy source for each cell in the body and ordinarilyâ##like a well-tuned car engineâ##they burn fuels including fats
Another advantage of the CARS-2 as well as subtests of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children selected for cognitive assessment is that the behavioral observations
and requires no electrical power. A companion smartphone application can automatically correlate the visual results to specific blood hemoglobin levels.
Because of its simplicity and ability to deliver results without electricity the device could also be used in resource-poor nations.
because this is a visual-based test that doesn't require an additional electrical device to analyze the results adds Lam who is senior author of a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
which we look at the interaction between the dipoles associated with these molecules and the nanosensor at high frequencies,
The electric charge on the substance surface causes it to form a long string from the syringe,
she says. hese proteins could accomplish that same task enzymatically, without the need for reactors and formation of dangerous byproducts.
but current design is the first to include piezoelectric materials. These materials turn mechanical pressure into electric signals,
andriux-uk/Flickr) ecause hearing aids rely on batteries, minimizing power consumption is a critical consideration in moving hearing-aid device technology forward,
Hall says. This technology may be a boon for people who are hearing impaired in the future. Currently, only two percent of Americans wear hearing aids,
and integrated the piezoelectric materials. The use of piezoelectric materials allowed them to simultaneously measure the flexing and the rotation of the beam,
which in turn allowed them to replicate the fly hearing. Hall credits the pioneering work of Ronald Miles at Binghamton University and Ronald Hoy at Cornell University,
such as those that may be relevant to energy applications and the production of probiotics. The technique, says Ismagilov,
A thin, circular antenna spans the perimeter of the deviceoughly tracing a person irisnd harnesses enough energy from the surrounding field to power a small pressure sensor chip.
Because terahertz waves are much smaller in energy than visible light finding materials that absorb and turn them into useful electronic signals has been a challenge Kono says.
STARVING KILLS DAMAGED CELLS hen you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are needed not,
especially those that may be damaged, Longo says. hat we started noticing in both our human work
The magnetic fields in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) often disrupt either the function or safety of implanted electrical devices.
But it has the potential to eliminate bulky batteries and clumsy recharging systems and lead to a type of medicine where physicians treat disease
Near-field waves can be used safely in wireless power systems. Some current medical devices like hearing implants use near-field technology.
But it is possible to build tiny batteries into microimplants, and then recharge these batteries wirelessly using the midfield system.
This is not possible with today technologies. ith this method we can safely transmit power to tiny implants in organs like the heart or brain,
Rogers says. ut chip-scale devices, batteries, capacitors, and other components must be reformulated for these platforms.
The National security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship of Energy the Korean Foundation for International Cooperation of Science and Technology,
A National Energy technology Laboratory grant supported the research
#Silly Putty component helps build carpet for stem cells The sponginess of the environment where human embryonic stem cells are growing affects the type of specialized cells they eventually become, a new study shows.
by measuring changes in energy levels of electrons in molecules after the laser has excited them.
#dgy films are perfect catalysts for fuel cells Chemists have found an easy and inexpensive way to create flexible films from molybdenum disulfide a versatile chemical compound with edges that are highly efficient catalysts.
The nanoporous films maximize the amount of exposed edge increasing its potential uses for energy storage
and as catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) a process used in fuel cells to pull hydrogen from water.
which store energy quickly as static charge and release it in a burst. Though they don t store as much energy as an electrochemical battery they have long lifespans
and are in wide use because they can deliver far more power than a battery. The researchers built supercapacitors with the films;
in tests they retained 90 percent of their capacity after 10000 charge-discharge cycles and 83 percent after 20000 cycles. e see anodization as a route to materials for multiple platforms in the next generation of alternative energy devicestour says. hese could be fuel cells supercapacitors and batteries.
And we ve demonstrated two of those three are possible with this new material. he research appears in the journal Advanced Materials
or electrical parts it uses no electricity and requires no batteries. That feature allows Tang to make devices that are smaller and cheaper than current sensors.
Now she plans to make her prototype smaller and extend the range of reactions it can record to open up new uses such as studying geothermal
and has been shown to cause cancer. ecause biochar can be produced from various waste biomass including agricultural residues this new technology provides an alternative and cost-effective way for arsenic removalsays Bin Gao associate professor of agricultural
Work at the Molecular Foundry received support from the Office of Science Office of Basic energy Sciences of the US Department of energy.
This result the researchers observe reflects enthalpic attraction#the adhesive energy generated by the higher temperatures and stimulating bonding between the particles.
#How energy loss can make lasers more intense Washington University in St louis rightoriginal Studyposted by Tony Fitzpatrick-WUSTL on October 20 2014energy loss in optical systems such as lasers is a chief hindrance
or light packets to achieve optical gain. his turns the conventional textbook understanding of lasers upside down. ut now scientists have demonstrated a more effective#yet counterintuitive#way to reap energy gains:
In other words they ve invented a way to win by losing. oo much of something can be really detrimentalsays Sahin Kaya Ozdemir a research scientist at Washington University in St louis. f you pump in more energy to get more laser intensity
and systems engineering. nstead of the standard method of adding more energy into the system we re offering a more energy-efficient method. ang says that
#This fusion reactor could be cheaper than coal University of Washington Posted by Michelle Ma-Washington on October 16 2014fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true#zero greenhouse gas emissions no long-lived radioactive waste a nearly unlimited fuel supply.
They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant would rival costs for a new coal fired plant with similar electrical output.
The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results this week at the International atomic energy agency s Fusion energy Conference in St petersburg Russia. ight now this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current conceptsays Thomas Jarboe a professor
of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics. The reactor called the dynomak started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago.
After the class ended Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland#who previously worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts institute of technology#continued to develop
and refine the concept. The design builds on existing technology and creates a magnetic field within a closed space to hold plasma in place long enough for fusion to occur allowing the hot plasma to react and burn.
The reactor itself would be largely self-sustaining meaning it would continuously heat the plasma to maintain thermonuclear conditions.
Heat generated from the reactor would heat up a coolant that is used to spin a turbine
and generate electricity similar to how a typical power reactor works. his is a much more elegant solution because the medium in
which is crucial to keeping a fusion reactor going. The new design is known as a spheromak meaning it generates the majority of magnetic fields by driving electrical currents into the plasma itself.
and actually allows researchers to shrink the overall size of the reactor. Other designs such as the experimental fusion reactor project that s currently being built in France#called Iter#have to be much larger than the dynomak
because they rely on superconducting coils that circle around the outside of the device to provide a similar magnetic field.
When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France the dynomak is much less expensive#roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter
#while producing five times the amount of energy. Jarboe and colleagues factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design
and compared that with building a coal power plant. They used a metric called vernight capital costswhich includes all costs particularly startup infrastructure fees.
A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2. 7 billion
while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2. 8 billion according to their analysis. f we do invest in this type of fusion we could be rewarded
because the commercial reactor unit already looks economicalsutherland says. t s very exciting. ight now the concept is about one-tenth the size and power output of a final product
The team has filed patents on the reactor concept and plans to continue developing and scaling up its prototypes.
#This atomically thin material generates electricity Columbia University Georgia Institute of technology rightoriginal Studyposted by John Toon-Georgia Tech on October 16 2014engineers have demonstrated that a single atomic layer of molybdenum disulfide
The effect is known as piezoelectricity. Scientists had predicted it was theoretically possible in materials of only a few atomic thicknesses
#and ultimately wearable. his material#just a single layer of atoms#could be made as a wearable device perhaps integrated into clothing to convert energy from your body movement to electricity
and power wearable sensors or medical devices or perhaps supply enough energy to charge your cell phone in your pocketsays James Hone professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University
and co-leader of the research. roof of the piezoelectric effect and piezotronic effect adds new functionalities to these two-dimensional materialssays Zhong Lin Wang a professor in Georgia Tech s School of Materials science and engineering
and a co-leader of the research. he materials community is excited about molybdenum disulfide and demonstrating the piezoelectric effect in it
adds a new facet to the material. here are two keys to using molybdenum disulfide for generating current:
but Wang notes so an even number of layers cancels out the piezoelectric effect. The material s crystalline structure also is piezoelectric in only certain crystalline orientations.
They monitored the conversion of mechanical to electrical energy and observed voltage and current outputs. The researchers also noted that the output voltage reversed sign
The presence of piezotronic effect in odd layer Mos2 was observed also for the first time. hat s really interesting is we ve now found that a material like Mos2 which is not piezoelectric in bulk form can become piezoelectric
and give zero net piezoelectric effect. his adds another member to the family of piezoelectric materials for functional devicessays Wenzhuo Wu a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech.
whose piezoelectric materials remain unexplored. Importantly as has been shown by Hone and his colleagues 2d materials can be stretched much farther than conventional materials particularly traditional ceramic piezoelectrics
which are quite brittle. The research could open the door to development of new applications for the material
The US Department of energy Office of Basic energy Sciences and National Science Foundation funded the project. Source:
when it's under stresssays coauthor Chia-Hong Tsai a doctoral candidate in the Michigan State-department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory
and department of plant biology. hey go into quiescence to conserve energy and nutrients. That's when they produce the equivalent of vegetable oil.
and gives scientists a way to potentially produce high amounts of oil and biomass. In terms of human medicine this discovery gives scientists a promising new model to study tumor suppression and growth.
#Hybrid#dots#offer cheaper way to run fuel cells Last year chemist James Tour made graphene quantum dots from coal.
The result is a hybrid material that could make it much cheaper to generate energy with fuel cells.
So it s a superb hybridization. he material outperformed commercial platinum/carbon hybrids commonly found in fuel cells.
or energy fed into it but only does so in bursts Herrmann explains. Experts call this self-organized criticality.
In the case of solar flares the build up of magnetic energy is emitted in sudden bursts. The sun consists of hot plasma made of electrons and ions.
In mathematical terms it is a scale-free energy distribution that follows a power law. Conventional computer models have been able to qualitatively reconstruct this statistic size distribution
Using a supercomputer the team was able to show that the model consistently generated correct results even when changing details such as the number of flux tubes or the energy of the plasma.
which the energy state of electrons is described with electronic materials. In particular the researchers examined surfaces of constant energy as these determine the conductivity of the material and its application potential.
Ensslin makes another comparison to demonstrate the mathematical concept behind these energy surfaces: magine a hilly landscape in which the valleys fill up with electrical charges
just as the water level rises between the hills when it rains. his is how a conductive material is formed from an initial isolator
#New polymer makes solar cells more efficient Solar cells made from polymers have the potential to be cheap and lightweight
but scientists are struggling to make them generate electricity efficiently. A polymer is a type of large molecule that forms plastics
Now a team of researchers led by Yu has identified a new polymer that allows electrical charges to move more easily through the cell boosting electricity production. olymer solar cells have great potential to provide low-cost lightweight
The active regions of such solar cells are composed of a mixture of polymers that give and receive electrons to generate electrical current
The new polymer developed by Yu s group called PID2 improves the efficiency of electrical power generation by 15 percent
when added to a standard polymer-fullerene mixture. ullerene a small carbon molecule is one of the standard materials used in polymer solar cellslu says. asically in polymer solar cells we have a polymer as electron donor
and fullerene as electron acceptor to allow charge separation. n their work the researchers added another polymer into the device resulting in solar cells with two polymers and one fullerene.
when an optimal amount of PID2 was added the highest ever for solar cells made up of two types of polymers with fullerene
The group which includes researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory is now working to push efficiencies toward 10 percent a benchmark necessary for polymer solar cells to be viable for commercial application.
In order for a current to be generated by the solar cell electrons must be transferred from polymer to fullerene within the device.
But the difference between electron energy levels for the standard polymer-fullerene is large enough that electron transfer between them is difficult.
PID2 has energy levels in between the other two and acts as an intermediary in the process. t s like a stepyu says. hen it s too high it s hard to climb up
The fibers serve as a pathway to allow electrons to travel to the electrodes on the sides of the solar cell. t s like you re generating a street
which to develop high-efficiency organic photovoltaic devices to meet the nation s future energy needschen adds.
but gave the process a spin with a different preparation so now we re the first to make neat fibers of pure carbon nanotube electrolytes.
because the setup is sealed. he nanotube electrolyte solution could be protected from oxygen and water which would have caused precipitation of the nanotubeshe says. t turns out that this is not a showstopper
#Ant-size radios could help create Internet of things A new radio the size of an ant can gather all the power it needs from the same electromagnetic waves that carry signals to its receiving antenna no batteries required.
This approach to miniaturization would have another benefit dramatically reducing power consumption because a single chip draws so much less power than conventional radios.
In fact if Arbabian's radio chip needed a battery which it doesn't a single AAA contains enough power to run it for more than a century.
a receiving antenna that also scavenges energy from incoming electromagnetic waves; a transmitting antenna to broadcast replies
Arbabian has used these prototypes to prove that the devices work they can receive signals harvest energy from incoming radio signals
As a consequence thermoplastic forming BMGS don t require massive amounts of energy. From there Schroers focused on producing BMGS in sheets.
#Sensor device grabs energy in odd places University of Washington Posted by Michelle Ma-Washington on September 4 2014scientists have built a new power harvester that uses natural fluctuations in temperature
The device harvests energy in any location where these temperature changes naturally occur powering sensors that can check for water leaks
which could provide another source of energy for certain applicationssays Shwetak Patel associate professor of computer science and engineering and of electrical engineering at the University of Washington.
Small cantilever motion harvesters are placed on the bellows and convert this kinetic energy into electrical energy. This powers sensors that also are placed on the bellows
A number of battery-free technologies exist that are powered by solar and ambient radio frequency waves.
A temperature change of only 0. 25 degrees Celsius creates enough energy to power the sensor node to read
and plan to make it smaller about the size of A d battery. A future version would include four chemicals that activate in different temperature ranges so the same device could be used in various climates. think our approach is uniquesays Chen Zhao lead author
This protein has two mobile heads that are moved by the energy-rich molecule ATP which supplies the cells of humans
and other life forms with energy and therefore make it the fuel of choice in this artificial system.
#AAA BATTERY powers cheap water splitter A new device uses a regular AAA BATTERY to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The hydrogen gas could power fuel cells in zero emissions vehicles. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas.
Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel
Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity
which powers the car. The only byproduct is water unlike gasoline combustion which emits carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas.
Most of these vehicles will run on fuel manufactured at large industrial plants that produce hydrogen by combining very hot steam and natural gas an energy-intensive process that releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
In 2015 American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers.
could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device. he electrodes are fairly stable
That goal is achievable based on my most recent resultshe researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy. ydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles buildings
and storing renewable energy on the gridsays Dai. e re very glad that we were able to make a catalyst that s very active and low cost.
and consume energy. dditional researchers from Oak ridge National Laboratory Stanford National Taiwan University of Science
Principal funding came from by the Global climate and Energy project the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford and by the US Department of energy.
#Clear material on windows harvests solar energy Michigan State university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Oswald-Michigan State on August 20 2014a new type of ransparent solar concentrator
or mobile devices to harvest solar energy without obscuring the view. Past efforts to create similar materials have been disappointing with inefficient energy production
or highly colored materials. o one wants to sit behind colored glasssays Richard Lunt an assistant professor of chemical engineering
The lowinginfrared light is guided to the edge of the plastic where it is converted to electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells. ecause the materials do not absorb
The technology is featured in the journal Advanced Optical Materials. t opens a lot of area to deploy solar energy in a nonintrusive waylunt says. t can be used on tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e reader.
in order to improve its energy-producing efficiency. Currently it is able to produce a solar conversion efficiency close to 1 percent
One approach is to capture CO2 emitted from power plants and other facilities and use it as a carbon source to make industrial chemicals most
It#s this extremely bright emission that can be collected from long distances. e get a large amount of energy into the system in a very short amount of time.
which we look at the interaction between the dipoles associated with these molecules and the nanosensor at high frequencieskulkarni says.
and reuses existing Wi-fi infrastructure to provide internet connectivity to battery-free devices. Called Wi-fi backscatter this technology is the first that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-fi infrastructure.
Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it all without requiring batteries.
Or battery-free sensors embedded around your home could track minute-by-minute temperature changes and send that information to your thermostat to help conserve energy.
This not-so-distant nternet of Thingsreality would extend connectivity to perhaps billions of devices.
Sensors could be embedded in everyday objects to help monitor and track everything from the structural safety of bridges to the health of your heart.
and connect these devices to the internet has kept this from taking off. f Internet of things devices are going to take off we must provide connectivity to the potentially billions of battery-free devices that will be embedded in everyday objectssays Shyam Gollakota an assistant professor of computer science
or wearable technology could run without batteries or cords by harnessing energy from existing radio TV
and wireless signals in the air. This work takes that a step further by connecting each individual device to the internet
but sustaining the confined energy was challenging because light tends to dissipate at a metal s surface.
##and using the optical gain from the semiconductor to amplify the light energy. The amplified sensor creates a much stronger signal than the passive plasmon sensors currently available
which work by detecting shifts in the wavelength of light Zhang says. he difference in intensity is similar to going from a light bulb for a table lamp to a laser pointer.
#Spinach leaves vibrate to kick off photosynthesis Vibrations deep within spinach leaves enhance the efficiency of photosynthesishe energy conversion process that powers life on our planet.
The discovery could potentially help engineers make more efficient solar cells and energy storage systems. It also injects new evidence into an ongoing uantum biologydebate over exactly how photosynthesis manages to be so efficient.
In the case of natural photosynthesis, that charge separation leads to biochemical energy, explains Jennifer Ogilvie,
and use it to generate electricity or some other useable energy source such as biofuels. CHARGE SEPARATION It takes about one-third of a second to blink your eye.
It also the only known natural enzyme that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Ogilvie says. e can look at where the energy is transferring and when the charge separation has occurred.
when the gaps in energy level are close to vibrational frequencies, you can have enhanced charge separation,
and the University of Michigan Center for Solar and Thermal energy Conversion, as well as the Research Council of Lithuania funded the research R
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