Just because Fermilab shut off its famous Tevartron back in 2011 doesn’t mean the entire facility closed down with it. In fact, the Chicago-area physics lab is embarking on an auspicious plan to develop some of the world’s most powerful proton beam technology by the end of the decade. But first, researchers have to install a 50-foot diameter electromagnet shipped in from 3,000 miles away and unlock the secret lives of elusive subatomic particles. No sweat, right?
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Researchers from Asia and Europe have developed the world’s lightest and thinnest organic circuits, which in the future could be used in a range of healthcare applications.
Lighter than a feather, these ultrathin film-like organic transistor integrated circuits are being developed by a research group led by Professor Takao Someya and Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Sekitani of the University of Tokyo, who run an Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) program sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), in collaboration with Siegfried Bauer’s group at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria.
The circuits are extremely lightweight, flexible, durable and thin, and conform to any surface. They are just 2 microns thick, just 1/5 that of kitchen wrap, and weighing only 3g/m^2, are 30 times lighter than office paper. They also feature a bend radius of 5 microns, meaning they can be scrunched up into a ball, without breaking. Due to these properties the researchers have dubbed them “imperceptible electronics”, which can be placed on any surface and even worn without restricting the users movement.
The integrated circuits are manufactured on rolls of one micron thick plastic film, making them easily scalable and cheap to produce. And if the circuit is placed on a rubber surface it becomes stretchable, able to withstand up to 233% tensile strain, while retaining full functionality.
“This is a very convenient way of making electronics stretchable because you can fabricate high performance devices in a flat state and then just transfer them over to a stretchable substrate and create something that is very compliant and stretchable just by a simple pick and place process.”
This prototype device is a touch sensor featuring a 12×12 array of sensors on a 4.8 cm x 4.8 cm circuit. It is made up of two layers, an integrated circuit layer and a tactile sensor layer.
With the development of these plastic electronics, the possibility for flexible, thin, large area electronics has been realized. In the future, the group would like to expand the capabilities of these circuits.
“The new flexible touch sensor is the world’s thinnest, lightest and people cannot feel the existence of this device. I believe this development will open up a wide range of new applications, from health monitoring systems, wearable medical instruments, and even robotic skins in the future.”
The results of this research were published in the July 25, 2013 issue of the journal Nature.
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Via: University of Tokyo
Food printing is like a science fiction dream, something that could solve everything from food going bad to world hunger. So where are the technical innovations that will allow such a technology to become reality?
The city responsible for the first solar-powered family car and a building shaped like a UFO is no stranger to creativity. Eindhoven, Netherlands was recently named “most inventive city” by Forbes magazine, probably thanks to the High Tech Campus (HTC) research and development center located there. The HTC is the result of the Dutch government’s initiative to bolster high-tech innovation in the region after rounds of layoffs from companies like Philips. Scads of tech firms are holed up within HTC’s walls including IBM, Intel and Accenture, with a focus on open cooperation and sharing of ideas and resources. Apparently, this has paid off in spades. According to the HTC’s website, the campus is responsible for roughly 50 percent of the Netherlands’ almost 10,000 patents each year. Yowza.
[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Via: Phys
Source: Forbes
Space may be the final frontier, but it seems that it is
mostly going to be explored by robots, at least for the time being. Some of you
may be aware of the Curiosity rover. Curiosity is currently on the surface of
the planet Mars, but what you may not know is that the rover is coming up on a
very big anniversary.
It’s official: humans suck at self-discipline so much, researchers thought it necessary to create a tooth sensor that detects if you’re smoking or stuffing your face and can tell doctors about it. The National Taiwan University Team led by Hao-hua Chu recently tested prototypes by gluing them to eight people’s dentures. Thanks to the device’s accelerometers, it was able to differentiate between chewing, smoking, speaking and coughing 94 percent of the time. It would’ve been better if it could also distinguish healthy food from not, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. After all, the scientists first have to develop an onboard power source (the prototypes required external batteries) and mouth-safe Bluetooth connectivity to transmit data to smartphones. Also, the team wants to shrink the already-teensy sensor down so it can fit inside cavities or on crowns. We don’t know about you, bu in the future we might choose between cavity-healing gel or these high tech fillings.
Via: Motherboard, New Scientist
Source: National Taiwan University
Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
This week is all about being humbled. New images from NASA remind us how truly small we are, while a blind computer artist reminds us we could try harder. Perhaps the “easiest” feat this week is a village that is redirecting the sun for five months of the year. No biggie. This is alt-week.
Everybody lies to their doctors. We say that we drink less than we do. We tell her we quit smoking when we didn’t. But what if the doctor knew more about what goes into your mouth than you do?
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Extreme athletes often hit a point during competition wherein their bodies simply can’t produce the requisite amount of energy to sustain their current output, commonly known as "hitting the wall." While much research has been done towards countering this event (looking at you Gatorade) actively estimating when the wall will hit remains a cumbersome exercise. But this new biosensor has a non-invasive way of knowing exactly when you’ll run out of steam.
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Some robots go into hospitals, others are getting ready to head into space, and some lucky robots are built to go just about anywhere that they need to. One of those robots in Rhex, whose name is pronounced rex, and with a funky set of semi-circle legs this bot can do some advanced manuvers.
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