GEN-ERIC News

A new theory developed at MIT could lead to “smart” optical microchips that adapt to different wavelengths of light, potentially advancing telecommunications, spectroscopy and remote sensing. Drawn by the promise of superior system performance, researchers have been exploring the concept of microchips that manipulate light instead of electricity. In their new theory, the MIT team has shown how such chips could feature tiny machines with moving parts powered and controlled by the very light they manipulate, giving rise to fundamentally new functionality. “There are thousands of complex functions we could make happen by tinkering with this idea,” said Peter Rakich, an MIT postdoctoral associate who invented the theoretical concept along with postdoc Milos Popovic. The work was described in the cover story of the November issue of Nature Photonics. For example, such chips could one day be used to remotely adjust the amount of bandwidth available in an optical network, or to automatically process signals flowing through fiber-optic networks, without using any electrical power, Rakich said.

Forgers take heed, a simple way to detect fake bank notes using their inks’ unique “magnetic signature” can also be used to authenticate oil paintings, according to the scientists who invented the technique. Some of the inks used to print bank notes around the world are made of ferrofluids, which are magnetic. These generate weak magnetic fields that can be measured using instruments such as superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs). A SQUID can be simply scanned across the note to record a “map” of its magnetic flux. Previously, Paulo Costa Ribeiro of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and colleagues made magnetic maps of Brazilian bank notes and found that each note has a unique signature that remains stable over time.

On a two-year trip to Mars, according to one estimate, a crew of six humans will generate more than six tons of solid organic waste–much of it feces. So what do you do with all that? Right now, astronaut waste gets shipped back to Earth. But for long-term exploration, you’d want to recycle it, because it holds resources that astronauts will need. It will provide pure drinking water. It will provide fertilizer. And, with the help of a recently discovered microbe, it will also provide electricity. Like many bacteria, this one, a member of the Geobacteraceae family, feeds on, and can decompose, organic material. Geobacter microbes were first discovered in the muck of the Potomac River in 1987; they like to live in places where there’s no oxygen and plenty of iron. They also have the unexpected ability to move electrons into metal.

A tiny “electronic nose” that MIT researchers have engineered with a novel inkjet printing method could be used to detect hazards including carbon monoxide, harmful industrial solvents and explosives. Led by MIT professor Harry Tuller, the researchers have devised a way to print thin sensor films onto a microchip, a process that could eventually allow for mass production of highly sensitive gas detectors. “Mass production would be an enormous breakthrough for this kind of gas sensing technology,” said Tuller, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The prototype sensor consists of thin layers of hollow spheres made of the ceramic material barium carbonate, which can detect a range of gases. Using a specialized inkjet print head, tiny droplets of barium carbonate or other gas-sensitive materials can be rapidly deposited onto a surface, in any pattern the researchers design. The miniature, low-cost detector could be used in a variety of settings, from an industrial workplace to an air-conditioning system to a car’s exhaust system, according to Tuller.

High-definition movie files can decimate the free space on your computer, but scientists are working to turn bacteria into a hard drive with nearly infinite capacity. This past spring, a group led by scientists at Keio University’s Institute for Advanced Biosciences at the Shonan Fujisawa campus near Tokyo announced that they had inscribed the phrase “E=MC² 1905!” onto bacterial DNA as a tribute to Albert Einstein. More than just parchment for simple messages, bacteria have the potential for massive data storage. In fact, a single bacterium could store more than 400 copies of this article. The scientists demonstrated the technology by converting the tribute phrase into binary code and then into a specific sequence of DNA nucleotides, which they spliced into the bacteria’s genome. To keep the data intact, the researchers used Bacillus subtilis, a species that has very slow mutation rates and resists most viruses. They also inserted their message into several spots of the genome as backups within the backup. The potential uses for this type of organic hard drive go far beyond data storage. Project adviser Yoshiaki Ohashi says that pharmaceutical companies could “stamp” their drugs to thwart counterfeiters, or spies could carry bacteria encoded with confidential information in tiny vials.

Australian engineers have found a way to use the elasticity of carbon nanotubes to not only stop bullets penetrating material but actually rebound their force. Their anti-ballistic carbon nanotubes are very different from the current materials used to design bullet-proof jackets, such as Kevlar, Twaron or Dyneema fibers. Current jackets can stop bullets, but the users can still be severely wounded by the strength of the impacts. On the contrary, these future nanotechnology-based jackets not only stop the bullets, but they repel them, thus avoiding ‘blunt force trauma.’

Bacterium that can eat sugar or sludge; must be team player or electrochemically active; ability to survive without oxygen, a plus. Thus might read the bacterial “job description” posted by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Washington University (WU) scientists, who are collaborating on ways to make microbial fuel cells more efficient and practical. According to Mike Cotta, who leads the ARS Fermentation Biotechnology Research Unit, Peoria, Ill., the project with WU arose from a mutual interest in developing sustainable methods of producing energy that could diminish U.S. reliance on crude oil. Cotta’s team specializes in using bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms inside bioreactors to do work, such as ferment grain sugars into fuel ethanol. At WU in St. Louis, Mo., assistant professor Lars Angenent is investigating fuel cell systems that use mixtures of bacteria to treat organic wastewater and catalyze the release of electrons and protons, which then can be used to produce electricity or hydrogen fuel.

Genuine mood lighting just took a step closer. A shape-shifting lampshade can monitor brightness and movement in a room and then gently adjust the amount and quality of light it emits. Brainchild of London-based designer Assa Ashuach, the AI Light consists of a light bulb surrounded by a flexible nylon “skeleton” that forms two lobes. Thin rods running through the centre of each lobe are controlled by built-in motors. They can rotate and bend to shape the skeleton in different ways. More light shines through areas where the skeleton is spread out, while squashed regions emit less. So different combinations of rod position create a range of light quality.

Microscopic particles can be steered through the tiny channels of a microfluidic chip using light, US researchers have shown. They modified standard piece of lab equipment to direct particle traffic using light, and say the trick could prove vital for rapid chemical and biological analysis with handheld devices. Microfluidic chips contain microscopic tubes that can be used to ferry cells and particles around for chemical or biological experimentation. Controlling fluids and particles at small scales is difficult, however. The US team, led by David Erickson and Michal Lipson at Cornell University, Ithaca, US used light to control these unruly particles. They constructed a microfluidic chip with “waveguides” built into the walls of each fluid channel. The waveguides were designed to act like leaky pipes: as laser light passes through, it does not bounce perfectly off the inside walls, and a weak electromagnetic field – called the evanescent field – leaks out. Mystery ‘cushion’Particles that flow across a waveguide’s path are captured by its electromagnetic field and pulled along in the same direction as the light inside the waveguide. The approach can even steer particles around a bend.

Researchers at The University of Manchester have developed high-tech battery-powered textile yarns that can be used to make clothing glow in the dark. Current high visibility products – such as those used by emergency services, cyclists and highway maintenance workers – depend on external light sources to make them visible. They can be ineffective in low light situations and require a light source from something like vehicle headlights to make them visible. The latest development, made from electroluminescent (EL) yarns, allows the wearer to be permanently visible and therefore improves personal safety. EL yarn is a novel technology, which emits light when powered by a battery. Its development has been based on thin film electroluminescent technology. The yarn consists of an inner conductive core yarn, coated with electroluminescent ink – which means it emits light when an electric current is passed through it – and a protective transparent encapsulation, with an outer conductive yarn wrapped around it. When the EL yarn is powered with an inverter the resultant electrical field between the inner and outer conductor causes the electroluminescent coating to emit light. The emission of light occurs between the contact points between the outer yarn and the inner yarn.

A university professor of physics has made a radio out of a single carbon nanotube that’s about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. It runs on batteries and you need headphones to use it, but it tunes in stations on the FM dial. Radio has gone nano. Electrical engineers at the University of California, Irvine, have built a radio receiver that uses a carbon nanotube as a key component. Peter J. Burke and Chris Rutherglen employed the nanotube as a demodulator—a device that translates radio waves into sound. The UC Irvine team grew nanotubes on high-resistivity silicon and then grafted palladium electrodes onto the wafer using optical lithography. For the demodulator, the researchers selected devices in which a lone nanotube bridges the gap between electrodes. They then incorporated the nanotube demodulator into an AM radio receiver. Using an iPod and an AM signal generator as their broadcasting system, Burke and Rutherglen showed they could wirelessly transmit music to the nanotube receiver system while maintaining high audio quality.

Syrdec, a Princeton, N.J.-based company is working on a material that, when combined with another substance, will generate electricity with ambient room heat, Andrew Surany, the company’s president, told CNET News.com this week. Conceivably, one could take that material and fashion it into a passive fuel cell that can create power by just sitting in an ordinary room heated to about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to self-charging electronic devices. “It derives heat from the environment” and converts it to electricity, Surany said. “I’m talking about embedding cells into doors or the panels on a car. In a laptop, I am talking about embedding cells into the case.”

Angela Belcher leans in to watch as a machine presses down slowly on the plunger of a syringe, injecting a billion harmless viruses into a clear liquid. Instead of diffusing into the solution as they escape the needle, the viruses cling together, forming a wispy white fiber that’s several centimeters long and about as strong as a strand of nylon. A gradu­ate student, Chung-Yi Chiang, fishes it out with a pair of tweezers. Then he holds it up to an ultra­violet light, and the fiber begins to glow bright red. In producing this novel fiber, the researchers have demonstrated a completely new way of making nanomaterials, one that uses viruses as microscopic building blocks. Belcher, a professor of materials science and biological engineering at MIT, says the approach has two main advantages. First, in high concentrations the viruses tend to organize themselves, lining up side by side to form an orderly pattern. Second, the viruses can be genetically engineered to bind to and organize inorganic materials such as those used in battery electrodes, transistors, and solar cells. The programmed viruses coat themselves with the materials and then, by aligning with other viruses, assemble into crystalline structures useful for making high-­performance devices.

Normally when the topic of pollution, consumption, and alternative fuels comes up, most people are talking about automobiles. We’ll talk about the Toyota Prius, perhaps, and the Chevy Volt. Not today. Not in Korea. In an effort to go green, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is working on a micro-fuel cell and hydrogen generator for mobile devices like cell phones. The kicker is that it runs completely on water. The generator has already been developed, it seems, and as they iron out the kinks and improve the system, they hope to launch a mobile phone powered by water some time in 2010.

The agreement, under which a commercial licence will be negotiated, sets out a codevelopment program for condoms with a VivaGel® coating. Undisclosed fees are payable to Starpharma under the co-development agreement, which also provides for the commencement of regulatory and market development activities by the two parties. SSL is the world’s largest manufacturer of condoms with approximately 30% share of the global market for branded condom sales, selling into over 100 countries around the world. Global condom retail sales in 2005 were approximately $3.2 billion, with the top four companies representing as much as 70% of the market. “We are delighted to be working with SSL, whom we believe will be an excellent codevelopment partner for VivaGel® as a condom coating,” said Starpharma’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Jackie Fairley. “In addition to SSL’s unparalleled global commercial position and the strength of the Durex® brand, Starpharma also values the organisation’s innovative approach, and its social-marketing program.

While developing new lenses for next-generation sensors, researchers have crafted a layered material that causes light to refract, or bend, in a manner nature never intended. Refraction always bends light one way, as one can see in the illusion of a “bent” drinking straw when observed through the side of a glass. A new metamaterial crafted from alternating layers of semiconductors (indium-gallium-arsenic and aluminum-indium-arsenic) acts as a single lens that refracts light in the opposite direction. Refraction is the reason that lenses have to be curved, a trait that limits image resolution. With the new metamaterial, flat lenses are possible, theoretically allowing microscopes to capture images of objects as small as a strand of DNA. The current metamaterial lens works with infrared light, but the researchers hope the technology will expand to other wavelengths in the future.

The Army has turned to a Honolulu company for Doppler radar and advanced algorithm technology to be able to detect and monitor multiple subjects based on their heart rate, even through walls. This means that soldiers will be able to detect someone hiding in a room before the door is kicked in, the company claims, and medics will be able to remotely perform triage and diagnoses or monitor casualties right through their flack jackets. It may also have homeland security and interrogation applications by allowing personnel to screen and identify individuals who may merit the third degree based on a guilty heart rate. Kai Sensors’ proprietary radar technology called LifeReader accurately detects and monitors heart and respiration activity wirelessly, remotely and with no contact with the subjects by using microwave, Doppler radar and digital signal processing, according to the company. LifeReader is the product of four years of research at the University of Hawaii’s electrical engineering department.

You’ve got a file on your laptop that you need to access — but you don’t want to wait for your laptop to boot up to get at it. New technology from the company Silicon Storage Technology will make the contents of a hard drive accessible via a computer’s USB port even when the computer is powered down. ‘FlashMate combines hardware, firmware and software in a system application subsystem that manages a notebook computer’s hard drive. It is based on SST’s expertise in NAND flash controllers and memory subsystem design with Insyde Software’s expertise in PC BIOS, system software and power management. FlashMate can work in conjunction with features such as Windows Vista ReadyDrive and serve as nonvolatile cache for the hard disk drive, thus enabling a standard hard disk drive to function as a hybrid drive.’

Innovalight creates nanoparticles of silicon that it uses to make ink “and we can end up with something that looks not very different from what a solar cell looks like today, except we got there substantially faster and cheaper, and we use less material,” he said. The goal is to achieve “double digit” efficiency, higher than current levels for other thin-film-based solar cells, although Burke wouldn’t reveal a specific number. The industry standard is 14 or 15 percent, although some companies talk about reaching 20 percent efficiency. Efficiency measures the percentage of absorbed light converted to electricity.

A single solar cell produces a relatively low output – it’s a case of strength in numbers. Tiny strips of metal are used to link cells together. If the laser soldering temperature is too high, the solder joint may fracture. A new system provides automatic temperature regulation. Teamwork is what matters – even in the case of solar cells: To obtain sufficient power to operate a pocket calculator, parking ticket dispenser or photovoltaic module, sunlight has to be captured simultaneously by an array of cells. They are connected in series using tiny strips of metal known as stringers. Each stringer has to be positioned in precisely the right spot, then its solder coating is melted using a hot electrode. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology have developed a non-contact soldering system in which the temperature is constantly monitored.

You arrive home from work, drop your mobile phone, MP3 player and camera on the kitchen table and pour yourself a well-earned drink. Immediately, the music on your MP3 player begins blaring from your hi-fi, photos start downloading to your PC and texts and emails start flashing up on your TV screen. What’s going on? The phone, MP3 player and camera are sending information to the table, which passes it to the walls, which in turn route it to the hi-fi, television and PC. Takao Someya, Tsuyoshi Sekitani and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Japan, have developed a flexible, plastic electronic sheet that can be embedded in tables, walls and floors. Plastic transistors and copper wires that snake through the sheets allow gadgets placed on them to form spontaneous connections and swap data.

An innovative and inexpensive way of making nanomaterials on a large scale has resulted in novel forms of advanced materials that pave the way for exceptional and unexpected optical properties. The new fabrication technique, known as soft lithography, offers many significant advantages over existing techniques, including the ability to scale-up the manufacturing process to produce devices in large quantities. The research, led by Northwestern University chemist Teri Odom, appears as the cover story in the September 2007 issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The optical nanomaterials in this research are called ‘plasmonic metamaterials’ because their unique physical properties originate from shape and structure rather than material composition only. Two examples of metamaterials in the natural world are peacock feathers and butterfly wings. Their brightly colored patterns are due to structural variations at the hundreds of nanometers level, which cause them to absorb or reflect light. Through the development of a new nanomanufacturing technique, Odom and her colleagues have succeeded in making gold films with virtually infinite arrays of circular perforations as small as 100 nanometers in diameter – 500 to 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. On a magnified scale, these perforated gold films look like Swiss cheese except the perforations are well-ordered and can spread over macroscale distances. The researchers’ ability to make these optical metamaterials inexpensively and on large wafers or sheets is what sets this work apart from other techniques.

Using sunlight to liberate hydrogen from water is an appealing way to generate a clean-burning fuel from a renewable energy source. As a result, scientists have examined a variety of materials over the years in search of a suitable catalyst to accelerate the water-splitting reaction. Several candidates show some level of promise, yet each material suffers from shortcomings that would limit its applications. For example, some catalysts absorb solar radiation inefficiently, exhibit low activity, or are unstable or costly. Now, a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institutes for Bioinorganic Chemistry and for Coal Research, in Germany, report that titanium disilicide (TiSi2)—an abundant and inexpensive semiconductor not known previously to be a water-splitting catalyst—separates water into hydrogen and oxygen when reactors containing the powdered catalyst are illuminated with simulated sunlight.

Engineers have shown how to grow forests of tiny cylinders called carbon nanotubes onto the surfaces of computer chips to enhance the flow of heat at a critical point where the chips connect to cooling devices called heat sinks. The carpetlike growth of nanotubes has been shown to outperform conventional “thermal interface materials.” Like those materials, the nanotube layer does not require elaborate clean-room environments, representing a possible low-cost manufacturing approach to keep future chips from overheating and reduce the size of cooling systems, said Placidus B. Amama, a postdoctoral research associate at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue’s [profile] Discovery Park. Researchers are trying to develop new types of thermal interface materials that conduct heat more efficiently than conventional materials, improving overall performance and helping to meet cooling needs of future chips that will produce more heat than current microprocessors. The materials, which are sandwiched between silicon chips and the metal heat sinks, fill gaps and irregularities between the chip and metal surfaces to enhance heat flow between the two.

Eggs give many of us the fuel we need to start the day, but leftover eggshells of the future could provide fuel to start hydrogen cars. The fragile leftovers can be ground up and used to filter out carbon dioxide, a pesky by-product of hydrogen production, engineers said. “The key to making pure hydrogen is separating out the carbon dioxide,” said L.S. Fan, a chemical and biomolecular engineer at Ohio State University. Calcium carbonate—the main component in eggshells and antacid tablets—serves as the active ingredient in Fan and his team’s process when heated up. The material soaks up acidic carbon dioxide gas during hydrogen-producing reactions, making them more efficient. In fact, it’s now the most effective carbon dioxide absorber ever tested, Fan said.

Three-dimensional drawing programs offer precision, but still require input in two dimensions. Now scientists have developed a software program that trades the keyboard and mouse for virtual reality goggles with feedback to illustrate objects in mid-air. The program, Drawing on Air, is meant to give scientists a better way to model complex ideas, and could eventually allow doctors to visualize a surgical procedure before they ever cut into a patient. It could also give artists an intuitive, simple way for moving from traditional freehand methods to computers. “It’s got ‘drawing’ in the title, but it’s very three-dimensional, so in many ways it’s more sculptural than it is drawing-based,” said Daniel Keefe, post-doctoral research associate in computer science at Brown University in Providence, RI.

Struggling with the new public smoking ban or simply fed up with being addicted to the evil weed? QuitmateME is a Java application which records each cigarette the user smokes and then calculates a quitting regime for them to follow. The smoker is then encouraged to beat targets set by the software to gradually reduce their daily intake. For instance a 20-a-day smoker could easily reduce their intake to 10 a day in just 10 days. Monthly, Daily, Hourly and AM/PM reports are provided help understand smoking patterns and motivate users to cut down on their smoking levels.

More than 5.5 million Filipinos now use their cell phones as virtual wallets, making the Philippines a leader among developing nations in providing financial transactions over mobile networks. Mobile banking services, which are also catching on in Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts. The system is particularly useful for the 8 million Filipinos – 10 percent of the country’s citizens – who work overseas and send money home.

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is using randomization software to determine the location and timing of security checkpoints and patrols. The theory is that random security will make it impossible for terrorists to predict the actions of security forces. The ARMOR software, written by computer scientists at the University of Southern California, was initially developed to solve a problem in game theory. Doctoral student Praveen Paruchuri wrote algorithms on how an agent should react to an opponent who has perfect information about the agent’s choices.

Cell phones are increasingly sophisticated – sporting such features as cameras, music players, games, video clips, Internet access and, lest we forget, the capability to phone someone – but these features come at a price: memory. Now computer engineers at Northwestern University and NEC Laboratories America, Inc. are the first to do what many thought impossible – they have developed technology that doubles the usable memory on cell phones and other embedded systems without any changes to hardware or applications. The improvement was made in the operating system software alone. This innovation, the result of two years of close collaboration between researchers at Northwestern and NEC Labs, is featured in millions of new smartphones, the NEC-manufactured FOMA N904i, which first hit shelves in Japan this summer. “All the things you do with a cell phone or personal digital assistant require memory,” said Robert P. Dick, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science in Northwestern’s Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “The technology we’ve developed automatically takes data and reduces it to less than half its original size without losing any information while the embedded system is running. It is like putting twice as much memory in the phone without increasing its cost or power consumption.”

What if you could avoid the flu and other viruses simply by getting dressed? That’s the idea behind two garments that are part of the “Glitterati” clothing line designed by Olivia Ong, a senior design major at Cornell University. It’s not the casually stylish appearance of the dress and jacket that has attracted attention from clothing manufacturers, tech blogs and even military research labs, but rather something that can’t be seen: a sprinkling of nanoparticles intended to protect the wearers of these garments from invisible threats to their health. The upper part of the dress is made from cotton coated with silver nanoparticles that deactivate bacteria and viruses. The jacket’s hood, sleeves and pockets contain palladium nanoparticles that act like tiny catalytic converters to break down harmful components of air pollution. The dress and jacket are known as “functional clothing”—garments that do more than just make you look cool—and they are growing in popularity. Already on the market are shirts with bug repellent, antimicrobial underwear and stain-resistant trousers. But Ong’s creations are among the first to qualify as genuine nanotextiles, fabrics in which the active particles are evenly distributed and less than 100 nanometers in diameter, or about one thousandth the thickness of cotton fibers.

James Lovelock, the British planetary scientist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis, has endorsed a cure for the “pathology” of global warming, but has admitted that it could make matters worse. The idea is to tether millions of vertical pipes across the oceans to pump nutrient-rich deep water to the surface. These waters would fertilise the growth of algae, which in turn fix carbon dioxide. The pipes, reaching to depths of 200 metres, would have flap valves at the bottom operated by the energy of waves, which would push deep water up the pipe. The concept, put forward with Chris Rapley of the Science Museum in London, is based on a proposal by Philip Kithil of the Santa Fe-based corporation Atmocean. Kithil suggested at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last year that 100 million 10-metre diameter pumps across the oceans could capture one-quarter of human-made CO2 emissions.

Hydrogen is one of the most important fuels of the future, and the sun will be one of our most important sources of energy. Why not combine the two to produce hydrogen directly from solar energy without any detours involving electrical current? Why not use a process similar to the photosynthesis used by plants to convert sunlight directly into chemical energy? Researchers from the German Max Planck Institute have now developed a catalyst that may do just that. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, titanium disilicide splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. And the semiconductor doesn’t just act as a photocatalyst, it also stores the gases produced, which allows an elegant separation of hydrogen and oxygen. “The generation of hydrogen and oxygen from water by means of semiconductors is an important contribution to the use of solar energy,” explains Martin Demuth. “Semiconductors suitable for use as photocatalysts have been difficult to obtain, have unfavorable light-absorption characteristics, or decompose during the reaction.”

A team of researchers at Rice University has filmed carbon nanotubes inside living animals. They’ve used a custom-built microscope and a technique called near-infrared fluorescent imaging to detect DNA-sized nanotubes inside living fruit flies. But more importantly, they’ve compared a group of fruit fly larvae fed with a yeast paste that contained carbon nanotubes with a control group fed normally. And they found no significant differences between the two groups. Does this mean that nanoparticles are innocuous, especially for humans? Only time will tell.

Dr John Zhu, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering, aims to develop a carbon nanotube (CNT) membrane for gas separation that will work like a sieve to separate high volumes of methane or carbon dioxide from other gases. Dr Zhu said that the CNT technology was exciting because it would trap moving gases up to 100 times faster than other gas separation techniques and could therefore be used by large-scale plants such as power stations. “Conventional membranes such as polymeric and metal membranes, porous silica and carbon molecular sieves all show a trade-off between how well they separate gases and how much gas they can process,” he said. “The CNT membranes can both separate effectively and process large volumes of gas, making them superior to conventional membranes at the large scale required for coal-fired power plants or natural gas processing. “If the technology is successful, it may be able to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced through power generation.

Engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have developed a system which can be installed in your roof and attic to soak up the sun’s heat during the day and then release it back into the sky at night - keeping houses cooler. “This could reduce the cooling bill for houses by up to 8 per cent,” says Bill Miller, a member of a team testing roof and attic energy-saving systems at Oak Ridge. “We’re able to intercept 90 per cent of the heat energy that would otherwise penetrate into the living space through the attic floor,” he says.

Good news for public health: Bioengineering researchers from the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have developed and patented a nanoparticle that can deliver vaccines more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost of current vaccine technologies. Described in an article appearing online September 16 in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the vaccine delivery platform is a deceptively simple combination of nanotechnology and chemistry that represents a huge advantage over current vaccine methods. This technology may make it possible to vaccinate against diseases like hepatitis and malaria with a single injection. And at an estimated cost of only a dollar a dose, this technology represents a real breakthrough for vaccine efforts in the developing world. A vaccination is an injection of a non-virulent form of a pathogen or molecule from a pathogen (known as an antigen), to which the immune system responds, destroying and then developing a “memory” for the pathogen. Later, when a virulent form of the pathogen comes along, this memory kicks in and the intruder is quickly eradicated. Most vaccines protect against viruses or bacteria, but vaccine techniques are also being explored as a way to kill cancer cells.

Hubbard, Ohio-based NanoLogix, which specializes in industrial microbes, said today that it has coaxed microorganisms to create hydrogen, which in turn was used to generate electricity. The hydrogen powered a 5.5-kilowatt generator. The generator powered multiple strings of 100-watt bulbs. Hydrogen doesn’t power generators directly. Hydrogen is fed into a fuel cell, which strips away electrons that get ultimately fed into an electrical appliance. The hydrogen is harvested from sugars in wastewater, according to the company. The company gets it from a Welch’s jelly plant nearby in Erie, Pa. The process was devised in part by Harry Diz, department chair and professor of environmental engineering at Gannon University and the developer of the NanoLogix bioreactor. The company did not provide specifics on how much sugar and wastewater is needed, what conditions are required to metabolize the sugar, what species of microbes were used, or whether Nutella would have the same effect. Still, an interesting achievement.

Invisibility cloaks that work at optical wavelengths are a step closer to reality thanks to a different take on the problem. In previous attempts fiendishly small structures had to be precisely positioned in the cloaking material. However, super-thin layers of much simpler stuff should do the trick. Invisibility cloaks burst into the public consciousness last year, when a transatlantic team unveiled both the theory and a working device. Engineering constraints only allowed them to construct a cloak that could hide a very small object at microwave wavelengths, as confirmed by a microwave detector, and they warned that to achieve the same feat at optical wavelengths would require an extremely difficult leap in miniaturisation.

A game of billiards may never get smaller than this. Physicists at UC Riverside have demonstrated that graphene – a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings – can act as an atomic-scale billiard table, with electric charges acting as billiard balls. The finding underscores graphene’s potential for serving as an excellent electronic material, such as silicon, that can be used to develop new kinds of transistors based on quantum physics. Because they encounter no obstacles, the electrons in graphene roam freely across the sheet of carbon, conducting electric charge with extremely low resistance. The research team, led by Chun Ning (Jeanie) Lau, found that the electrons in graphene are reflected back by the only obstacle they meet: graphene’s boundaries. “These electrons meet no other obstacles and behave like quantum billiard balls,” said Lau, an assistant professor who joined UCR’s Department of Physics and Astronomy in 2004. “They display properties that resemble both particles and waves.” Lau observed that when the electrons are reflected from one of the boundaries of graphene, the original and reflected components of the electron can interfere with each other, the way outgoing ripples in a pond might interfere with ripples reflected back from the banks.

The duck diver is designed for use in fairly shallow water, and consists of yellow plastic tubing connected in a square shape with a hollow center. The plastic square is attached by a rod to the sea floor, with a lever that allows the device to adjust its height between low and high tides. The ability to endure different water levels, Olson explains, has been a challenge for many ocean energy converters in the past. This flexibility, coupled with the device’s robustness, also enables the duck diver to withstand large waves by submerging itself vertically under the water–hence its name. And, like a duck or other floating object, the device moves toward a wave as it approaches, and then is pushed back by the wave as it passes. The device captures the horizontal push and vertical lift of the waves, as the waves pass by again and again. This energy can then be transferred to a generator and converted to electricity. Olson demonstrates a single device supplying enough energy to power 100 1.6-volt LEDs, in relatively calm water. Better yet, each device costs just $65 to make, is designed to survive for 10 years without maintenance, and can be constructed by someone with “general mechanical knowledge.”

New research led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory physicist Matthias Bode provides a more thorough understanding of new mechanisms, which makes it possible to switch a magnetic nanoparticle without any magnetic field and may enable computers to more accurately write and store information. Bode and four colleagues at the University of Hamburg used a special scanning tunneling microscope equipped with a magnetic probe tip to force a spin current through a small magnetic structure. The researchers were able to show that the structure’s magnetization direction is not affected by a small current, but can be influenced if the spin current is sufficiently high.

A Singapore-developed microneedle process used in Hewlett-Packard’s inkjet cartridges could soon be used in skin patches to administer drugs. The locally-developed microneedle technology is used in Hewlett-Packard’s patented process for its inkjet cartridges, could soon be used in transdermal patches to deliver time-controlled release of drugs to patients. HP announced Tuesday that it will license its microneedle technology to Crospon, an Ireland-based medical device maker, to develop and manufacture drug-laden skin patches for the healthcare market. In a phone interview with ZDNet Asia, Crospon CEO John O’Dea said that the skin patch is akin to “a very small infusion pump". Still at the prototype stage, the patch will likely be 25 mm square in size and 3 mm thick. It will incorporate an array of microneedles that are between 75 and 100 microns, which will penetrate the top dry layer of the skin, also known as the stratum corneum.

Visible and ultraviolet laser light has been used for years to cool trapped atoms—and more recently larger objects—by reducing the extent of their thermal motion. Now, applying a different form of radiation for a similar purpose, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used radio waves to dampen the motion of a miniature mechanical oscillator containing more than a quadrillion atoms, a cooling technique that may open a new window into the quantum world using smaller and simpler equipment. Described in a forthcoming issue of Physical Review Letters,* this demonstration of radio-frequency (RF) cooling of a relatively large object may offer a new tool for exploring the elusive boundary where the familiar rules of the everyday, macroscale world give way to the bizarre quantum behavior seen in the smallest particles of matter and light. There may be technology applications as well: the RF circuit could be made small enough to be incorporated on a chip with tiny oscillators, a focus of intensive research for use in sensors to detect, for example, molecular forces.

A researcher tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube. Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies. His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world’s most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses. Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, held a demonstration last week at the university’s Materials Research Laboratory in State College, to confirm what he’d witnessed weeks before in an Erie lab. Dr. Roy said the salt water isn’t burning per se, despite appearances. The radio frequency actually weakens bonds holding together the constituents of salt water – sodium chloride, hydrogen and oxygen – and releases the hydrogen, which, once ignited, burns continuously when exposed to the RF energy field. Mr. Kanzius said an independent source measured the flame’s temperature, which exceeds 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, reflecting an enormous energy output. As such, Dr. Roy, a founding member of the Materials Research Laboratory and expert in water structure, said Mr. Kanzius’ discovery represents “the most remarkable in water science in 100 years.”

Here’s a novel business plan. Prairie Village, Kansas-based Nowa Technology has come up with a wastewater treatment plant that sucks out materials from wastewater and some of these removed products can be consumed as a diesel additive. It depends on what’s in your wastewater, but Nowa CEO Richard Nelson says you find the fuel there quite a bit. You can mix it 50-50 with diesel and get about the same amount of energy as pure diesel, according to Nelson. This is different than what Israel’s BioPetrol is trying to accomplish. That company is applying the coal-to-petrol process on human sewage. The unit costs $7 million and pays for itself in a few years, he added. Water remains one of the growth areas in clean tech, but it doesn’t nearly get as much focus as biofuels and solar power. One of the fears about the water market is that the main customers are slow-moving municipalities.

Your computer could one day track your movements around the house by monitoring the electrical noise made by household appliances as you switch them on and off. Such a system could be cheaper and simpler to operate than the suite of sensors that researchers currently envisage for “smart homes". Scientists and visionaries have long imagined smart homes that could cater to our every whim. But their ideas all rely on cameras, microphones or other sensors in every room to track the locations of the occupants. The new method relies on a device plugged into a single standard wall socket that monitors noise in the electrical supply caused by electrical devices being switched on and off. A computer monitoring the device can then infer that a person must be in that location.

A NASA-supported study has introduced a new way to detect lightning outbreaks inside a hurricane from thousands of miles away, giving forecasters new insight into just how powerful an oncoming storm will be. As a result, researchers can now investigate with greater accuracy how the rate of lightning strikes produced within a hurricane’s eyewall is tied to the changing strength of the hurricane. A hurricane’s eyewall is the inner heat-driven region of the storm that surrounds the eye, where the most intense rainfall and most powerful winds occur. By monitoring the intensity of lightning near a hurricane’s eye, scientists will be able to improve their forecasts of when a storm will unleash its harshest conditions.

Scientists have developed a computerised face-recognition system that can diagnose autism and other genetically inherited diseases from telltale differences in facial features. The shape of the face and the size and position of the eyes, the ears, the nose and the lips can point to a wide range of genetic illnesses - from rare disorders of the heart and brain to more common conditions such as autism. The differences in the features of normal and abnormal children are often so subtle even very experienced medical specialists can often only diagnose them with expensive and time-consuming DNA tests. But now researchers at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children have developed a computer programme that can analyse and interpret the tiniest variations in face shape and features.

The device works by capturing solar energy on metal alloy plates. These plates then transfer their energy to a laser, amplifying it many times. The laser is then beamed down to earth where it is captured and converted to electricity. I’m not sure how this last step is accomplished, but possibly through a traditional boiler. The process, according the scientists, can be up to 40% efficient, which makes it comparable with the most efficient solar panels of today. The problems will arise with launch costs, weather interfering with the laser, and international outcry at the supposedly peaceful deathray.

By combining electrically induced fluid flow with nanoscale nozzles, researchers at the University of Illinois have established new benchmarks for precision control and resolution in jet-printing processes. “We have invented methods for an electrohydrodynamic jet (e-jet) printing process that can produce patterns and functional devices that establish new resolution benchmarks for liquid printing, significantly exceeding those of established ink-jet technologies,” said John Rogers, a Founder Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and corresponding author of a paper accepted for publication in the journal Nature Materials, and posted on its Web site. This type of e-jet printing could be used for large-area circuits, displays, photovoltaic modules and related devices, as well as other wide-ranging application possibilities in security, biotechnology and photonics, Rogers said. The success of this effort relied critically on an interdisciplinary team of materials scientists, chemists, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and physicists within the university’s Center for Nanoscale Chemical Electrical Mechanical Manufacturing Systems, a nanoscale science and engineering center funded by the National Science Foundation.

A motorised wheelchair that moves when the operator thinks of particular words has been demonstrated by a US company. The wheelchair works by intercepting signals sent from their brain to their voice box, even when no sound is actually produced. The company behind the chair, Ambient, is developing the technology with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, in the US. The wheelchair could help people with spinal injuries, or neurological problems like cerebral palsy or motor neurone disease, operate computers and other equipment despite serious problems with muscle control. The system will work providing a person can still control their larynx, or “voice box", which may be the case even if the lack the muscle coordination necessary to produce coherent speech.

Ever feel your phone could be more communicative? A prototype developed by German and Swedish researchers uses pulses of heat on your skin to get the message across, and to direct you using GPS. They connected a phone to a Peltier device strapped to the user’s elbow that can both heat up and cool down. The tester was set loose in an unfamiliar city, and had to use the device and the GPS-capable phone to find her way to a particular location. The Peltier device used five different temperature levels to signal whether she was headed in the right direction. Hottest meant she was going the right way. The colder levels signalled how much she was deviating from the correct direction.

Shops in Germany have begun installing new check-out systems that allow customers to pay via their fingerprints. Supermarkets, hardware stores and pubs across the country say the system, which scans customers’ fingerprints and deducts the bill from their bank accounts, has been a massive success. To use the scanning machines, which cost 2,000 euros each and are supplied by German firm IT Werke, customers must have their fingerprints taken and leave their addresses and banking details with the shop.

Your brain might be your next videogame controller. That might sound pretty awesome, but the prospect of brain-controlled virtual joysticks has some scientists worried that games might end up controlling our brains. Several makers of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs – devices that facilitate operating a computer by thought alone – claim the technology is poised to jump from the medical sector into the consumer gaming world in 2008. Companies including Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky say they’ve released BCI-based software-development kits. Gaming companies may release BCI games next year, but many scientists worry that users brains’ might be subject to negative effects. For example, the devices sometimes force users to slow down their brain waves. Afterward, users have reported trouble focusing their attention.

U.S. scientists have developed a technology that can detect cancer by using a laser to scan veins, eliminating the need to draw blood. Purdue University chemical and biomedical engineering scientists collaborated with cancer and biotechnology experts from the Mayo Clinic to develop the laser technology. In addition to being less invasive, the new detection method evaluates a much larger volume of blood than what can be drawn from a patient for analysis, said Purdue Professor Philip Low. “In the initial stages of cancer, there are very few circulating tumor cells – cells that indicate the spread of cancer and initiate secondary tumor formation,” Low said. “By increasing the volume of blood analyzed, we improve the sensitivity of the test and allow for earlier diagnosis.

Although relatively new to the market, liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions may soon be obsolete, thanks to a new technique created by University of Houston professors. Vincent Donnelly, Demetre Economou and Paul Ruchhoeft, all of the Cullen College of Engineering, have developed a technique that allows nanotech devices to be mass-produced, which could move the television industry away from the LCD display to the superior field emission display (FED). FEDs use a large array of carbon nanotubes – the most efficient emitters known – to create a higher resolution picture than an LCD. The nanotech fabrication technique that can mass produce an ordered array of carbon nanotubes and make FEDs happen promises to remove some of the largest practical barriers to mass-producing nanotech devices, Economou said. Dubbed nanopantography, the method uses standard photolithography to selectively remove parts of a thin film and etching to create arrays of ion-focusing micro-lenses – small round holes through a metal structure – on a substrate, such as a silicon wafer. “These lenses act as focusing elements,” Donnelly said. “They focus the beamlets to fabricate a hole 100 times smaller than the lens size.”

A father-son research team working from separate laboratory benches across the country has discovered a new use for lasers - zapping viruses out of blood. The technique, which holds promise for disinfecting blood for transfusions, uses a low-power laser beam with a pulse lasting just fractions of a second. Johns Hopkins University student Shaw-Wei David Tsen says it was during a stroll in the park with his father that the idea was born. Tsen, an immunology researcher in the laboratory of T.C. Wu at Hopkins’ Kimmel Cancer Center, sought a new method to rid isolated blood of dangerous pathogens, including the viruses HIV and hepatitis C. He says current techniques using UV irradiation and radioisotopes can leave a trail of mutated or damaged blood components. Using ultrasonic vibrations to destroy viruses was one possibility, but his father, Kong-Thon Tsen, a laser expert at Arizona State University, had a better idea: Lasers, unlike ultrasound, can penetrate energy-absorbing water surrounding the viruses and directly vibrate the pathogen itself.

The trouble with batteries is that there never seems to be a power socket in sight when you want to charge them up. Thankfully, one manufacturer has developed a battery that should be slightly easier to recharge, thanks to its ability to run off a variety of liquids, including water and urine. Dubbed NoPoPo, the battery has been developed by the Japanese company Aqua Power System and comes in standard AA and AAA formats. Although, larger capacities for use as auxiliary power supplies have been rumoured.

A group of researchers at the Technical University of Denmark’s project laboratory in Risø have discovered a cooling method that uses magnetic materials instead of electricity, reported daily free newspaper Nyhedsavisen. The invention will allow for refrigerators to replace existing electric refrigerators in homes and businesses with a fully environmentally friendly power source. Although the first prototype will not be ready until 2010, the project’s researchers say the appliance’s cooling cycle efficiency will be 60 percent greater than that of conventional refrigerators. The new method uses opposing magnetic fields to increase the temperature of the materials employed. The heat energy is transported through a non-volatile fluid, such as water, and then thermodynamically reversed to a cold temperature. The scientists have already been able to cool a 20° C room to 11°C using the new technology. ‘It probably isn’t realistic to believe that magnetic cooling technology will be immediately available for consumer use, especially as refrigerator manufacturers have brought prices down so much in the past few years,’ said Christian Bahl, one of DTU’s project researchers. But Bahl said another of the magnetic refrigerator’s advantages is that it is silent.

When Hurricane Frances ripped through Gainesville, Fla., in 2004, Christopher Swinney, an anesthesiologist, was without electricity for a week. A few weeks ago, Dr. Swinney lost power again, but this time he was ready. He plugged his Toyota Prius into the backup uninterruptible power supply unit in his house and soon the refrigerator was humming and the lights were back on. “It was running everything in the house except the central air-conditioning,” Dr. Swinney said. Without the Prius, the batteries in the U.P.S. unit would have run out of power in about an hour. The battery pack in the car kept the U.P.S. online and was itself recharged by the gasoline engine, which cycled on and off as needed. The U.P.S. has an inverter, which converts the direct current electricity from the batteries to household alternating current and regulates the voltage. As long as it has fuel, the Prius can produce at least three kilowatts of continuous power, which is adequate to maintain a home’s basic functions. This form of vehicle-to-grid technology, often called V2G, has attracted hobbyists, university researchers and companies like Pacific Gas & Electric and Google. Although there is some skepticism among experts about the feasibility of V2G, the big players see a future in which fleets of hybrid cars, recharged at night when demand is lower, can relieve the grid and help avert serious blackouts.

In the not-too-distant-future, you’ll be able to have your sagging breasts lifted on your lunch hour! Well, just about…. An Israeli company, MIM (Minimally Invasive Mastopexy) has developed a two-hole breast lift procedure to insert what amounts to a permanent push-up bra under your breasts. How clever and how considerate! The new technique, called the “Cup&Up” involves the insertion of a silicone implant through two small incisions and its attachment to the ribs and connective tissue with a few small screws and some surgical thread. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

For the first time, researchers at Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered that certain compounds in avocados have the ability to find and destroy oral cancer cells, even before they do any damage. “It’s significant in that the compounds that we’re interested in will only target the pre-cancerous cells and potentially the cancerous cells and not affect the normal cells,” says Steven D’Ambrosio, PhD at Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. Researchers still aren’t sure exactly how the avocados do it, but they think it has something to do with phytonutrients and their ability to help regulate the signals that your body sends to certain cells. “Signals that tell cells to grow, live or die. And we’re looking at the potential targets of these phytonutrients from the avocados,” says D’Ambrosio.

Researchers at Stanford have created a new secure input system that watches your eyes scan a visual keyboard to determine what text to input into secure fields, such as a password field or an ATM PIN. The benefits of such an approach come chiefly from defeating two common ways of snagging PINs and passwords: keylogging and good old-fashioned over-the-shoulder snooping, also known as “shoulder surfing.” The researchers suggest that ATMs are a natural fit for such technology. Just think of all those moments when you’re using an ATM to withdraw or deposit money, while simultaneously attempting to shield your PIN number from the goon behind you who doesn’t have the good sense to look away or admire the cars in the parking lot while you get to business. The gaze-tracking system functions by shining an invisible infrared beam on a user’s face. The beam produces a tiny reflection in the eyes that stays put, no matter where a person looks (provided they do not move their head too much). By tracking the stable position of this reflection and the relative position of a person’s pupils, the system is able to calculate which keys or buttons a user wishes to input, and interpret the information accordingly.

The burgeoning population of road vehicles in Bangalore is widely seen as a sign of the change in its economic landscape. In the literal sense, though, the landscape has posed a string of issues for governance, the traffic police on the ground and the common man. But, as most analysts have stated in recent times, the lack of a single view among governing bodies is a critical factor that has compounded traffic management. Given this backdrop, the Bangalore Traffic Information System is a fresh project that is expected to provide a far more accurate definition of the traffic problem. It could go some way toward developing a common view of the issue before arriving at micro and holistic solutions. Little wonder that M.N. Reddi, additional commissioner of police-traffic in Bangalore City, is excited about the latest public-private initiative. Reddi researched similar projects that provide live information via text messages about traffic-congested zones, speeds of vehicles in certain areas and directions from one point in the city to another. As a city synonymous with India’s IT industry, the technology application seemed almost inevitable in Bangalore, says Reddi.

“The nanotubes are microscopic carbon cylinders, thousands of times smaller than a human hair that can be easily taken up by human cells,” said Elimelech. “We wanted to find out more about where and how they are toxic.” This “nanoscience version of a David-and-Goliath story” was hailed in an ACS preview of the work as the first direct evidence that “carbon nanotubes have powerful antimicrobial activity, a discovery that could help fight the growing problem of antibiotic resistant infections.” Using the simple E. coli as test cells, the researchers incubated cultures of the bacteria in the presence of the nanotubes for up to an hour. The microbes were killed outright – but only when there was direct contact with aggregates of the SWCNTs that touched the bacteria. Elimelech speculates that the long, thin nanotubes puncture the cells and cause cellular damage.

University of Pennsylvania researchers have designed a nanoscale system to observe and measure how individual cells react to external forces. By combining microfabricated cantilevers and magnetic nanowire technology to create independent, nanoscale sensors, the study showed that cells respond to outside forces and demonstrated a dynamic biological relationship between cells and their environment. The study also revealed that cells sense force at a single adhesion point that leads not to a local response but to a remote response from the cell’s internal forces, akin to tickling the cell’s elbow and watching the knee kick. “The cell senses the force that we apply and adjusts its own internal forces to compensate,” Chris Chen, an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn, said. “This suggests that either the cell’s cytoskeleton dictates the reaction or the cell organizes a biochemical response. In either instance, cells are adapting at the microscale.”

DNA is one of the most popular building blocks of nanotechnology and is commonly used to construct ordered nanoscale structures with controlled architectures. For the most part, DNA is looked upon as a promising building block for fabricating microelectronic circuits from the bottom up. Now a team of researchers at Young propose the marriage of DNA self-assembly with standard microfabrication and lithography tools to form features such as nanochannels, nanowires, and nanoscale trenches. This discovery may open up new avenues for nanofabrication at dimensions not accessible by conventional optical lithography. Adam Woolley and Héctor Becerril have developed a method to use DNA molecules as templates to define patterns on substrates. The researchers deposit metal films over DNA molecules aligned on a substrate. The DNA molecules essentially act as nanostencils to define sub-10-nm-sized patterns on the substrate. The researchers call this process “DNA shadow nanolithography” because the metal film is deposited at an angle and the shadow cast by the DNA molecules defines the dimensions of the features on the substrate.

Fluid from the stomach of cows could help power alternative fuel cells, new research shows. Electricity is generated in the new fuel cells by the breakdown of cellulose, which can be found in waste paper, other wood products and in the corn leaves and stalks that farms generate after a harvest. Using cellulose as an ethanol fuel source has been proposed as an alternative to using corn. Cows come into the picture because the fluid in their rumen (the largest chamber of their stomach) is rich in microbes that break down cellulose. Fuel cells are energy conversion devices like batteries, except they consume a reactant that must be replenished, whereas batteries store electrical energy chemically in a closed system. Various fuels can be used, including hydrogen, hydrocarbons and alcohols. The new fuel cell contains two compartments, one of which is filled with cellulose and rumen fluid. As the microbes break down the cellulose, electrons are created, which flow into the other chamber of the fuel cell, creating an electric current. “Energy is produced as the bacteria break down cellulose, which is one of the most abundant resources on our planet,” said study team leader Hamid Rismani-Yazdi, a graduate student at Ohio State University.

When Tim Brom 07’ set out to build a budget supercomputer with Calvin computer science professor Joel Adams, he didn’t know the product of his efforts might end up in his checked baggage headed for England. Brom, now a graduate student at the University of Kentucky continuing his studies in computer science, worked with Adams to build Microwulf, a machine that is among the smallest and least expensive supercomputers on the planet. “It’s small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk,” said Brom. This may prove useful next summer when Brom and others from his graduate program travel to England to do work that will require “a significant amount of computing power.” And as the price of commercial supercomputers is often prohibitive for many educational institutions, bringing a “personal” supercomputer like Microwulf could be a cost-effective solution for the group of graduate researchers. “So far as we can tell, this is the first supercomputer to have this low price/performance ratio—the first to cost less than $100/Gflop,” said Adams. This is a significant achievement considering that Microwulf is more than twice as fast as Deep Blue, the IBM-created supercomputer that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, and cost only a fraction of the $5 million spent to build Deep Blue.

Researchers at IBM will have two papers published in the journal Science this week detailing how it may be possible to use individual atoms, or groups of atoms, to store data or act as a transistor. The work revolves around harnessing magnetic anisotropy, a property of atoms. Something is anisotrophic if it has different values when it faces in different directions. If a substance is anisotrophic and the orientation of the substance can be controlled, then the orientation–the theory goes–of the atom can come to represent the 1s and 0s of digital computing. Potentially, atomic-level storage or switching could result in incredibly tiny computers. With atomic storage, you could fit a 1,000 trillion bits of information in an iPod, according to IBM estimates.

Researchers at Purdue University have further developed a technology that could represent a pollution-free energy source for a range of potential applications, from golf carts to submarines and cars to emergency portable generators. The technology produces hydrogen by adding water to an alloy of aluminum and gallium. When water is added to the alloy, the aluminum splits water by attracting oxygen, liberating hydrogen in the process. The Purdue researchers are developing a method to create particles of the alloy that could be placed in a tank to react with water and produce hydrogen on demand. The gallium is a critical component because it hinders the formation of an aluminum oxide skin normally created on aluminum’s surface after bonding with oxygen, a process called oxidation. This skin usually acts as a barrier and prevents oxygen from reacting with aluminum. Reducing the skin’s protective properties allows the reaction to continue until all of the aluminum is used to generate hydrogen, said Jerry Woodall, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who invented the process.

An artificial arm that uses rocket propellant to power motorized muscles is being touted by its developers as the closest thing yet to a bionic limb. Weighing in at about 4 pounds and able to move in 21 directions, the Vanderbilt Arm works remarkably similar to a human arm, which weighs about 7 pounds and can move in 26 directions. The idea is to eventually hardwire the prosthetic to a person’s nervous system for thought-controlled motion. “As far as the user is concerned, it would almost be no different than the native limb,” said Michael Goldfarb, professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Industrial Nanotech, Inc., an emerging global leader in nanotechnology, has announced that it is now in the development stage of creating a thermal insulation material that will generate electricity. The company says it is now designing the first prototype material and filing the patents necessary. According to Stuart Burchill, CEO of Industrial Nanotech, Inc.: “The benefit of a thin sheet of thermal insulation that could be used in the walls of commercial buildings and in walls and attics of houses, instead of just helping conserve energy could create energy, is incalculable. The fact that there is almost always, day or night and anywhere in the world, a difference between the temperature inside a building and outside a building gives us an almost constant source of energy generation to tap into.”

What happens when you breed a helicopter with a two-wheeler? You get a motorcycle with all-wheel drive. Philadelphia-based Christini has begun to market a drivetrain that can apply power from the engine to the front wheel of motorcycles. A second chain turns the front wheel so that riders can get through sand, snow, mud or uneven terrain more easily. “I love it. It is a total advantage,” said Mike Bergman, a professional motocross racer who’s raced twice on motorcycles equipped with Christini’s drivetrain. “Let’s say you come into a rough corner with deep ruts, it will pull you right around it.” Christini recently released a version of its drivetrain for some Honda dirt bikes and will soon have a unit that works with off-road motorcycles from KLM. Over the next few years, it hopes to move from selling its system as an aftermarket device to something that is integrated into a motorcycle at a much lower cost at the factory.

A team of U.S. researchers has found a new and inexpensive way to create a nanowire coating for titanium surfaces used in bone implants. Their nanowire scaffolds can be used ‘to create more effective surfaces for hip replacement, dental reconstruction and vascular stenting.’ As said the lead researcher, ‘We can control the length, the height, the pore openings and the pore volumes within the nanowire scaffolds’ by varying the time, temperature and alkali concentration in the reaction,’ who added that the process was also extremely sustainable, requiring only that the device be rinsed in reusable water after the heating process. These nanowire scaffolds might also be used in hospitals or in meat-processing plants to kill bacteria.

The use of renewable energy in the United States increased nearly 7% in 2006, according to preliminary statistics released on August 21st by DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). The new report finds wind power to be the fastest growing renewable energy technology, growing by 45% in 2006, followed by biofuels, which grew by 27.6%. In 2006, ethanol provided 4% of the volume of finished gasoline produced in the United States while consuming 14% of the nation’s corn crop. Hydropower production also increased by 6.9% in 2006, reaching its highest level since 2003, but it remained below the high-water years of the late 1990s.

High stress levels may contribute to memory loss among people at risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. The e4 variant of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene contributes to the risk for memory loss related to Alzheimer’s disease. Similarly, high circulating levels of cortisol, associated with high stress levels, also impairs memory. However, the interactive effects of this risk genotype and chronic stress are not well understood, so a new study being published in the September 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry was designed to explore this relationship. In their study, Peavy and colleagues performed genotyping and measured the chronic stress level in 91 older, healthy subjects (mean age was 78.8 years). Those low on stress or without the APOE-e4 risk factor performed better on memory measures than those with high stress or those positive for APOE-e4, respectively. Those individuals experiencing high stress and who were positive for APOE-e4 showed the greatest memory impairment.

Call it a new type of fishing “net": studying the ocean by connecting the seafloor to the Internet. The first step of NEPTUNE, a joint U.S.-Canadian effort to create the world’s first regional cabled ocean observatory, was made last week when the French ship Ile de Sein laid down submarine fiber-optic cables in the Pacific Ocean. Fiber-optic cables can transmit more data at a faster pace than other technologies. The Canadian section of the observatory, supported by the University of Victoria in Canada, will be built off the west coast of Vancouver Island. NEPTUNE Canada will connect hundreds of oceanographic instruments to the Internet by way of a 500-mile (800-kilometer) long fiber-optic cable that encircles the northern Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. The plate, which is named after a Greek explorer, is sliding under the western side of the North American plate. The instruments include underwater microphones that will “eavesdrop on the ocean"; sensors that will monitor nutrient levels; and various video cameras, wave sensors, and seismometers.

For the first time, organo-sulfur compounds found in garlic have been identified as effective against glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor equivalent to a death sentence within a short period after diagnosis. Researchers studied three pure organo-sulfur compounds (DAS, DADS, and DATS) from garlic and the interaction with human glioblastoma cells. All three compounds demonstrated efficacy in eradicating brain cancer cells, but DATS proved to be the most effective. The study will be published in the September issue of the American Cancer Society’s journal, Cancer. Cancer cells have a high metabolism and require much energy for rapid growth. In this study, garlic compounds produced reactive oxygen species in brain cancer cells, essentially gorging them to death with activation of multiple death cascades.

More than 130 veterans of the Iraq war now face the daunting challenge of learning to live with a missing arm. To make that transition easier, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has launched a $55-million project that pools the efforts of prosthetics experts nationwide to create a thought-controlled bionic arm that duplicates the functions of a natural limb. If all goes well, by 2009 the agency will petition the Food and Drug Administration to put the arm through clinical trials. This summer the team hit a critical milestone when it finished Proto 2, a thought-controlled mechanical arm—complete with hand and articulated fingers—that can perform 25 joint motions. This dexterity approaches that of a native arm, which can make 30 motions, and trumps the previously most agile bionic arm, the Proto 1, which could bend at the elbow, rotate its wrist and shoulder, and open and close its fingers. A person wearing a Proto 2 could conceivably play the piano. The next steps are to shrink the battery, develop more-efficient motors, and refine the bulky electrodes used to read electrical signals in muscles.

An early warning system to detect and possibly prevent asthma attacks is being developed by investigators from the University of Pittsburgh: Researchers led by Alexander Star, a chemistry professor in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, created a sensor reactive to even minute amounts of nitric oxide, a gas prevalent in the breath of asthmatics, as they describe in the Aug. 22 online edition of the journal “Nanotechnology.” Star also will present his research at the American Chemical Society’s 234th National Meeting slated for Aug. 19-23 in Boston. The sensor consists of a carbon nanotube-a rolled, one-atom thick sheet of graphite 100,000 times smaller than a human hair-coated with a polyethylene imine polymer. Star cased the sensor in a hand-held device that people blow into to determine the nitric oxide content of their breath. The nitric oxide level in the breath of a person with asthma spikes as the airways grow more inflamed. High levels-perhaps two-thirds over normal-may precede an attack by one to three weeks, but possibly earlier depending on the asthma’s severity.

Blood and sweat could power a battery that looks just like a piece of paper, scientists say. “It’s flexible, it can be shaped or folded, you can poke a hole in it and it still works,” says chemist Robert Linhardt, a member of the research team that developed the new battery, which is made from paper and carbon nanotubes. He works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Regular AA batteries, like the ones in your camera, use battery acid to produce a current. But the new paper battery can run on blood or sweat. That means it might ultimately be used to power medical devices like hearing aids or pacemakers. “It could be easily implanted directly under the skin,” unlike metal batteries, which are less flexible, Linhardt says.

“Integrating a high-quality film of silicon nanoparticles 1 nanometer in size directly onto silicon solar cells improves power performance by 60 percent in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum,” said Munir Nayfeh, a physicist at the University of Illinois and corresponding author of a paper accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letters. A 10 percent improvement in the visible range of the spectrum can be achieved by using nanoparticles 2.85 nanometers in size, said Nayfeh, who also is a researcher at the university’s Beckman Institute. In conventional solar cells, ultraviolet light is either filtered out or absorbed by the silicon and converted into potentially damaging heat, not electricity. In previous work, however, Nayfeh showed that ultraviolet light could efficiently couple to correctly sized nanoparticles and produce electricity. That work was reported in the August 2004 issue of the journal Photonics Technology Letters.

Fortunately, the boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), which devastated U.S. cotton crops for much of the 20th century, is now found only in parts of the mid-South and South Texas, thanks to eradication efforts. But monitoring weevils to keep track of where they are coming from—and where they’re going—is vital for protecting cotton crops in the United States. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologist Tom Sappington works in the ARS Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research Unit at Ames, Iowa. He has tracked local weevil movements by marking the insects with enamel paint or fluorescent powders and recapturing them later. Now he uses “microsatellites”—short, repetitive DNA sequences—and population assignment tests to find out where weevils in different populations have come from. These tests help pinpoint the migratory patterns and origins of boll weevils over long distances.

Steve Arms started by designing sensors that could be arthroscopically implanted to measure strain on knee ligaments. These days, Arms and his company, MicroStrain Inc., are experimenting with wireless sensing technology that could play a bigger role in assessing the condition of bridges after one in Minneapolis collapsed two weeks ago, killing at least nine people. The wireless, solar-powered sensor system can provide data on strain, seismic activity and vibrations on bridges, eliminating the need to manually replace batteries once the sensors are installed in hard-to-access places. Already in place on the Corinth Canal Bridge in Greece and an Interstate 95 bridge in New London, Conn., the sensors harvest energy from the sun using 6-by-9-inch photovoltaic panels. The panels are linked to rechargeable batteries and power microelectronic modules that record data from inside watertight enclosures. The data is transmitted to computers via wireless connections.

DNA, the molecule that carries life’s blueprint, is being used to control the size of nanoparticles and the speed at which they form. Learning how to tailor their assembly could lead to the creation of nanoparticles for more efficient energy generation, data storage and drug delivery systems, among other uses. Mathew Maye, a chemist in Brookhaven National Laboratory’s new Center for Functional Nanomaterials, presented the findings yesterday at the 234th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. “We can synthesize nanoparticles with very well-controlled optical, catalytic, and magnetic properties,” Maye said. “They are usually free-flowing in solution, but for use in a functional device, they have to be organized in three dimensions, or on surfaces, in a well-controlled manner. That’s where self-assembly comes into play. We want the particles to do the work themselves.” Using optical measurements, transmission electron microscopy, and x-ray scattering at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source, Maye and his colleagues have shown how to control the self-assembly of gold nanoparticles with the help of various types of DNA.

The University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, has developed some face-transforming software that allows people to change the age, sex, or ethnicity of the person in an image that you export from your computer. Or, blend features from a number of faces into one amalgam. If all that is too creepy, then just import art or animal images and morph them.

Safer, more predictable warfarin therapy could come from pretreatment genotyping to individualize dosing, investigators reported. Combining data on polymorphisms for two genes with clinical variables resulted in an algorithm that accounted for 79% of the variability in therapeutic dose in orthopedics patients, Brian F. Gage, M.D., of Washington University here, and colleagues reported online and in the Sept. 1 issue of Blood. “Ultimately, with further validation and refinement, this pharmacogenetic model should yield a streamlined approach to refining the dose and improving the safety and efficiency of warfarin initiation,” the authors concluded. Marked variation in individual dosing requirements and a narrow therapeutic index have long complicated the use of warfarin. Doses that are too high or too low increase the risk of potentially serious adverse events, including fatal bleeding.

Government agents may soon find valuable information through an online-recommendation system like the one on Amazon.com: Spies who read this report, it might say, also found these reports useful. That is one of several features the Office of the Director of National Intelligence might borrow from mainstream technology as it designs its new Web-based information-sharing system. The DNI is working on a new system intended to “tunnel through” the 16 different intelligence-gathering agencies in hopes of streamlining data sharing, said Michael Wertheimer, DNI’s assistant deputy director for analytic transformation and technology. The system, called A-Space, will only be open to those cleared to use it and is scheduled to go live in December. The DNI said it was taking its cues from social networking sites, Web-based mail, online maps and other commonly used online tools. Next month, it will take its concepts to a conference in Chicago, where universities, tech companies and other government agencies will be invited to scrutinize the project. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” Wertheimer said. “This is unlike any other technology we’ve created.” This is not the government’s first attempt to imitate consumer technology. Last year, inspired by the popular user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia, the government launched Intellipedia, an internal site aimed at information exchange in the intelligence community.

AT&T is paying millions to be the exclusive United States provider of Apple’s much-hyped and glowingly reviewed gadget, the iPhone. It took 17-year-old George Hotz two months of work to undermine AT&T’s investment. Mr. Hotz, a resident of Glen Rock, N.J., published detailed instructions online this week that he says will let iPhone owners abandon AT&T’s service and use their phones on some competing cellular networks. Mr. Hotz’s method, which requires a soldering gun, a steady hand and a set of obscure software tools, is one of several techniques that have emerged over the last week to break the technological locks confining the iPhone to AT&T’s network. “This was about opening up the device for everyone,” Mr. Hotz said in an interview over his iPhone, which he was using on the network of T-Mobile, a rival to AT&T. Last fall, the Librarian of Congress issued an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ruling that people can legally unlock their cellphones. But the ruling does not specifically apply to people like Mr. Hotz and the iPhoneSimFree group who distribute the unlocking tools.

Rice University chemists have found a way to package some of nature’s most powerful radioactive particles inside DNA-sized tubes of pure carbon – a method they hope to use to target tiny tumors and even lone leukemia cells. “There are no FDA-approved cancer therapies that employ alpha-particle radiation,” said lead researcher Lon Wilson, professor of chemistry. “Approved therapies that use beta particles are not well-suited for treating cancer at the single-cell level because it takes thousands of beta particles to kill a lone cell. By contrast, cancer cells can be destroyed with just one direct hit from an alpha particle on a cell nucleus.” In the study, Wilson, Rice graduate student Keith Hartman, University of Washington (UW) radiation oncologist Scott Wilbur and UW research scientist Donald Hamlin, developed and tested a process to load astatine atoms inside short sections of carbon nanotubes. Because astatine is the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth – with less than a teaspoon estimated to exist in the Earth’s crust at any given time – the research was conducted using astatine created in a UW cyclotron.

A consortium of energy companies, working with the University of Texas at Austin, plans to research the use of nanotechnology to help produce oil and natural gas. The proposal came to light Thursday when the Justice Department announced it would not oppose the project on antitrust grounds. Nanotechnology involves the manufacture of materials at the nanometer scale — one one-billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 80,000 nano- meters wide. The joint venture partners, calling themselves the Advanced Energy Consortium, want to develop subsurface nanosensors that could be injected into oil and gas well bores. They believe the tiny nanosensors would migrate from the well hole into the pores of surrounding geological structures, collecting information producers could use to evaluate the potential of a reservoir. The partners are BP America, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp., Shell International E&P, Occidental Oil & Gas Corp., Halliburton Energy Services and Schlumberger Technology Corp., according to the Justice Department. UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology will manage the project. Each member will contribute $1 million a year for the first three years of the project to fund the research, according to information provided to the Justice Department by the consortium and quoted in the department’s response to the consortium’s lawyer. UT will conduct the research and will own any inventions resulting from the work, while the companies will have the right to make and sell any patented technology.

A number of companies are trying to figure out ways to make cellulosic ethanol by breaking down sugar with microbes and enzymes. Sony has used similar principles to build a battery. In short, the anode of the battery consists of enzymes–a protein that speeds up chemical reactions in living organisms–which digest sugar while the cathode that breaks down oxygen. The two are connected by a membrane. The anodie extracts electrons and hydrogen. The hydrogen migrates through a membrane to the cathode side and makes water with the oxygen. Those loose electrons go to power your MP3 player or phone. Test batteries produced by Sony have managed to produce 50 milliwatts. The company even strung a bunch of them together to power an MP3 player. Sony presented a paper on it at the 234th American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition in Boston, one of the premier and longest running scientific conferences in the world.

Most lightbulbs create light with a pair electrodes. Luxim does it with radio waves. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up has come up with a way to get rid of the parts inside of high intensity discharge (HID) lamps that are often the first to fail. As a result, Luxim’s LiFi (light fidelity) lamp provides more lumens per watt and lasts longer than competing products, according to the company. In traditional HID lamps, high voltage pulses pass between two electrodes. The energy creates plasma from the ambient gases trapped inside the bulb and you get light. The electrodes, however, degrade over time. Tungsten splatters off of them and blackens the surface of the bulb.
By contrast, the Luxim bulb doesn’t have electrodes. Instead, a radio frequency amplifier pumps RF waves to an antenna inside a resonant cavity. The interaction between the waves and the crystal cavity convert trapped gases into a plasma.