Wearable electronics

iPhone creator says it has some 'incredible plans' involving technologies in the works Cook said that wearable computing could be a "profound area," and that the wrist is particularly "interesting." Cook said that wearable computing could be a "profound area," and that the wrist is particularly "interesting." Cook said that wearable computing could be a “profound area,” and that the wrist is particularly “interesting.” Cook said that wearable computing could be a “profound area,” and that the wrist is particularly “interesting.” Cook said that wearable computing could be a “profound area,” and that the wrist is particularly “interesting.” CEO Tim Cook said electronics that adorn the body could be a 'profound area'

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re: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Apple+creating+game+changers+such+wearable+electronics/8446990/story.html#ixzz2UrFESeds

samsung smart watch

I am not sure whether this will take of or not, already mini smartphones are not that great for surfing the net , maybe when the transmission speeds for 4g or whatever replaces 4g is at an acceptable level and cost this kind of device will take off - will keep an eye on though. I think the wearable electronics will take off in fashion , for example the picture above is of a dress that is displaying tweets and different colours.

http://www.gizmag.com/wearableelectronics/7/

Nanoporous Graphene Promises Affordable Water Desalination

 

The key to making nanoporous graphene work in this desalination process is getting the size of the pores just right. If the pores are too big, the salt can pass right through; and, conversely, if the they are too small, the water will be blocked. According to Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Associate Professor of Power Engineering in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the ideal size range is extremely limited and looks to be 1 nanometer. If the pores are slightly smaller, 0.7 nanometers, the water won’t pass through the membrane at all.
Because the graphene is a thousand times thinner than the traditional membrane materials it requires far less force—and therefore energy—to push the water molecules through it

looks like the trick is being able to manufacture (up scale) this using existing method, still it looks promising for the future.

Graphene affordable water dealination
http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2013/03/22-2.htm#.UaP138pz524

Nanotechnology for Water Filter

 

Nanotechnology has developed tremendously in the past decade and was able to create many new materials with a vast range of potential applications. Carbon nanotubes are an example of these new materials and consist of cylindrical molecules of carbon with diameters of a few nanometers -- one nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter. Carbon nanotubes possess exceptional electronic,, mechanical and chemical properties, for example they can be used to clean polluted water.

Among many potential applications, carbon nanotubes are great candidate materials for cleaning polluted water. Many water pollutants have very high affinity for carbon nanotubes and pollutants could be removed from contaminated water by filters made of this nanomaterial, for example water soluble drugs which can hardly be separated from water by activated carbon. Problems due to filters' saturation could be reduced as carbon nanotubes have a very large surface area (e.g. 500 m2 per gram of nanotube) and consequently a very high capacity to retain pollutants. "Maintenance and wastes related to water depollution could thus be reduced," says Thilo Hofmann, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy of the University of Vienna.

this has the potential to solve the water problems of the world, I wonder if this could be used in the desalination process to get drinking water from sea water - will search further

Nanotechnology for water Filter

Graphene

 
Graphene is a material composed of pure carbon, with atoms arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern. Graphene can be described as a one-atom thick layer of the mineral graphite, (many layers of graphene stacked together effectively form crystalline flake graphite). Amongst its other well-publicised superlative properties, it is very light, with a 1-square-meter sheet weighing only 0.77 milligrams.


Transparent electrodes are in and of themselves nothing all that new – they’re currently used in things like touchscreens and flat-screen TVs. Thanks to research being conducted at Indiana’s Purdue University, however, a new class of such electrodes may soon find use in a variety of other applications, including flexible electronic devices.
Currently, transparent electrodes are made from a material known as indium tin oxide, or ITO. Although it suffices for its job, it’s brittle, cracking and losing functionality if flexed. Additionally, it degrades over time, and is somewhat expensive due to the limited quantities of indium metal.
As an alternative, the Purdue scientists combined graphene with silver nanowires to form a thin, transparent film.
The hybrid nature of the film is important, as either material alone exhibits too much electrical sheet resistance for use in a transparent electrode. Resistance occurs at the boundaries between the different segments that make up a single sheet of graphene, while the jumbled nature in which silver nanowires clump together results in poor contact between them.
In the film, however, the graphene is draped over the nanowires like “a sheet of cellophane over a bowl of noodles.” This gives the nanowires an overlying point of contact with one another, while also minimizing the resistance inherent within the graphene.

I think I need to research this material further, looks like it will be a game changer.



http://www.gizmag.com/graphene-silver-nanowire-transparent-electrodes/27638/

Top 10 Uses for the World's Strongest Material

 

Graphene is the world's new wonder material. It's the thinnest electronic material ever invented, consisting of a layer of carbon atoms just a single atom thick -- the atoms are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. It weighs almost nothing, coming in at only 0.77 grams for a square meter.

ANALYSIS: Now Nanotubes Can Be Spun into Spools of Wires

But it's no lightweight. Graphene is 100 times stronger than steel of the same thickness. It conducts both heat and electricity better than copper, and has outstanding optical and mechanical properties. If it could be produced on an industrial scale, graphene might revolutionize fields such as electronics and even body armor.

 Graphene repels water and is highly conductive, a combination that keeps steel from coming into contact with water and slows down the electrochemical reactions that oxidize iron

 Buffalo chemists designed a polymer coating containing this exotic form of carbon. They painted steel with the coating and then dipped the coated metal in a brine to see if it would stay rust-free. It did -- for an entire month. Such a coating could eliminate rusted cars forever.

Graphene transmits the heat energy from an electrical current to make sound.

At the University of Texas researchers put a layer of graphene less than a single nanometer thick onto glass and two different types of plastic. Next, they ran an alternating current through the layers, which produced sound. The graphene speakers are thin and because they transmit the heat energy from the electrical current to make sound, rather than vibrating a diaphragm, they can be made into any shape.

NEWS: Supercapacitor Could Power a Laptop for Days

Graphene could change that. It can be etched with a laser to create more surface area and in turn allow a capacitor to store way more energy than its ordinary carbon brethren. Capacitors can also go through many more cycles than batteries without failing. In the future, graphene supercapacitors could power electronics and even electric cars.


Graphene oxide is remarkably good at absorbing radioactive waste. Researchers at Rice University and Lomonosov Moscow State University found that microscopic bits of graphene oxide bind to radioactive contaminants, turning them into clumps that can be easily collected.

NEWS: Nuclear Plant Powered by Spent Fuel

 Flexible Electronic Circuits

  Silicon semiconductor chips give computers their brainpower. They process the 1s and 0s of binary code that are the fundamental building blocks of digital information. But graphene has the potential to process those 1s and 0s much faster than silicon because it conducts electricity better, all while using less power and generating less heat. That means a laptop could operate 50 times faster and need no cooling fans. Over the last two years giants such as IBM have developed working graphene-based processors for wireless devices, and one company, Digital Core Design of Poland, announced in April that it built a processor that could work in a tablet. The first graphene processors could be reaching consumers in the next five years, as manufacturers refine the fabrication process.

Sheets of graphene can crumple up like paper, but they are difficult to flatten out. At Duke University scientists recently attached graphene to a pre-stretched rubber sheet and found that when the sheet was relaxed, the graphene still adhered to the rubber even though it was crumpled up. That led them to layer the graphene with polymer, which expanded and contracted when a current was run through it – a key component in building artificial muscle.

NEWS: Artificial Muscle Stronger Than the Real Thing

 Graphene foam can pick up small concentrations of the nitrates and ammonia found in explosives. A sensor developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute the size of a postage stamp could one day be a regular part of the kit carried by bomb squads.


 Australian researchers found a way to make fibers from a composite material made of (http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW118285.html) graphene that's stronger than Kevlar. Adding an equal amount of graphene and carbon nanotubes to a polymer produced a super-strong fiber that could be spun into the fabric used to make bulletproof vests. The fibers could also be used to strengthen other materials.
 

Photodetectors are computer chips that convert photons from light into electrical signals. Every digital camera has one and they are made of silicon. Frank Koppens and his colleagues at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona dotted a layer of graphene with lead sulfide and created an ultra-sensitive and flexible photodector that could lead to thinner cameras and more lightweight night vision goggles.

NEWS: Night Vision Coming Soon to Cellphones, Eyeglasses

 
I wonder when this is going to make an impact on society, or will patent wars slow the implementation of this wonder material, it is rust resistant as well so marine applications?


http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanotechnology/top-10-uses-worlds-strongest-material-130212.htm

Environmental Sensors on RFID

Developments are on going with the aim of enabling the deployment of the internet of things. RFID (radio frequency identification) is one the technology considered to link wirelessly the different smart objects. Moreover, the monitoring of parameters during the shipment of goods is gaining a significant importance over the last years.

This could allow for instance to minimize the waste of perishable goods along the logistic chain. To detect cold chain breaking, several systems combining a temperature sensor and RFID communication appeared lately on the marketThey provide valuable information on critical events that may have occurred during shipment.

The integration of sensors with RFID will allow the deployment of a new generation of smart objects. We are working at the integration of sensors on RFID tags for environmental monitoring. Chemical and physical sensors are made out of flexible plastic foils and transfer to the tag at the moment. However we are targeting in a next step their direct large scale fabrication on the tags based on printing processes. We are currently performing the integration of a multi sensor plastic chip, composed of ultra-low power gas, humidity and temperature sensors, onto a RFID tag. The sensing chip is combined with very low power read-out circuitry and microcontroller for data acquisition and storage.
Other types of environmental sensors under development on plastic foil and that could be potentially integrated on tags are vibrations, shock, pressure and light sensors. Vibrations and shock sensors can have interesting applications in the field of logistics, machine tool and structure monitoring, safety, among others.


Ultra low power humidity, temperature and gas sensors
on polyimide foil for RFID tag.


makes interesting reading, think of the saving that this technology can make, picking up changes in the environment and triggering timely responses to catch certain conditions that may result in failure



  http://samlab.epfl.ch/page-15520-en.html

Micro gas engines - The Little Engine That Could Be

The micro turbine rotor.

The development of a fuel-powered miniature engine, touted as a more efficient and longer lasting alternative for the battery, may push the Energizer Bunny to the unemployment lines.
No bigger than a regular shirt button, the micro gas turbine engine uses the same process for producing electricity as its big brother electricity stations -- burning fuel and running it through a power plant.

"Fuel and air in, and electricity out," said Luc Frechette, one of the Microengine Project team members at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Frechette is currently assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University.
At about one thousandth the size of a regular power station, the engine-on-a-chip will create about 1 millionth the power level, producing 20 watts of power at 2.4 million rpm from its cubic centimeter-sized package.

"It will give 10 times the amount of power that is generated by the best lithium battery," Frechette said.

And when the engine runs out of juice you just fill 'er up again. There's no need to wait to recharge or run out to the store for new batteries.

"If you take a laptop battery for instance, it's just a bit bigger than a deck of cards. The engine would take up the space of, say, a quarter. The rest of the space would be for the fuel tank," Frechette said.
"This fuel could last you for 24 hours and then, when empty, you can just refill the tank."
Weighing less than a gram, the engine is constructed from eight wafers of diffusion-bonded silicon and consists of a combustion chamber that ignites hydrogen and shoots hot gas past a spinning turbine that powers the compressor to drive the machinery.

 "The military are very interested in these. The small robots sent into the WTC rubble, for instance, had to be connected with cables to power them because their batteries are too heavy to carry," Frechette said.

 

The micro engine would eradicate these problems., The commercial market will follow.

"For commercial use, the first application will probably be a battery charger -- if not actually in a laptop it could sit beside it," Frechette said. "Instead of having to get to an AC outlet, you can carry your power supply along with you."

this could be an alternative to batteries - although there could be other factors that will inhibit the uptake of this technology - like the new battery technology that looks promising. this could be the answer for recharging batteries at seas, at remote places on the earth etc.

engine on a chip promises to best battery

The Little Engine that could be

Gut-on-a-chip

 

 

 “organ-on-a-chip” technologies could not only do away with animal models that have proven disappointingly unreliable, but their ease of use and affordability could speed up the drug discovery process.
The newest of these, gut-on-a-chip, attempts to mimic the physiology, structure, and mechanics of the human intestines. It is roughly the size of a thumb drive and contains a central chamber that houses a pliant, porous membrane lined with human intestinal epithelial cells, producing an artificial intestinal barrier. It can even harbor the microbes normally abundant in our gut’s luminal space. Not only does the 3D chip mimic organ anatomy, the membrane is controlled with a vacuum pump to produce the peristaltic motions that occur during digestion.

Although the gut-on-a-chip is not yet ready widespread for use, it could potentially provide a relatively cheap way to study intestinal disorders such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. And the safety and efficacy of any treatment for gut disorders could be tested on the chip.



You wonder where this technology is going, certainly great for lab rats and mice - who knows we may eventually have a bionic man. It looks like the real positive side of this is in drug development ie assuming these digital environments simulate the human environment, there could be other spin-offs as well like sensor technology.

http://singularityhub.com/2012/06/21/gut-on-a-chip-the-latest-in-scientists-attempt-to-mimic-organs-in-the-lab/

A screen at your fingertips

Researchers at the National Taiwan University in Taipei may have the perfect solution - a screen on your fingernail.

The prototype is a little clunky - a one-inch OLED screen attached to a ring that you wear on your thumb. But engineers working on the project hope one day it will be possible to coat fingernails in organic light-emitting materials and wirelessly beam content directly to the nail itself.
"The proposed display augments the use of a finger by allowing for always-available visual feedback," write the researchers in their paper, NailDisplay: Bringing an Always-Available Visual Display To Fingertips. "What you control is what you see."
The technology, dubbed NailDisplay, has the potential to revolutionise the way we use devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs, the researchers say.
The aim of the technology is to allow you to see what's on your device's screen even when your thumbs are covering up the display. For example, if you're typing on a smartphone screen but can't actually see the keys you are trying to press, the NailDisplay would show what's going on under your thumbs.

 The researchers say the device incorporates an accelerometer, which means different content could be displayed using different finger gestures.

certainly intersting although I am not sure it will take off, why would we want to see our smartphone on our nails, maybe if the phone  is in you poccket it saves you having to take it out of the pocket to see messages.

A screen at your fingertips

Smart Home Technology: Intelligent Choices for Your Abode

 

 

Thanks to a recent onslaught of smart appliances, home life could get quite a bit easier in the near future. Especially if you’re able to activate the dishwasher from your smartphone while you’re at the office!
 

At the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this year, an array of smart products made their debut. Not only did these items attract attention for their innovative capabilities, they provided a glimpse into the future of appliances. Groundbreaking and even controversial, the products also make it clear that our smartphones may be more involved in day-to-day home duties than we thought.

I think that will become the norm in modern households , just the same as we are getting merging technology on smartphones. Remotely controlling light from your smartphone, just think you can turn off heaters you forgot to turn off when going out, or even turn on the electric blanket before arriving home from a night out.







Smart Home Technology: Intelligent Choices for Your Abode

RFID Crime: A new toy for Hackers

Radio-Frequency Identification or RFID is an increasingly common technology which has a tremendous amount of legitimate potential to benefit society and business.  There are of course criminal downsides to this technology.  There are many reported causes of RFID systems being hacked by international technologically savvy criminals. This is certainly an annoyance today when RFID is in its infancy.  But what will be the social and criminal justice impact of RFID when these devices become ubiquitous?  What new crimes await us when most inatimate objects have RFID sensors?
 

Customers can swipe debit cards to pay for transactions totalling less than £15 — doing away with the need for chip and pin.

The technology — known as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) — transmits details via a radio signal, which is implanted in bank cards which carry a special symbol.

The payment method is intended to cut queuing times in shops — but fraud gangs are taking the same technology to the streets.

According to the UK Cards Association there are 19.6million cards with contactless functionality in the UK and 73,000 terminals in shops and restaurants.

An RFID reader enables thieves to read a stranger’s card simply by walking past them — and the devices cost as little as £7 online, We demonstrated how easy it is to commit the crime — known as “RFID skimming” — with a reader we bought for £200.

 

But before you cut up your RFID bank cards or lock them away in a box, The Sun can reveal a simple and cheap trick to ensure your card is never skimmed.
Tin foil blocks all RFID signals — so lining your wallet or purse with it is a sure way to keep your card details secure.

How crooks work it...

1) THEY buy similar card reader to those used in shops and walk around scanning people.

2) THEIR victims’ cards transmit data to the fraudster’s reader without them even knowing.

3) CRIMINALS can then impregnate the details on to a blank card — or shop online.

This is going to  factor that payment systems are going to have to include safegaurd mechanisms against,  not a pleasant thought , I ll invest in a metal wallet.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4285837/Robbed-by-radiowave.html#ixzz2U5THNpdT

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4285837/Robbed-by-radiowave.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/151822/article.html