One of the World's Smallest Electronic Circuits Created

One of the World's Smallest Electronic Circuits Created

  9:48:00 AM    Science Lover

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A team of scientists, led by Guillaume Gervais from McGill's Physics Department and Mike Lilly from Sandia National Laboratories, has engineered one of the world's smallest electronic circuits. It is formed by two wires separated by only about 150 atoms or 15 nanometers (nm).

Scientists have engineered one of the world's smallest electronic
circuits. It is formed by two wires separated by only about 150
atoms or 15 nanometers (nm).
(Credit: Image courtesy of McGill University)

The discovery, published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, could have a significant effect on the speed and power of the ever smaller integrated circuits of the future in everything from smartphones to desktop computers, televisions and GPS systems.

This is the first time that anyone has studied how the wires in an electronic circuit interact with one another when packed so tightly together. Surprisingly, the authors found that the effect of one wire on the other can be either positive or negative. This means that a current in one wire can produce a current in the other one that is either in the same or the opposite direction. This discovery, based on the principles of quantum physics, suggests a need to revise our understanding of how even the simplest electronic circuits behave at the nanoscale.

In addition to the effect on the speed and efficiency of future electronic circuits, this discovery could also help to solve one of the major challenges facing future computer design. This is managing the ever-increasing amount of heat produced by integrated circuits

Well-known theorist Markus Büttiker speculates that it may be possible to harness the energy lost as heat in one wire by using other wires nearby. Moreover, Buttiker believes that these findings will have an impact on the future of both fundamental and applied research in nanoelectronics.

The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de recherche Nature et Technologies of Quebec, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Center of Integrated Nanotechnologies at Sandia National Laboratories.

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GPS-Enabled Shoes to Help Track Down Grandpa

GPS-Enabled Shoes to Help Track Down Grandpa

  10:06:00 AM    Science Lover

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The next frontier for GPS? Footwear for those suffering from Alzheimer's.

New GPS-enabled shoes are meant to provide safety and security for all walks of life.

Shoes with built-in GPS could be coming to a store near you this month. AFP reports that 3,000 of the shoes, a collaboration between GTX Corp and Aetrex Worldwide, have shipped and will retail at about $300 per pair.

What, exactly, you may wonder, is a possible use case for a GPS-enabled shoe? There are several, apparently.

MSNBC reports that another effort, from something called "The Aphrodite Project" (URL: SexyGpsShoes.com) involves GPS-equipped sandals intended to keep prostitutes safe. "Our first shoe...was inspired by the prostitutes of ancient Greece and Rome, who enticed clients with their flutes and sandals that left 'follow me' footprints in the earth," write the founders of The Aphrodite Project.

Another use case could be for missing children: GTX Corp first got the idea for the shoes, reportedly, in the wake of the 2002 Elizabeth Smart case. The idea was that if a child were kidnapped or wandered off while wearing the GPS shoes, you could easily track him or her down. Call it a digitally enabled AMBER alert.

Eventually, GTX Corp and Aetrex came to settle on another "use case" entirely: the Alzheimer's patient. Those suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's will often wander off and become lost or confused. "They go for a walk and they can get lost for days," Andrew Carle, a professor of Health and Human Services at George Mason College (and an adviser on the GPS shoe project), told AFP. It is, sadly, a growth market. Five million Americans have Alzheimer's; as many as 20 million may come to suffer from it in the near future. The majority of Alzheimer's patients exhibit wandering behavior at some point; if not found within a few days, these sufferers can become severely injured or even die from dehydration.

Much like with similar technologies that allow you to essentially helicopter parent your pet, the GTX/Aetrex shoe allows caretakers or family members to set up a geofence for safe wandering; if the wearer strays beyond the geofence, an alert will go out. But aren't there easier ways to get a GPS unit on a senior? Carle claimed that paranoia often prevents Alzheimer's patients from wearing, say, a wristwatch with a GPS unit. "If it's a wristwatch and it's not their wristwatch," he said, "they will take it off. So you have to hide it."

It isn't the first time caretakers have resorted to a bit of ingenuity to aid in caring for those with Alzheimer's. Listen, for example, to this amazing story care of Radiolab about a German nursing home that built a fake bus stop to convince its wandering Alzheimer's sufferers to simply sit and wait.

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Powering Gadgets a Step at a Time

Powering Gadgets a Step at a Time

  12:52:00 AM    Science Lover

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A microfluidics approach could be ideal for harnessing electricity from footsteps.

Power walk: An artist’s concept shows an energy-harvesting device based on a new microfluidics approach. The device could be embedded in ashoe sole.Credit: InStep NanoPower

A new way to harvest footfall energy could someday let shoes generate enough power to keep cell phones and laptops topped up.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have come up with a microfluidics technique that scavenges considerably more energy from human footfalls and converts it into electric power. Previous attempts to make energy-harvesting shoes have yielded less than a watt of power, but the new approach could lead to a shoe-mounted generator that produces up to 10 watts, says Tom Krupenkin, a mechanical engineering professor who led the work.

"A lot of energy is simply wasted as heat while we walk," says Krupenkin. "If one can convert this into electrical energy, numbers come out to be up to 10 watts per foot." Cell phones and smart phones need about one to two watts, while small laptops need 10 to 12 watts. Power-generating shoes could be an important breakthrough for soldiers, who currently carry heavy batteries to power their radios, GPS units, and night-vision goggles.

Walking exerts a lot of force on the heel and toe, and cushioned soles can compress by about a centimeter with every step. Energy harvesters convert this force and displacement into electrical energy. The most promising approaches to tap into the human gait have involved piezoelectrics and electroactive polymers, materials that convert mechanical stress into electric power. But neither material works well with the relatively high displacements, but low frequency, of footfalls, Krupenkin says.




The new concept, presented in a Nature Communications paper, involves microscopic droplets of a conductive fluid flowing between electrodes coated with dielectric films. The droplets—the researchers used mercury or a gallium-based alloy called galistan—can be sandwiched between flat plates coated with the film or can be enclosed in a coated microchannel. When the area of overlap between the droplets and electrodes changes, an electric current is produced.

"It's a unique approach to energy harvesting," says Andrew Haughian, a partner at Vancouver, Canada-based venture capital firm Pangaea Ventures, which is evaluating the technology for potential investment. "The biggest opportunity I see would be in [developing countries], where the power grid is not reliable."

It might be years before you can buy a power-generating shoe, though. So far, the researchers have only made an array of 150 droplets that gives a few milliwatts of power. However, they calculate that a device with 1,000 droplets in a four-meter-long, one-millimeter-wide channel, which would cover an area of 40 square centimeters and fit in a shoe sole, could generate a few watts.

"The process is interesting, and the work itself is very good," says Paul Wright, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley. However, he says, "to be useful to society, they would need to scale up the approach and show that it still works."

Krupenkin and his colleagues have established a startup, InStep NanoPower, to develop and possibly commercialize the technology. The company has a first-generation benchtop-sized prototype device. They expect the third generation harvester could be embedded in footwear. "This type of product will have to be a collaborative project between Instep and a shoe manufacturer," Krupenkin says. "We can't expect anything on the market earlier than two years."

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Miniature Lasers Could Help Launch New Age of the Internet

Miniature Lasers Could Help Launch New Age of the Internet

  5:49:00 PM    Science Lover

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A new laser device created at the University of Central Florida could make high-speed computing faster and more reliable, opening the door to a new age of the Internet.

Sabine Freisem, a senior research scientist who 
has been collaborating with Deppe for the past eight 
years, works on lasers in their UCF lab. (Credit: UCF)

Professor Dennis Deppe's miniature laser diode emits more intense light than those currently used. The light emits at a single wavelength, making it ideal for use in compact disc players, laser pointers and optical mice for computers, in addition to high-speed data transmission.

Until now, the biggest challenge has been the failure rate of these tiny devices. They don't work very well when they face huge workloads; the stress makes them crack.

The smaller size and elimination of non-semiconductor materials means the new devices could potentially be used in heavy data transmission, which is critical in developing the next generation of the Internet. By incorporating laser diodes into cables in the future, massive amounts of data could be moved across great distances almost instantaneously. By using the tiny lasers in optical clocks, the precision of GPS and high-speed wireless data communications also would increase.

"The new laser diodes represent a sharp departure from past commercial devices in how they are made," Deppe said from his lab inside the College of Optics and Photonics. "The new devices show almost no change in operation under stress conditions that cause commercial devices to rapidly fail."

"At the speed at which the industry is moving, I wouldn't be surprised if in four to five years, when you go to Best Buy to buy cables for all your electronics, you'll be selecting cables with laser diodes embedded in them," he added.

Deppe and Sabine Freisem, a senior research scientist who has been collaborating with Deppe for the past eight years, presented their findings in January at the SPIE (formerly The International Society for Optical Engineering) Photonics West conference in San Francisco.

Deppe has spent 21 years researching semiconductor lasers, and he is considered an international expert in the area. sdPhotonics is working on the commercialization of many of his creations and has several ongoing contracts.

"This is definitely a milestone," Freisem said. "The implications for the future are huge."

But there is still one challenge that the team is working to resolve. The voltage necessary to make the laser diodes work more efficiently must be optimized

Deppe said once that problem is resolved, the uses for the laser diodes will multiply. They could be used in lasers in space to remove unwanted hair.

"We usually have no idea how often we use this technology in our everyday life already," Deppe said. "Most of us just don't think about it. With further development, it will only become more commonplace."

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Google Latitude lets you track friends,kids

Google Latitude lets you track friends,kids

  9:57:00 AM    Science Lover

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A new service on Google Maps, called Latitude, allows cellphone users to check their own location, as well as track their friends' whereabouts. The software, which can also be installed on a laptop or PC, plots a user's location - marked by a personal picture on the map - by relaying on cellphone towers, GPS or a Wi-Fi connection. As for privacy concerns, Latitude - functional in India lets the user decide who can monitor his location, and in how much detail.

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