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smarterplanet: Chinese team develop fuel cell that can clean water as it generates electricity | Physorg.com Yanbiao Liu and his colleagues from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, have succeeded in building a device capable of both cleaning wastewater and producing electricity from it. Using light as an energy source the team created a photo-catalytic fuel cell that used a titanium dioxide nanotube-array anode and a cathode based on platinum. The light energy degrades the organic material found in the wastewater and in the process generates electrons which pass through the cathode converting it into electricity. The team has published its results on Water Science & Technology.

smarterplanet:

Chinese team develop fuel cell that can clean water as it generates electricity | Physorg.com

Yanbiao Liu and his colleagues from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, have succeeded in building a device capable of both cleaning wastewater and producing electricity from it. Using light as an energy source the team created a photo-catalytic fuel cell that used a titanium dioxide nanotube-array anode and a cathode based on platinum. The light energy degrades the organic material found in the wastewater and in the process generates electrons which pass through the cathode converting it into electricity. The team has published its results on Water Science & Technology.


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Computer-Controlled Swarm of Bacteria Builds Tiny Pyramid

Researchers at the NanoRobotics Laboratory of the École Polytechnique de Montréal, in Canada, are putting swarms of bacteria to work, using them to perform micro-manipulations and even propel microrobots.

Led by Professor Sylvain Martel, the researchers want to use flagellated bacteria to carry drugs into tumors, act as sensing agents for detecting pathogens, and operate micro-factories that could perform pharmacological and genetic tests.

They also want to use the bacteria as micro-workers for building things. Things like a tiny step pyramid.

The video above shows some 5000 bacteria moving like a swarm of little fish, working together to transport tiny epoxy bricks and assemble a pyramidal structure — all in 15 minutes.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!~ 

In honor of the Countess of Lovelace (humankind’s first computer programmer or, as some might argue, merely the author of “the first ever documentation on what it meant to be computer programmer”) and because I pledged to do so at Finding Ada, I’m helping celebrate women in tech and science with a post on a notable woman in the field:  Dava J. Newman

Dr. Newman is a Professor of Aeronautics / Astronautics and Engineering Systems, Director of Technology and Policy Program, and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT.  Her research focuses on optimizing performance in extreme conditions, namely space and inhospitable moons & planets.

As stated on her bio page at the Forum Network, she is currently “designing a revolutionary, advanced spacesuit for future exploration missions, the Bio-Suit System”, scheduled for launch in 2020.  In the video above, she describes and demos the suit. [Current spacesuits are bulky, weigh 300 lbs and thereby only work decently well in 0 grav environments.  They severely limit range of motion, no bending knees or elbows, making moon/planetside exploration more than a bit difficult.]

What I admire about her, beyond all the cool stuff she’s working on, is her holistic approach to the problem. 

A small example:  She once spent 1.5 years sailing around the world.  They made stops at tiny inhabited islands along the way, meeting people, talking to the kids about space exploration. 

How it relates to her work as a scientist?  She spent approximately 574 days (similar to the 520-day Mars simulation being run in Russia) in relative isolation, traveling island to island across vast distances of ‘empty’ ocean.  She also asked the islanders she met about their sense of isolation, getting a feel (slight tho’ it may be) for what it might be like for future colonists on Mars or the moon.

Opportunity Mars Rover Gets Artificial Intelligence Upgrade, Decides For Itself What to Explore Next | Popular Science Click for high-res photo

Opportunity Mars Rover Gets Artificial Intelligence Upgrade, Decides For Itself What to Explore Next | Popular Science


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QuantumFilm: Dots Do It Better, Says Phone Camera Chip Designer

QuantumFilm: Dots Do It Better, Says Phone Camera Chip Designer


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Tiny Mini-Generators Scavenge Energy From Ambient, Random Vibrations

The new Parametric Frequency Increased Generators from the U of M team have a huge advantage over other kinetic energy harvesters because they can scavenge the arbitrary, ambient, non-repeatable vibrations that are far more common in the world around us.

For instance, the vibrations caused by traffic passing over a bridge could power wireless structural sensors on the underside of the structure, and everything from lampposts to skyscrapers could harness energy from wind vibrations to power — at least partially — their day-to-day operations. Placed in stairwells, the generators could harness the kinetic energy of climbing to power the emergency lighting, and on electric cars they could feed some of the energy lost through engine rattle back into the energy loop. They could even be used to power sensors in far flung, off-the-grid locales, like fire-detecting sensors deep within forests.

IEEE Spectrum: Willow Garage Details Its Robotics Navigation Software

In a recent video, Willow Garage researcher Eitan Marder-Eppstein describes the open-source navigation stack they’ve released as version 1.0. The code, available at http://ros.org/wiki/navigation, was designed to be flexible and cross-platform, he says, and could be used in anything from a small iRobot Create-based bot to a large multi-sensor robot like Willow’s own PR2.

On-Chip Routers Could be a Choke Point for Future Chips

Interconnect delays dwarfed by slow-downs at sluggish routers in future many-core chips, say researchers

IEEE Spectrum: Intel and Micron Double the Capacity of Flash Memory

IMFT’s 25-nm process can make a NAND device that stores 8 gigabytes of memory in 167 square millimeters, twice the density found in today’s standard, 34-nm flash devices. A chip no larger than the hole in a compact disc can hold 10 times as much data as that disc, says Troy Winslow, director of NAND marketing for Intel. A more intriguing possibility is using flash drives in a wider range of laptop computers than has been possible at today’s prices. As a replacement for a rotating magnetic hard drive, flash enables a laptop to turn on instantly, subsist on less power, and survive drops more easily. Up to now flash drives for laptops have lagged in the number of gigabytes they can hold, as well as in speed of access and in how long they last. But Kevin Kilbuck, director of NAND marketing for Micron, says the companies expect in a few months to offer solid-state drives that begin to solve these problems.

Micro Listening Device Identifies Any Sound In Battle - PSFK A Dutch firm, Microflown Technologies, has created a micro device which listens for various sounds emanating from a battle field, such as gunshots, mortars, screams and warplanes. The Acoustic Vector Sensor is smaller than a match head and consists of two platinum strips. Popsci reports more on the working of this device: By measuring the mechanical movement of individual air particles, as opposed to sound waves as a whole, the device can not only pinpoint the origin of sniper fire or approaching aircraft, but detail their make and model, as well. Click for high-res photo

Micro Listening Device Identifies Any Sound In Battle - PSFK

A Dutch firm, Microflown Technologies, has created a micro device which listens for various sounds emanating from a battle field, such as gunshots, mortars, screams and warplanes. The Acoustic Vector Sensor is smaller than a match head and consists of two platinum strips.

Popsci reports more on the working of this device:

By measuring the mechanical movement of individual air particles, as opposed to sound waves as a whole, the device can not only pinpoint the origin of sniper fire or approaching aircraft, but detail their make and model, as well.


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Flexible robots: Return of the blob

TRAPPED under a pile of rubble, you wait for rescue. Then, to add to your troubles, you see a small blob ooze through a nearby crack. It is not, however, an extra from a horror film in search of a meal, for soon afterwards it is followed by the emergency services digging down to find you.

This scene is science fiction now, but it might not be for much longer. Traditionally, people have thought of robots as whirring bits of metal, but there are those in the field who ask why that need be so. Instead of trying to build a robot that looks like a human, an insect or even a tank, some robotics experts have decided to look to the humble amoeba for inspiration.

America’s Department of Defence has taken the idea seriously enough to provide a $3.3m grant via its research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, to iRobot (a company best known for its vacuum-cleaning robot, the Roomba). Chris Jones, research programme manager at iRobot, says that DARPA’s criterion for the robot was that it had to fit through an opening half its full diameter.

smarterplanet: techspotlight: Science fiction turns fact as ‘internet of things’ draws closer | Technology | guardian.co.uk

smarterplanet:

techspotlight:

Science fiction turns fact as ‘internet of things’ draws closer | Technology | guardian.co.uk


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infoneer-pulse: emergentfutures: Optical System Promises to Revolutionize Undersea Communications In a technological advance that its developers are likening to the cell phone and wireless Internet access, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers have devised an undersea optical communications system that — complemented by acoustics — enables a virtual revolution in high-speed undersea data collection and transmission.

infoneer-pulse:

emergentfutures:

Optical System Promises to Revolutionize Undersea Communications

In a technological advance that its developers are likening to the cell phone and wireless Internet access, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers have devised an undersea optical communications system that — complemented by acoustics — enables a virtual revolution in high-speed undersea data collection and transmission.


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BBC News - Tiny ear listens to hidden worlds

A micro-ear could soon help scientists eavesdrop on tiny events just like microscopes make them visible.

am intrigued by recent usages of sound, see SASERs (phonons instead of photons)

mikehudack:

“NTT DoCoMo has created headphones that sense eye movements. For instance, you can look from right to left to pause your music. Look right, then right again, to skip to the next track. Roll them clockwise to raise the volume…. They sense the movements of the eyeballs by measuring tiny changes in electric charge. It turns out that the cornea, the outer surface of the eyes, has a positive charge. When you look left, the resulting shift in the electrical charge can be detected as far away as the ears.”

— Looks can’t kill but might control your phone (via mattlehrer)