Lifeboat Foundation

Sensing a hug from each other via the internet may be a possibility in the near future. A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently developed a wireless, soft e-skin that can both detect and deliver the sense of touch, and form a touch network allowing one-to-multiuser interaction. It offers great potential for enhancing the immersion of distance touch communication.

“With the rapid development of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), our visual and auditory senses are not sufficient for us to create an immersive experience. Touch communication could be a revolution for us to interact throughout the metaverse,” said Dr. Yu Xinge, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at CityU.

While there are numerous haptic interfaces in the market to simulate tactile sensation in the virtual world, they provide only touch sensing or haptic feedback. The uniqueness of the novel e-skin is that it can perform self-sensing and haptic reproducing functions on the same interface.

Arctic and save Greenland’s glaciers.

George Soros proposes geoengineering project to save Greenland’s glaciers.

Less problematic geoengineering already is underway with CO₂ direct air capture. But more controversial sunlight blocking is being proposed.

Continue reading “A Globalist Billionaire Pitches Geoengineering While Others Propose Putting Particles into the Atmosphere and Space” »

Professor Juhyuk Lee of the Department of Energy Engineering has developed an elastic triboelectric generator that can be used in the daily lives of frequent movers. The cause of the output reduction of the elastic triboelectric sensor was identified during joint research with Professor Joohun Lee of Hanyang University’s (ERICA campus) Department of Bio-Nanotechnology. Additionally, the professor used graphene to develop a touch sensor with stable output and expand the application of the triboelectric generator. The study is published in the journal Nano Energy.

Along with the rapid growth of various biosensors and wearable devices due to the continuous development of semiconductors and small electronic components, there has been a growing interest in triboelectric generators for use as sensors or energy sources. To use the triboelectric generator in a wearable device, the material that comes into contact with the body must be safe, and the output must be constant despite any deformations caused by movement.

However, the output of conventional elastic triboelectric generators is affected by its change in form. The reason for this relationship was not clearly understood. Similar to previously existing products, there are limitations to precise detection if the output changes along with the change in form, such as stretching.

Up to now, the use of models to research the barrier that separates the circulatory from the nervous system has proven to be either limited or extremely complicated. Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a more realistic model that can also be used to better explore new treatments for brain tumors.

Mario Modena is a postdoc working in the Bio Engineering Laboratory at ETH Zurich. If he were to explain his research on the blood-brain barrier —the wall that protects our central nervous system from harmful substances in the blood stream —to an 11-year-old, he would say, “This wall is important, because it stops the bad guys from getting into the brain.” If the brain is damaged or sick, he says, holes can appear in the wall. Sometimes, such holes can actually be useful, for example, for supplying the brain with urgently needed medicine. “So what we are trying to understand is how to maintain this wall, break through it and repair it again.”

This wall is also important from a medical perspective, because many diseases of the central nervous system are linked to an injury to the blood-brain barrier. To discover how this barrier works, scientists often conduct experiments on live animals. In addition to such experiments being relatively expensive, animal cells may provide only part of the picture of what is going on in a human body. Moreover, there are some critics, who question the basic validity of animal testing. An alternative is to base experiments on human cells that have been cultivated in the laboratory.

Supercooled droplets can typically freeze on surfaces in nature, and have broad-scale influence on industries where they can adversely impact technical efficiency and reliability. Superhydrophobic surfaces are therefore a materials engineering solution to rapidly shed water and reduce ice adhesion to form promising candidates that resist icing.

However, the impact of supercooled droplet freezing and their effects on droplet-substrate interactions as well as resultant applications across ice-phobic surfaces remain to be explored in physics and materials engineering.

In a new report in Nature Physics, Henry Lambley and a research team in mechanical and processing engineering at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, studied frozen supercooled droplets resting on textured surfaces. They induced freezing by evacuating the surrounding atmosphere and determined the surface properties required to promote ice formation.

How will materials behave under certain conditions? And how to make materials more robust? These two questions are crucial to design advanced materials for structural and functional components and applications. A close look at the underlying atomic structures and especially their defects is necessary to understand and predict material behavior.

Electrical conductivity, strength and fracture resistance are for example influenced by grain boundaries. It is known that grain boundaries—despite being defects—have their own ordered atomic structures, which can influence or even dominate material properties. However, their experimental observation requires precise and time-consuming atomic resolution imaging and is limited to the investigation of specific, individual cases.

But are these cases generalizable for all metals? A researcher team of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE) utilized computer simulations to show that the same atomic arrangements occur in a whole group of metals, namely fcc metals, thus proving that the “special cases” investigated in the experiments are not really exotic, but common.

It acted with rudimentary intelligence, learning, evolving and communicating with itself to grow more powerful.

A new model by a team of researchers led by Penn State and inspired by Crichton’s novel describes how biological or technical systems form complex structures equipped with signal-processing capabilities that allow the systems to respond to stimulus and perform functional tasks without external guidance.

“Basically, these little nanobots become self-organized and self-aware,” said Igor Aronson, Huck Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Mathematics at Penn State, explaining the plot of Crichton’s book. The novel inspired Aronson to study the emergence of collective motion among interacting, self-propelled agents. The research was recently published in Nature Communications.

Reconfigurable antennas — those that can tune properties like frequency or radiation beams in real-time, from afar — are integral to future communication network systems, like 6G. But many current reconfigurable antenna designs can fall short: they dysfunction in high or low temperatures, have power limitations, or require regular servicing.

To address these limitations, electrical engineers in the Penn State College of Engineering combined electromagnets with a compliant mechanism, which is the same mechanical engineering concept behind binder clips or a bow and arrow. They published their proof-of-concept reconfigurable compliant mechanism-enabled patch antenna today (February 13, 2023) in the journal Nature Communications.

<em>Nature Communications</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access, multidisciplinary, scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It covers the natural sciences, including physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, and earth sciences. It began publishing in 2010 and has editorial offices in London, Berlin, New York City, and Shanghai.

As devices get smaller and more powerful, the risk of them overheating and burning out increases substantially. Despite advancements in cooling solutions, the interface between an electronic chip and its cooling system has remained a barrier for thermal transport due to the materials’ intrinsic roughness.

Material after graphene coating. (Image: CMU)

Sheng Shen, a professor of mechanical engineering Opens in new window, has fabricated a flexible, powerful, and highly-reliable material to efficiently fill the gap (ACS Nano, “3D Graphene-Nanowire “Sandwich” Thermal Interface with Ultralow Resistance and Stiffness”).