Litroenergy is a new type of material that emits light for 12 years without needing electricity or sun exposure. The self-luminous micro-particles are called Litrospheres and are said to be non-toxic, inexpensive and equivalent to a 20 watt incandescent bulb. The Litrospheres give off a continuous illumination, and can be designed to glow in any colour. In addition, they are not affected by heat or cold and are 5,000-pound crush resistant. They can be injection molded or added to paint. The fill rate of Litroenergy micro particles in plastic injection molding material or paint is about 20%
One of the potentially useful things that a living cell can do is pump ions across its membrane. Simon Levinson, a biophysicist at the University of Colorado Medical School in Denver, US, says this generates a potential difference and so could be exploited to make a biobattery. Levinson believes that kidney cells, which are particularly good at transporting ions, could be well suited to making a miniature battery. This would be formed by stacking up large numbers of cell layers to boost the voltage and current they can produce
Every year about 1,500 people in the US have surgical objects accidentally left inside them after surgery, according to medical studies. To prevent this potentially deadly problem, Loyola University Medical Centre is utilising a new technology that is helping its surgical teams keep track of all sponges used during a surgical procedure. Each sponge has a unique bar code affixed to it that is scanned by a high-tech device to obtain a count. Before a procedure begins, the identification number of the patient and the badge of the surgical team member maintaining the count are scanned into the counter. When a sponge is removed from a patient, it is scanned back into the system. A surgical procedure cannot end until all sponges are accounted for — via Slashdot
Two engineers at the University of California, Riverside are part of a binational team that has found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria — a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices. The research team believes this is the first time nanotubes have been shown to be produced by biological rather than chemical means. It opens the door to the possibility of cheaper and more environmentally friendly manufacture of electronic materials
Ageing may be as important to electronics as it is to good wine. A plastic transistor doubles its performance if simply left to sit at room temperature for a week. Cheap to mould, pentacene transistors are a promising candidate for organic electronics. However, when they are being built, molecules can misalign to form defects, which trap electrons and slow the transistors down
Scientists from Korea and the Czech Republic have discovered new drugs that can counteract the chemical overload caused by nerve gas. All of the experimental medications belong to a family of chemicals called oximes. Those molecules reactivate the enzyme that is damaged by the chemical weapons. Last year, the FDA approved the first combined atropine and oxime auto-injector for use by emergency personnel. Israel has been providing them to their citizens since the first Gulf War — via Slashdot
The ability to create flexible, transparent electronics could lead to a host of novel applications, such as e-paper and electronic car windshields. Now, scientists have constructed a transistor made of a network of nanotubes that may serve as an essential component in a trans-flex device. Such devices require two main components: light displays and current-controlling transistors. While scientists have found that OLEDs and LCDs work well as light displays, finding a truly transparent and flexible transistor material is still an open area. Usually, these transistors consist of metallic nanowires
HP and Crospon have developed a skin patch employing microneedles that barely penetrate the skin. The microneedles can replace conventional injections and deliver drugs through the skin without causing any pain. The skin patch technology also enables delivery of several drugs by one patch and the control of dosage and of administration time for each drug. It has the potential to be safer and more efficient than injections
Scientists conducting tests on two tasmanian devils have found one from Tasmania’s west coast resistant to the devil facial tumour disease. The facial tumour disease is found across about 60 per cent of the state, and has killed up to 90 per cent of some populations. The devil is now listed as an endangered species
Solving the last mile
problem is a goal both the telecommunication and cable industries have pursued for years without discovering a single, easily implementable solution. Now, researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology think they have developed a new type of plastic optical fibre that could potentially be used to provide low-cost fibre connectivity from the consumer to the provider
New Zealand scientists have found a bacterium, named Methylokorus infernorum
, that eats a key global warming chemical. Found in a hot spring, the bug lives off of methane emissions from geothermically active areas. A scientist quoted in the article stated that a cubic meter of liquid containing the bacterium would consume about 11kg of methane each year. But Dr Stott cautioned that such an application was probably some years into the future. He said it was unlikely the micro-organism, which prefers acidic conditions of about 60°C, could ever be added to sheep or cows’ food to stop the animals releasing methane — via Slashdot
Paleontologists discovered a giant fossilised claw that once belonged to an 2.5m long sea scorpion. The University of Bristol scientists uncovered the claw near Prum, Germany. It’s approximately 400 million years old
A paleontologist has discovered a 110 million-year-old dinosaur that had a mouth that worked like a vacuum cleaner, hundreds of tiny teeth and nearly translucent skull
The Telegraph is running a story about a new Unified Theory of Physics. Garrett Lisi has presented a paper called An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
which unifies the Standard Model with gravity — without using string theory. The trick was to use E8 geometry which you may remember from an earlier Slashdot article. Lisi’s theory predicts 20 new particles which he hopes might turn up in the Large Hadron Collider — via Slashdot
Microsoft is now working on a system that will back up the contents of your brain. The pilot project lacks a direct brain interface, but MyLifeBits
will provide a simulacrum of actual memories. No mention is made as to whether Microsoft will claim to own the digital rights to the content of your life, or what license fees you will have to pay to access your own memories — via Slashdot
Physiatrist Todd A Kuiken, MD PhD, has pioneered a technique known as targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), that allows a prosthetic arm to respond directly to the brain’s signals, allowing wearers to open and close their artificial hands and bend and straighten their artificial elbows nearly as naturally as their own arms. Doctors first perform nerve transfer surgery to redirect nerves that go to the amputated arm to the patient’s chest muscles. Then when the chest muscle contracts, an electromyogram picks up the electrical signal to move the prosthetic arm. So when the patient thinks close hand
, the hand closes. Now the team wants to see if they can extract more information from the electrical signals produced by the nerves to provide a greater number of hand and arm movements. They have been able to identify unique EMG patterns with 95% accuracy for 16 different elbow, wrist, hand, thumb and finger movements — via Slashdot
Nissan is developing a paramagnetic iron oxide paint polymer. Using an electrical charge, the arrangement of iron oxide crystals can be tweaked, adjusting the car’s colour. Nissan claims to have the technology on the market extremely soon, by 2010 if possible. However, there’s a catch. A small amount of current is always needed to maintain the arrangement of iron oxide (your custom car colour). So when you leave your car parked/off, the car turns white
NASA and its Applied Sciences Program will be using 14 satellites to watch the Earth’s environment and help predict and prevent infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Through orbiting satellites, data is collected daily to monitor environmental changes. That information is then passed on to agencies such as the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense who then apply the data to predict and track disease outbreaks and assist in making public health policy decisions. The use of remote sensing technology helps scientists predict the outbreak of some of the most common and deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, West Nile virus and Rift Valley Fever
Scientists say the colugo, which looks like a cross between a bat and a squirrel, is the last surviving example of a group of mammals called dermopterans. After our fellow primates — apes, monkeys and lemurs — dermopterans apparently share the most genetic markers with us
The Australian Defence Department has injected $4.4 million worth of funding to further the CSIRO’s research into designing clothing which can be used as a self-recharging electrical source on the battlefield. The CSIRO’s Flexible Integrated Energy Device (FIED) was one of eight proposals selected as part of the latest round of Defence Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) Program funding announced in October
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