Signal replicas make a flexible sensor

Fluorescence image showing two nerves (stained in red and green),

which are responsible for transmitting information from the hair

cells to the brain and from neurons (small green dots) that alter

hair cell sensitivity, respectively.

(September 4, 2015)  LMU researchers have shown how signals from the spinal cord adjust the sensitivity of hair cells in the inner ear to accommodate shifts in head position associated with active locomotion – thus ensuring that balance is maintained.

When a jogger sets out on his evening run, the active movements of his arms and legs are accompanied by involuntary changes in the position of the head relative to the rest of the body. Yet the jogger does not experience feelings of dizziness like those induced in the passive riders of a rollercoaster, who have no control over the abrupt dips and swoops to which they are exposed. The reason for the difference lies in the vestibular organ (VO) located in the inner ear, which controls balance and posture. The VO senses ongoing self-motion and ensures that, while running, the jogger unconsciously compensates for the accompanying changes in the orientation of the head. The capacity to adapt and respond appropriately to both slight and substantial displacements of the head in turn implies that the sensory hair cells in the inner ear can react to widely varying stimulus intensities.

In collaboration with Dr. John Simmers at the Centre national de la recherche scientifiqu (CNRS) at the University of Bordeaux, neurobiologists Dr. Boris Chagnaud, Roberto Banchi and Professor Hans Straka at LMU’s Department of Biology II, have now shown, for the first time, how this feat is achieved. Their findings reveal that cells in the spinal cord which generate the rhythmic patterns of neural and muscle activity required for locomotion also adaptively alter the sensitivity of the hair cells in the VO, enabling them to respond appropriately to the broad range of incoming signal amplitudes. The results are reported in the online journal “Nature Communications”. As Boris Chagnaud points out, “we are not really aware of what movement actually involves because our balance organs react immediately to alterations in posture and head position. The hair cells, which detect the resulting changes in fluid flow in the semicircular canals in the inner ear, enable us to keep our balance without any conscious effort.”

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Rice researchers demo solar water-splitting technology

CAPTION: Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture

the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water

molecules. CREDIT: I. Thomann/Rice University

Process uses light-harvesting nanoparticles, captures energy from ‘hot electrons’

(September 4, 2015)  Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water molecules.

The technology, which is described online in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, relies on a configuration of light-activated gold nanoparticles that harvest sunlight and transfer solar energy to highly excited electrons, which scientists sometimes refer to as “hot electrons.”

“Hot electrons have the potential to drive very useful chemical reactions, but they decay very rapidly, and people have struggled to harness their energy,” said lead researcher Isabell Thomann, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and of chemistry and materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. “For example, most of the energy losses in today’s best photovoltaic solar panels are the result of hot electrons that cool within a few trillionths of a second and release their energy as wasted heat.”

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Customizing 3-D printing

A new Web-based interface for design novices allows a wide range of modifications

to a basic design — such as a toy car or a black-and-white "yin-yang" cup —

that are guaranteed to be both structurally stable and printable on a 3-D printer.

Courtesy of the researchers (edited by MIT News)

Design tool lets novices do in minutes what would take experts in computer-aided design hours.

(September 4, 2015)  The technology behind 3-D printing is growing more and more common, but the ability to create designs for it is not. Any but the simplest designs require expertise with computer-aided design (CAD) applications, and even for the experts, the design process is immensely time consuming.

Researchers at MIT and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel aim to change that, with a new system that automatically turns CAD files into visual models that users can modify in real time, simply by moving virtual sliders on a Web page. Once the design meets the user’s specifications, he or she hits the print button to send it to a 3-D printer.

“We envision a world where everything you buy can potentially be customized, and technologies such as 3-D printing promise that that might be cost-effective,” says Masha Shugrina, an MIT graduate student in computer science and engineering and one of the new system’s designers. “So the question we set out to answer was, ‘How do you actually allow people to modify digital designs in a way that keeps them functional?’”

A new Web-based interface for design novices allows a wide range of modifications

to a basic design — such as a toy car or a black-and-white "yin-yang" cup —

that are guaranteed to be both structurally stable and printable on a 3-D printer.

Courtesy of the researchers (edited by MIT News)

For a CAD user, modifying a design means changing numerical values in input fields and then waiting for as much as a minute while the program recalculates the geometry of the associated object.

Once the design is finalized, it has to be tested using simulation software. For designs intended for 3-D printers, compliance with the printers’ specifications is one such test. But designers typically test their designs for structural stability and integrity as well. Those tests can take anywhere from several minutes to several hours, and they need to be rerun every time the design changes.

Advance work

Shugrina and her collaborators — her thesis advisor, Wojciech Matusik, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and Ariel Shamir of IDC Herzliya — are trying to turn visual design into something novices can do in real time. They presented their new system, dubbed “Fab Forms,” at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Siggraph conference, in August.

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Metallic gels produce tunable light emission

Luminescent materials produced by the MIT team are shown under ultraviolet light,

emitting different colors of light that can be modified by their environmental conditions.

These light-emitting beads were made by materials science and engineering

students Caroline Liu and Rebecca Gallivan. Photo: Tara Fadenrecht

New family of luminescent materials could find broad uses in chemical and biological detectors.

(September 4, 2015)  Researchers at MIT have developed a family of materials that can emit light of precisely controlled colors — even pure white light — and whose output can be tuned to respond to a wide variety of external conditions. The materials could find a variety of uses in detecting chemical and biological compounds, or mechanical and thermal conditions.

The material, a metallic polymer gel made using rare-earth elements, is described in a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society by assistant professor of materials science and engineering Niels Holten-Andersen, postdoc Pangkuan Chen, and graduate students Qiaochu Li and Scott Grindy.

The material, a light-emitting lanthanide metallogel, can be chemically tuned to emit light in response to chemical, mechanical, or thermal stimuli — potentially providing a visible output to indicate the presence of a particular substance or condition.

The new material is an example of work with biologically inspired materials, Holten-Andersen explains. “My niche is biomimetics — using nature’s tricks to design bio-inspired polymers,” he says. There are an amazing variety of “really funky” organisms in the oceans, he says, adding: “We’ve barely scratched the surface of trying to understand how they’re put together, from a chemical and mechanical standpoint.”

Luminescent materials produced by the MIT team are shown under ultraviolet light,

emitting different colors of light that can be modified by their environmental conditions.

These light-emitting beads were made by materials science and engineering

students Caroline Liu and Rebecca Gallivan. Photo: Tara Fadenrecht

Studying such natural materials, evolved over millions of years to adapt to challenging environmental conditions, “allows us as engineers to derive design principles” that can be applied to other kinds of materials, he adds.

Holten-Andersen’s own research has examined a particular kind of crosslinking in the threads mussels use to anchor themselves to rocks, called metal-coordination bonds. These bonds, he adds, also play an important role in many biological functions, such as binding oxygen to hemoglobin in red blood cells.

He emphasizes that the idea is not to copy nature, but to understand and apply some of the underlying principles of natural materials; in some cases, these principles can be applied in materials that are simpler in structure and easier to produce than their natural counterparts.

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‘Littlest’ quark-gluon plasma revealed by physicists using Large Hadron Collider

CMS detector. Photo courtesy CERN.

(September 4, 2015)  Researchers at the University of Kansas working with an international team at the Large Hadron Collider have produced quark-gluon plasma — a state of matter thought to have existed right at the birth of the universe — with fewer particles than previously thought possible.

The material was discovered by colliding protons with lead nuclei at high energy inside the supercollider’s Compact Muon Solenoid detector. Physicists have dubbed the resulting plasma the “littlest liquid.”

“Before the CMS experimental results, it had been thought the medium created in a proton on lead collisions would be too small to create a quark-gluon plasma,” said Quan Wang, a KU postdoctoral researcher working with the team at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Wang performed key analysis for a paper about the experiment recently published in APS Physics.

“Indeed, these collisions were being studied as a reference for collisions of two lead nuclei to explore the non-quark-gluon-plasma aspects of the collisions,” Wang said. “The analysis presented in this paper indicates, contrary to expectations, a quark-gluon plasma can be created in very asymmetric proton on lead collisions.” The unexpected discovery was said by senior scientists associated with the CMS detector to shed new light on high-energy physics.

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Making Nanowires from Protein and DNA

 

Co-crystal structure of protein-DNA nanowires. The protein-DNA nanowire

design is experimentally verified by X-ray crystallography.

Credit: Yun (Kurt) Mou, Jiun-Yann Yu, Timothy M. Wannier, Chin-Lin Guo

and Stephen L. Mayo/Caltech

(September 4, 2015)  The ability to custom design biological materials such as protein and DNA opens up technological possibilities that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. For example, synthetic structures made of DNA could one day be used to deliver cancer drugs directly to tumor cells, and customized proteins could be designed to specifically attack a certain kind of virus. Although researchers have already made such structures out of DNA or protein alone, a Caltech team recently created—for the first time—a synthetic structure made of both protein and DNA. Combining the two molecule types into one biomaterial opens the door to numerous applications.

A paper describing the so-called hybridized, or multiple component, materials appears in the September 2 issue of the journal Nature.

Design strategy of protein-DNA nanowires. The protein-DNA nanowire is

self-assembled with a computationally designed protein homodimer and

a double-stranded DNA with the protein binding sites properly arranged.

Credit: Yun (Kurt) Mou, Jiun-Yann Yu, Timothy M. Wannier, Chin-Lin Guo

and Stephen L. Mayo/Caltech

There are many advantages to multiple component materials, says Yun (Kurt) Mou (PhD '15), first author of the Nature study. "If your material is made up of several different kinds of components, it can have more functionality. For example, protein is very versatile; it can be used for many things, such as protein–protein interactions or as an enzyme to speed up a reaction. And DNA is easily programmed into nanostructures of a variety of sizes and shapes."

But how do you begin to create something like a protein–DNA nanowire—a material that no one has seen before?

Mou and his colleagues in the laboratory of Stephen Mayo, Bren Professor of Biology and Chemistry and the William K. Bowes Jr. Leadership Chair of Caltech's Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, began with a computer program to design the type of protein and DNA that would work best as part of their hybrid material. "Materials can be formed using just a trial-and-error method of combining things to see what results, but it's better and more efficient if you can first predict what the structure is like and then design a protein to form that kind of material," he says.

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Lighter with laser welding

Caption for illustration 1: Laser welding of steel and aluminum. (Photo: LZH)

(September 3, 2015) For a definitive breakthrough of lightweight materials in the automotive industry, new processes for manufacturing, testing and measuring are necessary. For this, steel-aluminum hybrid welds are of great interest, since they can be used for load-adapted, and at the same time lightweight components. Within the project LaserLeichter (Laser Lighter), the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) is currently developing a laser welding process for joining three-dimensional structures made of steel and aluminum in a hybrid design.

One of the challenges in welding steel with aluminum is to avoid hard and brittle intermetallic phases in the welding seam. These phases can occur easily, since iron and aluminum do not combine well. The goal of the scientists at the LZH and their partners in the project LaserLeichter, is to control the welding process as much as possible. Therefore, different measuring methods will be assessed.

Establishing control during and after the running process

For one, the engineers will be testing a spectroscopic control of the welding depth, which measures the emissions of the plasma. During the ongoing process, the composition of the plasma indicates the welding depth, and allows to adapt the laser output accordingly. This control is already being evaluated at the LZH for flat welds, and will now be expanded to three-dimensional structures. Since the distance between the process zone and the measurement sensors inevitably changes in the course of the process, detecting the plasma emissions accurately is difficult. For optimal measurements, the spectrometer will be integrated into an innovative, scanner-based processing head.

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Wastewater to irrigate, fertilize and generate energy

Agricultural areas in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang: in the future,

residents can use purified wastewater to water their crops. © Fraunhofer IGB

(September 3, 2015)  To meet the requirements of Asian cities, researchers are adapting an idea they have already applied in Germany for comprehensive water management: They are developing a concept for reducing water use, treating wastewater and extracting fertilizer for a strip of coastline in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang.

Urbanization is in full swing. Particularly in Asia, solutions are needed for feeding the growing population, supplying water and energy, and cleverly recycling waste wherever possible. In Vietnam, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart have adapted a wastewater treatment concept they developed in the DEUS 21 project to support the supply of water, energy and fertilizer.

Under the auspices of the German Society for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ), the “Integrated Resource Management in Asian Cities: The Urban Nexus” project will now implement the innovative infrastructure along a strip of coastal land with some 200,000 residents in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang. Starting in the fall, 110 plots – home to around 500 people – are to be connected to a novel sewage network made up of vacuum pipes, which have a significantly smaller diameter than standard pipes. Wastewater is extracted with pumps, similar to the process used in trains and aircraft.

Until now, Da Nang’s wastewater often flowed untreated into leaky ditches. Not only does this risk contaminating beaches, it also leaves untapped a valuable resource that the Fraunhofer researchers are now making accessible. Now for the first time, wastewater will be processed together with hotel kitchen waste; the resulting biogas will be used for cooking in hotel kitchens. Treated water will be used for urban agriculture – meaning farmers will require less groundwater, reserves of which are at risk of becoming ever more saline as seawater is drawn in to replace the excessive volumes of freshwater being extracted during periods of drought. A further advantage is that nutrients found in the processed wastewater work as a natural fertilizer. So the novel system connects the pressing issues of supplying water, energy and food with little effort – and the researchers achieve good results in each area. For example, with biogas: “At 45 liters per resident per day, our solution produces twice as much biogas as with traditional water treatment plants in Germany,” says group manager Dr. Marius Mohr from the IGB.

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Pulses for better posture

The implant uses electrical pulses to stimulate muscles. In the future,

the unit will be implanted in the patient’s groin area. The picture shows

the prototype of the implant. © Fraunhofer IPMS

(September 3, 2015)  In an effort to find a better treatment for spinal curvature in children and young people, the EU’s “StimulAIS” project is focused on electrostimulation of muscles. Fraunhofer scientists worked with partners from industry and research to develop a prototype implant that would do the job.

“Sit up straight!” It’s an instruction almost every child has heard some day – but sometimes being reminded to consider your posture isn’t enough: two out of every hundred children and young people between the ages of 10 and 18 suffer from a curvature of the spine. Known as adolescent scoliosis, this growth disorder causes a lasting deformation of the back. These deformations are clearly visible and sufferers often feel disfigured by them.

In nine out of ten cases, the exact causes of the spinal curvature are unknown – what doctors refer to as idiopathic. Recent research suggests that adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, or AIS for short, is caused by a disease of the central nervous system. “According to this theory, the connection between the nerves and the relevant muscles is impaired, but only on one side of the back. When muscles on the healthy side contract, the muscles on the unhealthy side fail to receive the signal to balance the contraction out. This causes the spinal column to twist and buckle,” explains Dr. Andreas Heinig from the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden. Building on this theory and working with research and industry partners in Spain and France, Heinig’s team has developed a novel approach to treat this form of scoliosis. It makes use of functional electrostimulation, whereby targeted electrical impulses replace the nerve signals that the disease has caused to be either too weak or completely absent. The aim is for the impulses to stimulate the deep muscles along the spinal column so that they build up the necessary counter-contractions to allow symmetrical growth. Within the space of just two years, the interdisciplinary European consortium was able to develop a prototype implant.

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Georgia Tech Uses Artificial Intelligence to Crowdsource Interactive Fiction

A new Georgia Tech artificial intelligence system develops interactive stories through

crowdsourced data for more robust fiction. Here, the AI replicates a typical first date

to the movies (user choices are in red), complete with loud theater talkers and

the arm-over-shoulder movie move.

(September 3, 2015)  Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new artificially intelligent system that crowdsources plots for interactive stories, which are popular in video games and let players choose different branching story options.

With potentially limitless crowdsourced plot points, the system could allow for more creative stories and an easier method for interactive narrative generation. Current AI models for games have a limited number of scenarios, no matter what a player chooses. They depend on a dataset already programmed into a model by experts.

Using the Georgia Tech approach, one might imagine a Star Wars game using online fan fiction to let the AI system generate countless paths for a player to take.

“Our open interactive narrative system learns genre models from crowdsourced example stories so that the player can perform different actions and still receive a coherent story experience,” says Mark Riedl, lead investigator and associate professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech.

A test of the AI system, called Scheherazade IF (Interactive Fiction) -- a reference to the fabled Arabic queen and storyteller – showed that it can achieve near human-level authoring.

“When enough data is available and that data sufficiently covers all aspects of the game experience, the system was able to meet or come close to meeting human performance in creating a playable story,” says Riedl.

The researchers evaluated the AI system by measuring the number of “commonsense” errors (e.g. scenes out of sequence) found by players, as well as players’ subjective experiences for things such as enjoyment and coherence of story. 

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Alcoholism: A step toward a treatment

Work at the Texas A&M Health Science Center could ultimately lead

to a cure for alcoholism and other addictions.

(September 3, 2015)  Scientists have pinpointed a population of neurons in the brain that influences whether one drink leads to two, which could ultimately lead to a cure for alcoholism and other addictions.

A study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, finds that alcohol consumption alters the structure and function of neurons in the dorsomedial striatum, a part of the brain known to be important in goal-driven behaviors. The findings could be an important step toward creation of a drug to combat alcoholism.

“Alcoholism is a very common disease,” said Jun Wang, M.D., Ph.D., the lead author on the paper and an assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics at the Texas A&M College of Medicine, “but the mechanism is not understood very well.”

Now, Wang and his team have helped come a little closer to that understanding. Using an animal model, the researchers determined that alcohol actually changes the physical structure of medium spiny neurons, the main type of cell in the striatum. These neurons can be thought of like a tree, with many branches, and many small protrusions, or spines, coming off of them. They each have one of two types of dopamine receptors, D1 or D2, and so can be thought of as either D1 or D2 neurons. D1 neurons are informally called part of a “go” pathway in the brain, while D2 neurons are in the “no-go” pathway. In other words, when D2 neurons are activated, they discourage action — telling you to wait, to stop, to do nothing.

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journal reference >>

COAT RANGE

(September 2, 2016)   Inspired by the snow-capped mountain peaks of the Grand Tetons, the Coat Range utilizes the contrast of Walnut and the exposed interior of Certified Maple. A functional landscape for your home that leaves little impact on the actual frontier. The peaks of the Coat Range enable you to hang four or more items. Connect them end to end to extend your range!

source >>

Efficient heating for electric cars

In order to analyze the heating effect of the films for cars, the researchers

connected them to a power source and monitored them using a thermo camera.

© Fraunhofer IPA

(September 2, 2015)  If you don‘t want to freeze in your electric car, you have to make a few concessions, because heating devours a substantial portion of power supply. Fraunhofer researchers will exhibit the demo model of a highly energy-efficient heating system for electric cars at the IAA: a coated film that produces a broad, radiant heat.

Electric car drivers now have one more reason to love the summer, because in the winter, the vehicle’s range declines markedly due to the additional energy demanded by the heating system. Electric cars generate next to no heat as opposed to conventional passenger vehicles, which produce more than enough engine heat to heat the interior. An additional electric heater is required. This is supplied with power by the same battery that provides the engine with energy. “In the most unfavorable case, you can only drive half the usual distance with the car”, says Serhat Sahakalkan, project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart.

Researchers at the IPA have developed a film-based panel heater, which quickly provides a comfortable warmth in electric cars, which is – particularly on short journeys – more effective than former electric heaters. The heating concept is based on a film that is coated with conductive carbon nanotubes (CNTs). For this, the researchers spray on a very thin layer of CNT dispersion. “The film is glued to the inner door trim and generates a comfortable warmth there in the area of the armrest within a very short time”, Sahakalkan explains. The heater functions in accordance with the Joule principle: When electricity flows through the film, it comes across a natural resistance between the individual nanoparticles. These “collisions” generate heat.

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DNA division can slow to a halt

Single-molecule imaging reveals that DNA replication termination

in E. coli is mediated by kinetic competition between speed of strand

separation by the replisomal helicase and rearrangement of Tus−Ter

interactions during separation of the first six base pairs of Ter.

Multiple termination sites are required to insure fork stoppage. © 2015 KAUST

Termination sites of DNA are shown to stop slow-moving replication forks but not faster ones.

(September 2, 2015)  A key mystery of the DNA replication process has been unraveled by researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Before a bacterium can divide, it must make a copy of its genetic material, the circular DNA molecules that resemble bunched rubber bands, through a process called DNA replication. In this process, the two strands of DNA making up the circular DNA molecule unwind and separate to become templates for generating new strands.

To ensure the process is well regulated, the bacterium has set a number of “roadblocks,” or termination sites on the DNA, to ensure the permanent stoppage of  replication forks, Y-shaped structures formed between the strands as the DNA molecule splits.

The Nature study, led by KAUST Ph.D. student Mohamed Elshenawy and Associate Professor Samir Hamdan from KAUST’s Division of Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering, along with colleagues from the University of Wollongong in Australia, showed why termination sites were able to permanently stop replication forks in vitro, while in living bacteria, more than 50 percent of the replication forks that moved towards the termination site continued synthesis without stopping1.

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Cost-effective catalyst converts CO2 into natural gas

Schematic representation of the conversion of CO2 and water

to methane and carbon monoxide

(September 2, 2015)  A discovery made in Leiden helps not only to make natural gas from CO2 but also to store renewable energy. Research by Professor Marc Koper and PhD student Jing Shen shows how this process can be implemented in a cost-effective and controllable way. Nature Communications, 2 september 2015.

A few euros

The conversion of the greenhouse gas CO2 into natural gas is achieved using a chemical process in which CO2 is bubbled through an acid solution. The solution contains a graphite electrode – to which a small negative voltage is applied – with a cobalt-porphyrin catalyst attached to it. It was already known that this catalyst can convert CO2 into carbon monoxide and methane, but the reaction always released unwanted hydrogen. In their investigation, Koper and Shen show for the first time how the process works. They therefore know exactly what the best acidity degree is in order to minimise the amount of hydrogen and to convert as much CO2 as possible into natural gas.

Common materials

An added benefit is that the catalyst is entirely made up of common materials. Cobalt porphyrin is a part of vitamin B12, while the graphite for the electrode is similar to a pencil lead. Therefore the catalyst only costs a few euros. Comparable methods of converting CO2 into methane often use rare and expensive metals, such as platinum.

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A New Materials Research Hub Established for Promoting Research from the Perspective of Data Science

A schematic of the “Materials research by Information Integration” Initiative (MI2I).

Conventionally, materials research was carried out with combinations of experiment,

theory and computational science. Meanwhile, independently of the advancement

in materials science, progress has been made in the field of information integration

technology, which uses basic technology for artificial intelligence research (e.g. big data

analysis and machine learning), starting a new trend of data science. The “Materials

research by Information Integration” Initiative is a strategy to incorporate such data science

methodology into materials science and thereby accelerate the development of new materials

and stimulate industrial innovation. To make this new challenge a success, we will devise

packages of tools for retrieving the data necessary for the design and development of new

materials effectively from a massive amount of data, and evolve them into more user-friendly

packages through their use. The “Materials research by Information Integration” Initiative is

expected to demonstrate a model for solving social issues in various areas including social

infrastructure, energy and environment, information and communication, and life science.

“Materials research by Information Integration” Initiative (MI2I)

(September 2, 2015)  An open innovation hub for promoting research on new materials was set up at NIMS under the name of “Materials research by Information Integration” Initiative (MI2I).

Abstract

1.  NIMS (Sukekatsu Ushioda, President) worked out a strategy to incorporate data science methodology into materials science and thereby accelerate the development of new materials and stimulate industrial innovation. This project was selected for the Support program for starting up innovation hub sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). On July 1, an open innovation hub for promoting research for materials development was set up at NIMS under the name of “Materials research by Information Integration” Initiative (MI2I).

2.  There is currently a trend toward evolving materials science into the fourth field of science — information-integrated science. Companies that have successfully implemented this change in new materials design ahead of others will have an overwhelming advantage in patent races and international competition. To achieve such evolution, it is necessary to devise venturous new methods and develop a dataplatform integrating a massive amount of data in materials science as databases, the cutting-edge data science, information science and mathematics. There is a call for intensive actions being taken through concerted efforts among the industry, academia, and society.

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Manipulating the Rotational Direction of Artificial Molecular Motors Using Supramolecules

Conceptual diagram showing a molecular motor in action. A porphyrin dimer

rotates in the direction indicated by the solid arrow through injection of electric

current into the dimer from the probe of a scanning tunneling microscope.

Pioneering Mass Production of Versatile Nanomachines

(September 2, 2015)  A NIMS MANA group and a research team at the Institute for Chemical Research of Kyoto University jointly fabricated molecular motors on a metal substrate using supramolecules, and successfully reversed rotation of molecular motors by rearranging bonding between molecules that constitute a supramolecule.

Abstract

1. A research group consisting of Takashi Uchihashi, MANA Scientist, Jonathan Hill, MANA Scientist, Tomonobu Nakayama, Unit Director, and Christian Joachim, MANA Principal Investigator (also a group leader at the CEMES-CNRS, France), at the NIMS International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), along with a research team led by Professor Teruo Ono at the Institute for Chemical Research of Kyoto University, jointly fabricated molecular motors on a metal substrate using supramolecules, and successfully reversed rotation of molecular motors by rearranging bonding between molecules that constitute a supramolecule.

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Upholding disarmament agreements with engineering

Ruaridh Macdonald

PhD student Ruaridh Macdonald develops a tool to identify nuclear weapons without divulging too much.

(September 2, 2015)  “Energy is incredibly fundamental to life,” MIT graduate student Ruaridh Macdonald says. “That’s why I keep studying it.”

This tenet has been the thread throughout Macdonald’s nearly eight years at MIT — first as an undergraduate, then as a master’s student, and now as a PhD student — all spent studying nuclear science and engineering. Though he has remained engaged in this one department, he’s participated in a variety of projects, first studying reactor design as he pursued his master’s degree and now working on a nuclear weapons verification project in the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy.

Transportable reactors

Macdonald, who grew up in West London, spent his grade school days equally interested in the arts and humanities and in physics. But he ultimately chose physics when faced with the U.K.’s school system, which requires students to pick a concentration, similar to a major in college.

“I still have immense respect for the arts, but I asked myself which would allow me to help people most broadly, and I chose science,” Macdonald says.

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Self-driving golf carts

The autonomous golf carts (shown here) deployed in the Singapore

public gardens relied on just a few unobtrusive sensors.

Screenshot from video provided by SMART

Autonomous vehicles share sidewalk space with pedestrians in six-day trial in Singaporean public garden.

(September 2, 2015)  At the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in September, members of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and their colleagues will describe an experiment conducted over six days at a large public garden in Singapore, in which self-driving golf carts ferried 500 tourists around winding paths trafficked by pedestrians, bicyclists, and the occasional monitor lizard.

The experiments also tested an online booking system that enabled visitors to schedule pickups and drop-offs at any of 10 distinct stations scattered around the garden, automatically routing and redeploying the vehicles to accommodate all the requests.

“We would like to use robot cars to make transportation available to everyone,” says Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a senior author on the conference paper. “The idea is, if you need a ride, you make a booking, maybe using your smartphone or maybe on the Internet, and the car just comes.”

The researchers asked participants in the experiment to fill out a brief questionnaire after their rides. Some 98 percent said that they would use the autonomous golf carts again, and 95 percent said that they would be more likely to visit the gardens if the golf carts were a permanent fixture.

SMART is a collaboration between MIT and the National Research Foundation of Singapore. With lead researchers drawn from both MIT and several Singaporean universities — chiefly the National University of Singapore and the Singapore University of Technology and Design — the program offers four-year graduate fellowships that cover tuition for students at the affiliated schools, as well as undergraduate and postdoctoral research fellowships.

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SABINAS LOUNGE CHAIR

(September 1, 2015)    It’s inspired by natural fluid shapes, avoiding  any straight lines or geometry. Its outline hints at sand dunes, at female curves. This collection goes beyond fulfilling a purpose, or use, but poses a special friendship and attachment with its user. As all collections by this author it adheres to a very formal “mariscalish” code.

source >>

Solid Collection

(September 1, 2015)  It is a group of items which, although being light offer stability thanks to their geometric and well-defined cut, as if they were sculpted from stone.The collection includes a sofa, an armchair, a chair, a chair with armrests, a table and a small table. It is a functional collection due to its collapsability and design.

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Could tiny jellyfish propulsion drive design of new underwater craft?

(September 1, 2015)  The University of Oregon's Kelly Sutherland has seen the future of under-sea exploration by studying the swimming prowess of tiny jellyfish gathered from Puget Sound off Washington's San Juan Island.

In a paper with four colleagues in the Sept. 2 issue of the journal Nature Communications, Sutherland details how a tiny type of jellyfish — colonial siphonophores — swim rapidly by coordinating multiple water-shooting jets from separate but genetically identical units that make up the animal.

Information on the biomechanics of a living organism that uses such a coordinated system ought to inspire "a natural solution to multi-engine organization that may contribute to the expanding field of underwater-distributed propulsion vehicle design," the co-authors conclude in their paper.

"This is a very interesting system for studying propulsion, because these jellies have multiple swimming bells to use for propulsion," said Sutherland, a biologist with both the UO's Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston and the Robert D. Clark Honors College on the Eugene campus. "This is relatively rare in the animal kingdom. Most organisms that swim with propulsion do so with a single jet. These siphonophores can turn on a dime, and very rapidly."

The jellies studied are Nanomia bijuga. They are members of the phylum Cnidaria, whose members have specialized stinging cells that are used mainly for capturing prey.

N. bijuga rarely exceed two inches in length but with tentacles can extend to a foot long. Samples were collected — most often at night when their translucent bodies are easily seen with light over the dark water — with cups off the floating docks at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories. Individual colonies contained from four to 12 jet-like structures known as nectophores.

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Pedestal NINNA

(September1, 2015)  DIMENSIONS: Diameter 70cm / H 73 cm

FINISH: Solid ash wood frame, natural varnished, marble top.

A coffee table designed by Carlo Contin characterized by simple and smooth shapes.

The NINNA three legs base supports a thin-brushed marble top. Its structure is entirely crafted from hand turned ash wood materials.

The assembly points are tapered to form a sleek bottleneck shape similar to the design of the NINNA armchair.

Carlo Contin partners with Adentro to make this second piece.

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Water heals a bioplastic

"What's unique about this plastic is the ability to stick itself back together with a drop of water,"

said Melik Demirel. Image: Demirel Lab/Penn State

(September 1, 2015)  A drop of water self-heals a multiphase polymer derived from the genetic code of squid ring teeth, which may someday extend the life of medical implants, fiber-optic cables and other hard to repair in place objects, according to an international team of researchers.

"What's unique about this plastic is the ability to stick itself back together with a drop of water," said Melik Demirel, professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State. "There are other materials that are self healing, but not with water."

Demirel and his team looked at the ring teeth of squid collected around the world -- in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, near Hawaii, Argentina and the Sea of Japan -- and found that proteins with self-healing properties are ubiquitous. However, as they note in a recent issue of Scientific Reports, "the yield of this proteinaceous material from natural sources is low (about 1 gram of squid ring teeth protein from 5 kilograms of squid) and the composition of native material varies between squid species."

So as not to deplete squid populations, and to have a uniform material, the researchers used biotechnology to create the proteins in bacteria. The polymer can then either be molded using heat or cast by solvent evaporation.

self-healing polymer

The polymer can either be molded using heat or cast by solvent evaporation.

Demirel Lab/Penn State

The two-part material is a copolymer consisting of an amorphous segment that is soft and a more structured molecular architecture. The structured portion consists of strands of amino acids connected by hydrogen bonds to form a twisted and/or pleated sheet. This part also provides strength for the polymer, but the amorphous segment provides the self-healing.

The researchers created a dog-bone shaped sample of the polymer and then cut it in half. Using warm water at about 113 degrees Fahrenheit -- slightly warmer than body temperature -- and a slight amount of pressure with a metal tool, the two halves reunited to reform the dog-bone shape. Strength tests showed that the material after healing was as strong as when originally created.

"If one of the fiber-optic cables under the ocean breaks, the only way to fix it is to replace it," said Demirel. "With this material, it would be possible to heal the cable and go on with operation, saving time and money.

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Wireless charging and discharging for electric vehicles

This coil system for the inductive charging of electric cars is built into the road.

© Fraunhofer IWES

(September 1, 2015)  In the future, a wireless charging system will allow electric cars not only to charge their batteries, but also to feed energy back into the power grid, helping to stabilize it. The cost-effective charging system achieves high levels of efficiency across the whole power range, from 400 watts to 3.6 kilowatts, while the car and the charging coil can be up to 20 centimeters apart. Fraunhofer researchers are presenting their prototype from September 15 to 18, 2015 at the IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt (Hall 4, Booth D33).

When it’s pouring rain, a driver who has to connect a thick, unwieldy cable between their electric car and a charge spot is sure to get soaked to the skin. But sometimes there’s no alternative – the battery is empty. Using wireless inductive systems to charge the car is much more convenient. This involves transmitting energy through the air, or, more precisely, through a time-varying magnetic field. The technology is essentially based around two coils, with one built into a road, a parking space or a garage, and the other fitted to the underbody of the car. In conjunction with suitable capacitors, these coils form a sort of resonant "antenna system for energy transfer." The nearer the two coils are to each other, the more efficiently the energy is transferred.

Highly efficient, bidirectional charging

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES in Kassel have come up with a more cost-effective design for such inductive charging systems. "We deliberately use standard components that are already available on the mass market," explains Marco Jung, deputy head of the converter technology department at Fraunhofer IWES. In addition, the researchers use coil systems that require fewer ferrite sheets. The sheets are needed to control and shield the magnetic field and are very heavy on account of the iron oxide they contain. They are also expensive. Reducing the amount of ferrite material used further decreases the weight and cost of the coils.

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Physicists study how to achieve perfect absorption of light with the help of rough ultrathin films

Dominik Differt measuring the scattering of light in a rough absorber film.

Photo: Bielefeld University

(September 1, 2015)  Physicists study how to achieve perfect absorption of light with the help of rough ultrathin films

Light-absorbing films can be found in many everyday applications such as solar cells or sensors. They are used to convert light into electrical current or heat. The films literally trap the light. Although such absorber films are applied widely, scientists still do not know which mechanism permits the most efficient absorption of light. A team of physicists at Bielefeld University, the University of Kaiserslautern, and the University of Würzburg have now proved that the very efficient scattering of light in ultrathin rough films traps light until it is absorbed completely. The researchers are now publishing their findings in the journal Nature Photonics. This research can help to make thin absorber films even more efficient and thereby save energy.

The experiments applied ultrashort light pulses. When such pulses penetrate smooth ultrathin films, they emerge on the other side practically unchanged and scarcely weakened. In rough films, in contrast, irregularities prevent the light pulse from spreading through the material. When there are many irregularities leading to light scattering, the pulse proceeds along a closed path and remains trapped until the light is absorbed.

Martin Piecuch adjusting the electron microscope to detect hot electrons.

Photo: University of Kaiserslautern

The underlying effect of this so-called Anderson localization was already described more than 60 years ago, and it has been observed several times since then. What is new is that the mechanism also functions for thin absorber layers. ‘This opens up new ways to develop highly efficient absorbers and can therefore contribute to developing improved thin-film solar cells or sensors,’ says Professor Dr. Walter Pfeiffer from Bielefeld University. The idea behind the research is to make thin-film absorbers more efficient so that they can be used in everyday applications. In future, the researchers aim to study what structure films should have in order to trap light perfectly and to use this to develop a universal concept of efficient light absorption via Anderson localization.

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Mouth guard monitors health markers, transmits information wirelessly to smart phone

The mouth guard sensor offers an easy and reliable way

to monitor uric acid levels in human saliva.

(September 1, 2015)  Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a mouth guard that can monitor health markers, such as lactate, cortisol and uric acid, in saliva and transmit the information wirelessly to a smart phone, laptop or tablet.

The technology, which is at a proof-of-concept stage, could be used to monitor patients continuously without invasive procedures, as well as to monitor athletes’ performance or stress levels in soldiers and pilots. In this study, engineers focused on uric acid, which is a marker related to diabetes and to gout. Currently, the only way to monitor the levels of uric acid in a patient is to draw blood.

The team, led by nanoengineering professor Joseph Wang and electrical engineering professor Patrick Mercier, both from the University of California, San Diego, describes the mouth guard’s design and performance this month in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

“The ability to monitor continuously and non-invasively saliva biomarkers holds considerable promise for many biomedical and fitness applications,” said Wang.

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