PolyU develops novel eco high performance energy storage device

(September 23, 2015)  The Department of Applied Physics of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed a simple approach to synthesize novel environmentally-friendly manganese dioxide (MnO2) ink by using glucose. The MnO2 ink could be used for the production of light, thin, flexible and high performance energy storage devices via ordinary printing or even home-used printers. The capacity of the MnO2 ink supercapacitor is more than 30 times higher than that of a commercial capacitor of the same weight of active material (e.g. carbon powder), demonstrating the great potential of MnO2 ink in significantly enhancing the performances of energy storage devices, whereas its production cost amounts to less than HK$1.

MnO2 is a kind of environmentally-friendly material and it is degradable. Given the environmental compatibility and high potential capacity of MnO2, it has always been regarded as an ideal candidate for the electrode materials of energy storage devices. The conventional MnO2 electrode preparation methods suffer from high cost, complicated processes and could result in agglomeration of the MnO2 ink during the coating process, leading to the reduction of electrical conductivity. The PolyU research team has developed a simple approach to synthesize aqueous MnO2 ink. Firstly, highly crystalline carbon particles were prepared by microwave hydrothermal method, followed by a morphology transmission mechanism at room temperature. The MnO2 ink can be coated on various substrates, such as conductive paper, plastic and glass. Its thickness and weight can also be controlled for the production of light, thin, transparent and flexible energy storage devices. Substrates coated by MnO2 ink can easily be erased if required, facilitating the fabrication of electronic devices.

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Antimicrobial Film for Future Implants

© Inserm, E. Falette

(September 23, 2015)  The implantation of medical devices is not without risks. Bacterial or fungal infections can occur and the body’s strong immune response may lead to the rejection of the implant. Researchers at Unit 1121 “Biomaterials and Bio-engineering” (Inserm/Strasbourg university) have succeeded in creating a biofilm with antimicrobial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory properties. It may be used to cover titanium implants (orthopaedic prostheses, pacemakers…) prevent or control post-operative infections. Other frequently used medical devices that cause numerous infectious problems, such as catheters, may also benefit.

These results are published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

See video on the discovery presented by Philippe Lavalle, Research Director at Inserm (subtitles soon available)

Implantable medical devices (prosthesis/pacemakers) are an ideal interface for micro-organisms, which can easily colonize their surface. As such, bacterial infection may occur and lead to an inflammatory reaction. This may cause the implant to be rejected. These infections are mainly caused by bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, originating in the body, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These infections may also be fungal or caused by yeasts. The challenge presented by implanting medical devices in the body is preventing the occurrence of these infections, which lead to an immune response that compromises the success of the implant. Antibiotics are currently used during surgery or to coat certain implants. However, the emergence of multi-resistant bacteria now restricts their effectiveness.

A biofilm invisible to the naked eye…

It is within this context that researchers at the “Bioengineering and Biomaterials” Unit 1121 (Inserm/Strasbourg University) with four laboratories[1] have developed a biofilm with antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. Researchers have used a combination of two substances: polyarginine (PAR) and hyaluronic acid (HA), to develop and create a film invisible to the naked eye (between 400 and 600 nm thick) that is made of several layers. As arginine is metabolised by immune cells to fight pathogens, it has been used to communicate with the immune system to obtain the desired anti-inflammatory effect. Hyaluronic acid, a natural component of the body, was also chosen for its biocompatibility and inhibiting effect on bacterial growth.

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Ultrafast Lasers Offer 3-D Micropatterning of Biocompatible Silk Hydrogels

Illustration of laser-based micropatterning of silk hydrogels. The transparent gels enable

the laser's photons to be absorbed more than 10 times deeper than with other materials,

without damaging the cells surrounding the "Tufts" pattern. Courtesy: M.B. A

High resolution, scalability for engineering tissue scaffolds and implants

(September 23, 2015)  Tufts University biomedical engineers are using low-energy, ultrafast laser technology to make high-resolution, 3-D structures in silk protein hydrogels. The laser-based micropatterning represents a new approach to customized engineering of tissue and biomedical implants.

The work is reported in a paper in PNAS Early Edition published September 15 online before print: "Laser-based three-dimensional multiscale micropatterning of biocompatible hydrogels for customized tissue engineering scaffolds."

Artificial tissue growth requires pores, or voids, to bring oxygen and nutrients to rapidly proliferating cells in the tissue scaffold.  Current patterning techniques allow for the production of random, micron-scale pores and the creation of channels that are hundreds of microns in diameter, but there is little in between.

The Tufts researchers used an ultrafast, femtosecond laser to generate scalable, high-resolution 3-D voids within silk protein hydrogel, a soft, transparent biomaterial that supports cell growth and allows cells to penetrate deep within it.  The researchers were able to create voids at multiple scales as small as 10 microns and as large at 400 microns over a large volume.

Further, the exceptional clarity of the transparent silk gels enabled the laser's photons to be absorbed nearly 1 cm below the surface of the gel – more than 10 times deeper than with other materials, without damaging adjacent material.

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ORNL integrated energy demo connects 3D-printed building, vehicle

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) demonstration

connects a 3D-printed building and vehicle to showcase a new approach to energy use,

storage and consumption. Photo by Carlos Jones

(September 23, 2015)  A research demonstration unveiled today at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory combines clean energy technologies into a 3D-printed building and vehicle to showcase a new approach to energy use, storage and consumption.

The Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) demonstration, displayed at DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Industry Day event, is a model for energy-efficient systems that link buildings, vehicles and the grid.

An ORNL team worked with industrial partners to manufacture and connect a natural-gas-powered hybrid electric vehicle with a solar-powered building to create an integrated energy system. Power can flow in either direction between the vehicle and building through a lab-developed wireless technology. The approach allows the car to provide supplemental power to the 210-square-foot house when the sun is not shining. Watch an animation of the energy flow here: https://youtu.be/afITvjudnoc.

The demonstration also showcases additive manufacturing's rapid prototyping potential in architecture and vehicle design; the car and house both were built using large-scale 3D printers.

The 38x12x13-foot building was designed by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) through the University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Energy and Urbanism. It was assembled by Clayton Homes, the nation’s largest builder of manufactured housing. Connecting the house to the 3D-printed vehicle demonstrates the concept of integrating two energy streams, buildings and transportation, which typically operate independently.

“Working together, we designed a building that innovates construction and building practices and a vehicle with a long enough range to serve as a primary power source,” said ORNL’s Roderick Jackson, who led the AMIE demonstration project. “Our integrated system allows you to get multiple uses out your vehicle.”

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NUS Engineering team develops highly flexible and wearable tactile sensor for robotics, electronics and healthcare applications

A demonstration on the application of wearable liquid-based microfluidic tactile sensor

on a glove. Photo: Daryl Kang

(September 23, 2015)  A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Engineering has developed a wearable liquid-based microfluidic tactile sensor that is small, thin, highly flexible and durable. Simple and cost-effective to produce, this novel device is very suitable for applications such as soft robotics, wearable consumer electronics, smart medical prosthetic devices, as well as real-time healthcare monitoring.

Tactile sensors are data acquisition devices that detect and measure a diversity of properties arising from physical interaction and translate the information acquired to be analysed by an interconnected intelligent system. Conventional tactile sensors that are available today are typically rigid and in solid-state form, restricting various natural body movements when used and may also be subjected to plastic deformation and failure when pressure is exerted, resulting in compromises in conformability, durability and overall robustness.

Addressing the limitations of existing tactile sensors, a team of researchers led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck from NUS’ Department of Biomedical Engineering achieves a significant technological breakthrough by adopting a liquid-based pressure sensing method in the design of such sensors.

Novel liquid-based pressure sensing element

The newly developed microfluidic tactile sensor is fabricated on a flexible substrate like silicone rubber, and uses non-corrosive, non-toxic 2D nanomaterial suspension in liquid form, such as graphene oxide, as the pressure sensing element to recognise force-induced changes.

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Color-coding sensor: Nanostructures for contactless control

These images depict how the photonic sensor translates finger movements into

color changes, as the photonic crystal reacts to the change in local humidity

caused by the approach of the finger without direct contact.

(September 23, 2015)  Chemists at LMU have fabricated a novel nanosheet-based photonic crystal that changes color in response to moisture. The new material could form the basis for humidity-sensitive contactless control of interactive screens on digital devices.

LMU chemists have developed a photonic crystal from ultrathin nanosheets which are extremely sensitive to moisture. “These photonic nanostructures change color in response to variations in local humidity. This makes them ideal candidates for the development of novel user interfaces for touchless devices,” says Professor Bettina Lotsch of the Department of Chemistry at LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. The new sensing platform is described in the journal “Advanced Materials”.

“The humidity around a fingertip is slightly higher than the overall level of moisture in the ambient air,” explains Katalin Szendrei, a member of Prof. Lotsch’s research group. “This difference can be detected by our photonic sensor, and causes it to change color – without any contact with the nearby fingertip.” It is this extreme sensitivity to local moisture that makes the nanostructure so interesting for use in “touchless”-screens. “Contactless control is a particularly attractive option for next-generation positioning interfaces such as ticket machines or cash dispensers, which are used by hundreds of customers each day. In this case, touchless navigation has obvious advantages with respect to hygiene,” says Szendrei, pointing to one potential application for the new device.

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Toward tires that repair themselves

(September 23, 2015)  A cut or torn tire usually means one thing — you have to buy a new one. But some day, that could change. For the first time, scientists have made tire-grade rubber without the processing step — vulcanization — that has been essential to inflatable tires since their invention. The resulting material heals itself and could potentially withstand the long-term pressures of driving. Their report appears in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Vulcanization involves adding sulfur or other curatives to make rubber more durable while maintaining its elasticity. But once an errant piece of glass or other sharp object pierces a tire, it can’t be patched for long-term use. Researchers are beginning to develop self-healing rubber in the laboratory, but these prototypes might not be stable over time either. Amit Das and colleagues wanted to address that shortcoming.

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A Cosmic Rose With Many Names

This new image of the rose-coloured star forming region Messier 17 was captured by the

Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

It is one of the sharpest images showing the entire nebula and not only reveals its full size

but also retains fine detail throughout the cosmic landscape of gas clouds, dust and newborn stars.

(September 23, 2015)  The nebula pictured here may have had more names bestowed upon it over the ages than any other object of its kind. Although officially known as Messier 17, its nicknames include: the Omega Nebula, the Swan Nebula, the Checkmark Nebula, the Horseshoe Nebula and — lest those with more of a more marine bent miss out — the Lobster Nebula.

Messier 17 is located about 5500 light-years from Earth near the plane of the Milky Way and in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The object spans a big section of the sky — its gas and dust clouds measure about 15 light-years across. This material is fueling the birth of new stars and the wide field of view of the new picture reveals many stars in front of, in, or behind Messier 17.

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Frustrated magnets point towards new memory

Skyrmions

(September 23, 2015)  Theoretical physicists from the University of Groningen, supported by the FOM Foundation, have discovered that so-called ‘frustrated magnets’ can produce skyrmions, tiny magnetic vortices that may be used in memory storage. This discovery opens up a new class of materials for scientists working on ‘skyrmionics’, which aims to build memory and logic devices based on skyrmions. The results are published on todays Nature Communications.

The field of skyrmionics has developed rapidly over the last few years. The very small (around 10 nanometre) magnetic vortices could provide a new way to build memory and logical devices with a very low energy use. ‘In fact, a computer memory system based on magnetic bubbles, which are basically very large skyrmions, was invented in the 1967 at Bell Labs’, explains Maxim Mostovoy, Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Groningen. This bubble memory was rapidly overtaken in the 1980s by much smaller silicon-based memory and is now only used for niche applications – it is very robust, has no moving parts and can operate in harsh environments.

Frustrated magnet

So far, skyrmions are only produced in special materials called chiral magnets. The lattice structure of these magnets is chiral, which means the crystal lattice does not have the same properties as its mirror image. ‘To advance the field, new classes of materials are needed’, says Mostovoy. With his post-doc Andrey Leonov (currently working at the Technische Universität Dresden), he discovered that magnetic frustration can produce skyrmions.

In a normal magnet, the magnetic moments are aligned. In a frustrated magnet, interactions favouring parallel magnetic moments compete with interactions favouring antiparallel magnetic moments. Mostovoy: ‘This means the magnetic moments in the crystals are not happy – they are forced to coil into magnetic spirals.’ An applied magnetic field transforms the spiral into a magnetic crystal composed of skyrmions.

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Tiny Carbon-capturing Motors May Help Tackle Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels

Nanoengineers have invented tiny tube-shaped micromotors that zoom around

in water and efficiently remove carbon dioxide. The surfaces of the micromotors are

functionalized with the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which enables the motors to help

rapidly convert carbon dioxide to calcium carbonate.

Image credit: Laboratory for Nanobioelectronics, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

(September 23, 2015)  Machines that are much smaller than the width of a human hair could one day help clean up carbon dioxide pollution in the oceans. Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have designed enzyme-functionalized micromotors that rapidly zoom around in water, remove carbon dioxide and convert it into a usable solid form.

The proof of concept study represents a promising route to mitigate the buildup of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas in the environment, said researchers. The team, led by distinguished nanoengineering professor and chair Joseph Wang, published the work this month in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Video frames showing the movement of a micromotor in sea water.

Image credit: Laboratory for Nanobioelectronics, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

“We’re excited about the possibility of using these micromotors to combat ocean acidification and global warming,” said Virendra V. Singh, a postdoctoral scientist in Wang’s research group and a co-first author of this study.

In their experiments, nanoengineers demonstrated that the micromotors rapidly decarbonated water solutions that were saturated with carbon dioxide. Within five minutes, the micromotors removed 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from a solution of deionized water. The micromotors were just as effective in a sea water solution and removed 88 percent of the carbon dioxide in the same timeframe.

“In the future, we could potentially use these micromotors as part of a water treatment system, like a water decarbonation plant,” said Kevin Kaufmann, an undergraduate researcher in Wang’s lab and a co-author of the study.

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Environmental trade-offs, opportunities

James Corbett examines the market potential and environmental trade-offs of using natural gas in marine fuels.

(September 23, 2015)  As the maritime shipping industry transitions toward cleaner fuels in response to new environmental regulations and emissions standards, abundant supplies of natural gas in the United States, and worldwide, appear to offer a promising solution in transportation industries.

Natural gas is considered by many to be a 21st century energy resource that will enable multiple sectors, including shipping, to transition away from petroleum fuels. But, questions remain about whether the economic and energy potential benefits include co-benefits for the environment.

The University of Delaware’s James Corbett, a professor of marine science and policy in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, has spent the past 15 years working to improve environmental policy on global shipping.

In a study published this week in the international journal Energy Policy, Corbett, in partnership with James Winebrake, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, and recent UD doctoral graduate Heather Thomson, evaluated whether a transition to using liquid natural gas (LNG) to power marine vessels can reduce both local pollution and greenhouse gas in the marine environment, and whether fueling ships at major ports can help develop the natural gas infrastructure.

Study findings indicate that while using natural gas will reduce emissions in the marine sector, the implications for greenhouse gases depends on how the natural gas is extracted, processed, distributed and used.

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Permanent Data Storage with Light

All-optical data memory: Ultra-short light pulses make the GST material change from crystalline

to amorphous and back. Weak light pulses read out the data. (Photo: C. Rios/Oxford University)

(September 23, 2015)  Researchers Develop the First Non-volatile All-optical Chip Memory Based on Phase Change Materials – Publication in Nature Photonics

The first all-optical permanent on-chip memory has been developed by scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the universities of Münster, Oxford, and Exeter. This is an important step on the way towards optical computers. Phase change materials that change their optical properties depending on the arrangement of the atoms allow for the storage of several bits in a single cell. The researchers present their development in the journal Nature Photonics (10.1038/nphoton.2015.182).

Light determines the future of information and communication technology: With optical elements, computers can work more rapidly and more efficiently. Optical fibers have long since been used for the transmission of data with light. But on a computer, data are still processed and stored electronically. Electronic exchange of data between processors and the memory limits the speed of modern computers. To overcome this so-called von Neumann bottleneck, it is not sufficient to optically connect memory and processor, as the optical signals have to be converted into electric signals again. Scientists, hence, look for methods to carry out calculations and data storage in a purely optical manner.

Scientists of KIT, the University of Münster, Oxford University, and Exeter University have now developed the first all-optical, non-volatile on-chip memory. “Optical bits can be written at frequencies of up to a gigahertz. This allows for extremely quick data storage by our all-photonic memory,” Professor Wolfram Pernice explains. Pernice headed a working group of the KIT Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) and recently moved to the University of Münster. “The memory is compatible not only with conventional optical fiber data transmission, but also with latest processors,” Professor Harish Bhaskaran of Oxford University adds.

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Biodiversity and carbon co-benefits to improve sustainable palm oil

Primary rainforests store the highest levels of both biodiversity and carbon across land uses in South East Asia.

(September 22, 2015)  A new report by the Science-Policy Partnership Network, led by the University of York, provides important new information to conserve biodiversity and facilitate more sustainable palm oil production.

The report – ‘Co-benefits for biodiversity and carbon in land planning decisions within oil palm landscapes’ -- examines relationships between the amount of carbon and the amount of biodiversity in different land-use types in Malaysia and Indonesia, and how land planning decisions aimed at benefiting one of these vital resources will also benefit the other.

Dr Jennifer Lucey and Professor Jane Hill from the Department of Biology at York, and Dr Glen Reynolds from the SE Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP), drafted the new report. This report responds to a key question identified by the industry: “Are the land-uses that are important for biodiversity the same land-uses that are important for carbon?”

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A fast cell sorter shrinks to cell phone size

Drawing of blood components being separated by sound waves.

Image: Tony Huang/Penn State

(September 22, 2015)  Commercially available cell sorters can rapidly and accurately aid medical diagnosis and biological research, but they are large and expensive, present a biohazard and may damage cells. Now a team of researchers has developed a cell sorter based on acoustic waves that can compete with existing fluorescence-activated cell sorters and is an inexpensive lab on a chip.

"The current benchtop cell sorters are too expensive, too un-safe, and too high-maintenance," said Tony Jun Huang, Penn State professor of engineering science and mechanics. "More importantly, they have very low biocompatibility. The cell-sorting process can reduce cell viability and functions by 30 to 99 percent for many fragile or sensitive cells such as neurons, stem cells, liver cells and sperm cells. We are developing an acoustic cell sorter that has the potential to address all these problems."

Over the past decade, microfluidic cell sorters have emerged as a promising new tool for single cell sequencing, rare cell isolation, and drug screening. However, many of these microfluidic devices operate at only a few hundred cells per second, far too slow to compete with commercial devices that operate on the order of tens of thousands of operations per second. The Penn State system can sort about 3,000 cells per second, with the potential to sort more than 13,000 cells per second.

The researchers achieve the speed by using focused interdigital transducers to create standing surface acoustic waves. When the waves are not focused, the acoustic field spreads out, slowing the sorting process. The narrow field allows the sorting to take place at high speed while gently manipulating individual cells.

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Characterizing the Forces that Hold Everything Together

 

UMass Amherst physicists, with others, provide a new software tool and

database to help materials designers with the difficult calculations needed

to predict the magnitude of van der Waals interactions between anisotropic or

directionally dependent bodies such as those illustrated, with long-range torques.

Though small, these forces are dominant on the nanoscale. Courtesy of UMass Amherst

UMass Amherst physicists offer new open source calculations for molecular interactions

(September 22, 2015)  As electronic, medical and molecular-level biological devices grow smaller and smaller, approaching the nanometer scale, the chemical engineers and materials scientists devising them often struggle to predict the magnitude of molecular interactions on that scale and whether new combinations of materials will assemble and function as designed.

This is because the physics of interactions at these scales is difficult, say physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who with colleagues elsewhere this week unveil a project known as Gecko Hamaker, a new computational and modeling software tool plus an open science database to aid those who design nano-scale materials.

In the cover story in today’s issue of Langmuir, Adrian Parsegian, Gluckstern Chair in physics, physics doctoral student Jaime Hopkins and adjunct professor Rudolf Podgornik on the UMass Amherst team report calculations of van der Waals interactions between DNA, carbon nanotubes, proteins and various inorganic materials, with colleagues at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Missouri who make up the Gecko-Hamaker project team.

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Tiny magnets mimic steam, water and ice

PSI researchers have created a magnetic metamaterial made of long nanomagnets,

arranged in a flat, honeycomb pattern. The arrangement of magnetisation in the synthetic

material assumed very different states at different temperatures – just like molecules in ice

are more ordered than in water, and are in turn more ordered in water than in steam.

(Image: PSI/Luca Anghinolfi)

(September 22, 2015)  Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) created a synthetic material out of 1 billion tiny magnets. Astonishingly, it now appears that the magnetic properties of this so-called metamaterial change with the temperature, so that it can take on different states; just like water has a gaseous, liquid and a solid state. This material made of nanomagnets might well be refined for electronic applications of the future – such as for more efficient information transfer.

A synthetic material – created from 1 billion nanomagnets – assumes different aggregate states depending on the temperature: the so-called metamaterial exhibits phase transitions, much like those between steam, water and ice. This effect was observed by a team of researchers headed by Laura Heyderman from PSI. “We were surprised and excited,” explains Heyderman. “Only complex systems are able to display phase transitions.” And as complex systems can provide new kinds of information transfer, the result of the new study also reveals that the PSI researchers’ metamaterial would be a potential candidate here.

The major advantage of the synthetic metamaterial is that it can be customised virtually freely. While the individual atoms in a natural material cannot be rearranged with pinpoint precision on such a grand scale, the researchers say that this is possible with the nanomagnets.

Honeycomb of nanomagnets

The magnets are only 63 nanometres long and shaped roughly like grains of rice. The researchers used a highly advanced technique to place 1 billion of these tiny grains on a flat substrate to form a large-scale honeycomb pattern. The nanomagnets covered a total area of five by five millimetres.

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Iowa State engineer develops power-saving tools to keep solar-powered robots in action

Ran Dai, foreground, is working to develop technologies that will help robots

manage their energy use to improve efficiency and battery life. Many students

are assisting with the project, including, back row, left to right, Kishan Patel,

Justin Vandentop, Adam Kaplan and front row, left to right, Nathaniel Kingry

and Yen-Chen Liu. Larger photo. Photo by Christopher Gannon.

(September 22, 2015)  The small robots in Ran Dai’s basement lab at Iowa State University look like fancy electronic toys. But they’re really very smart. And they’re getting smarter.

Dai, an Iowa State assistant professor and Black and Veatch Faculty Fellow in aerospace engineering, is developing power-management technologies that would allow land- and air-based robots to monitor solar conditions so they can maximize operating efficiency and battery life.

That’s right. The robots would decide for themselves the best way to maximize energy production and minimize energy loss.

“It’s these solar-harvesting and power-management functions that can make any robot work longer, or even permanently,” Dai said. “That could make these robots smarter than the Mars rovers.”

Those smart robots could be put to work in all kinds of applications, including search and rescue, agriculture, surveillance or environmental monitoring.

Dai’s power-management research is supported by a five-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant is from the foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program designed to support the research and teaching of junior faculty.

Dai has been working on power-management technologies since her days as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle. That project involved real-time management of aircraft power systems to increase the energy efficiency of Boeing 787s.

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Unique production experiment in progress: Turning waste cotton into new fibre for the fashion industry

PHOTOS: Helsinki Metropolitan Area Reuse Centre Ltd has collected and

pre-processed cotton textiles thrown away by consumers that could not

be reused as clothing or used as material for recycled products.

(Photos by Joonas Lumpeinen)

(September 22, 2015)  Old worn-out cotton clothing can be turned into new fibres for the textile industry using a cellulose dissolution technique developed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. A group of Finnish organisations have launched a project in the course of which the new production technique will be tried out in practice at all stages of the value chain during 2015 and 2016. Cellulose wet-spinning is due to begin at VTT's pop-up plant in Finland in October. The first clothing line made of the new recycled fibres will be out towards the end of 2016.

Advancements in recycling technology are challenging both consumers and businesses: Organic waste in the form of clothing may as of 2016 no longer be disposed of by landfill. The Circular Economy of Textiles (TEKI) project is aimed at piloting and modelling a closed-loop ecosystem in line with the principles of the circular economy, which will form the basis of a new way to make industrial use of textile waste that cannot be reused.

For the purpose of the TEKI project, VTT and Ethica have brought together a group of Finnish organisations representing different activities in the value chain. The common goal of the organisations is to promote the recycling of textiles while adding value to their business activities or creating new business. Ethica's role in the project is to research and model the potential of a closed-loop textile ecosystem more comprehensively and to gauge consumers' interest in operating models that are based on the principles of circular economy and recycled materials. The project also aims to study the technological requirements of dissolution-based recycling.

Cotton that is not suitable for reuse can be dissolved to make cellulose solution, which can be turned into new fibre. Cellulose fibre can be produced using the same technique and equipment as has been used to make viscose fibre for decades, but the new production technique is considerably more environmentally friendly than the technique used for viscose, as no carbon disulphide is needed in the dissolution process. Compared to virgin cotton, the new technique also reduces the water footprint by more than 70% and the carbon footprint by 40–50%.

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Unexpected link between choroid plexus and chronic pain

The choroid plexus located in the brain ventricle is marked with red in the brain image.

The volume of the choroid plexus was measured in this work. The dots in the graph show

the volume of the choroid plexus in patients with CRPS (on the left) and healthy control

subjects (on the right). Each point corresponds to a single person.

(September 22, 2015)  An observation by Finnish researchers shows that the central nervous system plays an important role in complex regional pain syndrome.

Aalto University neuroscientists, in collaboration with researchers at Helsinki University Hospital and Harvard Medical School, have found a novel connection between the size of the choroid plexus in the brain and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). The findings were recently published in the Scientific Reports online journal.

'When studying magnetic resonance images of the brains of patients suffering from CRPS, we noticed that the choroid plexus was nearly one-fifth larger in patients than in healthy control subjects,' says Postdoctoral Researcher Guangyu Zhou from Aalto University Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, who analysed the images.

Located in the walls of the brain ventricles, the choroid plexus is best known for producing cerebrospinal fluid, which forms a protective mechanical cushion and immunological buffer for the brain.  It also controls the passage of many substances from the blood into the cerebrospinal fluid, brain, and spinal cord.

'However, in clinical neuroscience, the functions of choroid plexus beyond cerebrospinal fluid generation have been largely neglected; for example, the size of the choroid plexus is not quantified in routine brain scans,' explains Professor, Academician Riitta Hari, who was in charge of the research.

'As the choroid plexus is known to mediate the interaction between inflammation in the periphery of the body and in the brain, it is an interesting and important target for future research of chronic pain and CRPS in particular,' continues Hari.

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Pushing the Limits of Lensless Imaging

Pushing the limits of lensless imaging.

(September 22, 2015)  At the Frontiers in Optics conference researchers will describe a custom-built ultrafast laser that could help image everything from semiconductor chips to cells in real time.

Using ultrafast beams of extreme ultraviolet light streaming at a 100,000 times a second, researchers from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, have pushed the boundaries of a well-established imaging technique. Not only did they make the highest resolution images ever achieved with this method at a given wavelength, they also created images fast enough to be used in real time. Their new approach could be used to study everything from semiconductor chips to cancer cells.

The team will present their work at the Frontiers in Optics, The Optical Society’s annual meeting and conference in San Jose, California, USA, on 22 October 2015.

The researchers’ wanted to improve on a lensless imaging technique called coherent diffraction imaging, which has been around since the 1980s. To take a picture with this method, scientists fire an X-ray or extreme ultraviolet laser at a target. The light scatters off, and some of those photons interfere with one another and find their way onto a detector, creating a diffraction pattern. By analyzing that pattern, a computer then reconstructs the path those photons must have taken, which generates an image of the target material — all without the lens that's required in conventional microscopy.

"The computer does the imaging part — forget about the lens," explained Michael Zürch, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany and lead researcher. "The computer emulates the lens."

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NIST Team Breaks Distance Record for Quantum Teleportation

Credit: K. Irvine/NIST

(September 22, 2015)  Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have “teleported” or transferred quantum information carried in light particles over 100 kilometers (km) of optical fiber, four times farther than the previous record.

The experiment confirmed that quantum communication is feasible over long distances in fiber. Other research groups have teleported quantum information over longer distances in free space, but the ability to do so over conventional fiber-optic lines offers more flexibility for network design.

Not to be confused with Star Trek’s fictional “beaming up” of people, quantum teleportation involves the transfer, or remote reconstruction, of information encoded in quantum states of matter or light. Teleportation is useful in both quantum communications and quantum computing, which offer prospects for novel capabilities such as unbreakable encryption and advanced code-breaking, respectively. The basic method for quantum teleportation was first proposed more than 20 years ago and has been performed by a number of research groups, including one at NIST using atoms in 2004.

The new record, described in Optica,* involved the transfer of quantum information contained in one photon—its specific time slot in a sequence—to another photon transmitted over 102 km of spooled fiber in a NIST laboratory in Colorado.

The lead author, Hiroki Takesue, was a NIST guest researcher from NTT Corp. in Japan. The achievement was made possible by advanced single-photon detectors designed and made at NIST.

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Ultrathin lens could revolutionise next-gen devices

(September 22, 2015)  Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, collaborating with Monash University, have developed an ultrathin, flat, ultra-lightweight graphene oxide optical lens with unprecedented flexibility.

The ultrathin lens enables potential applications in on-chip nanophotonics and improves the conversion process of solar cells. It also opens up new avenues in:

*  non-invasive 3D biomedical imaging

*  photonic chips

*  aerospace photonics

*  micromachines

*  laser tweezing – the process of using lasers to trap tiny particles.

Optical lenses are indispensable components in almost all aspects of technology including imaging, sensing, communications, and medical diagnosis and treatment.

The rapid development in nano-optics and on-chip photonic systems has increased the demand for ultrathin flat lenses with three-dimensional subwavelength focusing capability – the ability to see details of an object smaller than 200 nanometres.

Recent breakthroughs in nanophotonics have led to the development of a number of ultrathin flat lens concepts, however their real-life application is limited due to their complex design, narrow operational bandwidth and time consuming manufacturing processes.

  

Lead authors PhD candidate Xiaorui Zheng and Associate Professor Baohua Jia.

“Our lens concept has a 3D subwavelength capability that is 30 times more efficient, able to tightly focus broadband light from the visible to the near infrared, and offers a simple and low-cost manufacturing method,” research leader in nanophotonics at Swinburne’s Centre for Micro-Photonics (CMP), Associate Professor Baohua Jia, said.

The researchers produced a film that is 300 times thinner than a sheet of paper by converting graphene oxide film to reduced graphene oxide through a photoreduction process.

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Printing lightweight, flexible, and functional materials

Optical image (left) and schematic illustration (right) of impeller-based mixing nozzle

MULTIMATERIAL 3D PRINTING VIA ACTIVE MIXING AND SWITCHING PRINTHEADS

(September 21, 2015)  3D printing is revolutionizing the production of lightweight structures, soft robots and flexible electronics, but the technology struggles with complex, multimaterial integration.

To print a flexible device, including the electronics, a 3D printer must be able to seamlessly transition from a flexible material that moves with your joints for wearable applications, to a rigid material that accommodates the electronic components. It would also need to be able to embed electrical circuitry using multiple inks of varying conductivity and resistivity, precisely switching between them. And, it would be ideal to do all of this without the stopping the printing process.

The ability to integrate disparate materials and properties within printed objects is the next frontier in 3D printing.

Towards this objective, Harvard researchers have designed new multimaterial printheads that mix and print concentrated viscoelastic inks that allow for the simultaneous control of composition and geometry during printing.  Using active mixing and fast-switching nozzles, these novel printheads change material composition on the fly and could pave the way for entirely 3D-printed wearable devices, soft robots, and electronics.

Optical image of the impeller-based active mixer. Each fluid enters

the mixing chamber through a separate inlet and is mixed in a narrow gap

by an impeller rotating at a constant rate.

(photo by Thomas Ober, Harvard SEAS/Wyss Institute)

The research was led by Jennifer A. Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. The work was published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Mixing complex fluids is fundamental for printing a broad range of materials.   But most mixing approaches are passive, wherein two streams of fluids converge into a single channel where they undergo diffusive mixing. This method works well with low-viscosity fluids, but is ineffective with high-viscosity fluids, like gels, especially in small volumes over short timescales.

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UCLA physicists determine the three-dimensional positions of individual atoms for the first time

Mary Scott and Jianwei (John) Miao/UCLA

The scientists were able to plot the exact coordinates of nine layers of atoms with

a precision of 19 trillionths of a meter.

Finding will help scientists better understand the structural properties of materials

(September 21, 2015)  Atoms are the building blocks of all matter on Earth, and the patterns in which they are arranged dictate how strong, conductive or flexible a material will be. Now, scientists at UCLA have used a powerful microscope to image the three-dimensional positions of individual atoms to a precision of 19 trillionths of a meter, which is several times smaller than a hydrogen atom.

Their observations make it possible, for the first time, to infer the macroscopic properties of materials based on their structural arrangements of atoms, which will guide how scientists and engineers build aircraft components, for example. The research, led by Jianwei (John) Miao, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a member of UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute, is published Sept. 21 in the online edition of the journal Nature Materials.

For more than 100 years, researchers have inferred how atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space using a technique called X-ray crystallography, which involves measuring how light waves scatter off of a crystal. However, X-ray crystallography only yields information about the average positions of many billions of atoms in the crystal, and not about individual atoms’ precise coordinates.

“It’s like taking an average of people on Earth,” Miao said. “Most people have a head, two eyes, a nose and two ears. But an image of the average person will still look different from you and me.”

Because X-ray crystallography doesn’t reveal the structure of a material on a per-atom basis, the technique can’t identify tiny imperfections in materials such as the absence of a single atom. These imperfections, known as point defects, can weaken materials, which can be dangerous when the materials are components of machines like jet engines.

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Endgrain Collection

(September 21, 2015) Self Production  2015  |  The collection is an elaboration of the Endgrain technique we developed previously at the studio.

The idea behind ‘Endgrain’ is to harness the grain of the wood in order to carry dye right the way through sections of timber.

Blocks dyed is different pigments are then glued together with the grains facing vertically to create three-dimensional patterns - then shaped with a computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine. ‘Endgrain’ is therefore a process that starts very crafty and ends quite industrial.

Set up in an entrance hall, the series consists of a bench, an armchair and a console table.

Inspired by checked patterns, the grid arrangement of the coloured blocks introduces what we usually see in textiles into three dimensional wooden piece. When sculpting these 2D patterned blocks into the finish objects, the volumetric shape distorts the graphic patterns in a surprising and unexpected way that feels almost like a three dimensional marquetry.

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