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Category: electronics – Page 110

Bridging the Bio-Electronic Divide

A new DARPA program aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. The interface would serve as a translator, converting between the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of information technology. The goal is to achieve this communications link in a biocompatible device no larger than one cubic centimeter in size, roughly the volume of two nickels stacked back to back.

The program, Neural Engineering System Design (NESD), stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in neurotechnology and provide a foundation for new therapies.

“Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” said Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”

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‘Bubble pen’ can precisely write patterns with nanoparticles as small as 1 nanometer

Allows for more easily building tiny machines, biomedical sensors, optical computers, solar panels, and other devices — no complex clean room required; portable version planned.

Illustration of the bubble-pen pattern-writing process using an optically controlled microbubble on a plasmonic substrate. The small blue spheres are colloidal nanoparticles. (credit: Linhan Lin et al./Nano Letters)

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have created “bubble-pen lithography” — a device and technique to quickly, gently, and precisely use microbubbles to “write” using gold, silicon and other nanoparticles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size as “ink” on a surface.

The new technology is aimed at allowing researchers to more easily build tiny machines, biomedical sensors, optical computers, solar panels, and other devices.

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Goldman Sachs says VR will be bigger than TV in 10 years

In an analyst note published on Wednesday, Goldman Sachs predicted that the virtual reality (VR) market will outpace the TV market in annual revenue by 2025, making VR bigger than TV.

The banking firm writes that the VR market will generate $110 billion dollars compared to TVs $99 billion in 10 years.

This will happen if VR adoption follows their “Accelerated Uptake” projection, in which virtual reality becomes more commonplace through advances in battery and cellular technologies. By eventually ditching the current wires and accompanying computers needed to power high-end VR headsets, the devices would become truly mobile; think a headset that’s more akin to a pair of sunglasses than the bulky goggles of the first generation Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

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7 Mind-Blowing Digital Health Tools That Could Disrupt Health Care in 2016

Wow!!! Chewing gum wearable technology, Cyborg Chips, Ingestible sensors to let doctors know if you’re taking your meds, etc. 2016 is going to be interesting

The phrase “Brave New World” has become one of the most often used clichés in medical technology in recent years. Google the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian, and anticipatory, novel with the word medicine and 2,940,000 results appear.

But could there be better shorthand to describe some of the recent developments in medical, health and bio-tech? Consider these possibilities coming to fruition, or close to, in 2016:

1. Back from Extinction

Gene-editing startup Editas Medicine of Cambridge, Mass., filed to go public this month. The company’s founder, Harvard professor George Church, hopes to, among other things, revive the extinct woolly mammoth or create a facsimile. Investors include Google and Bill Gates.

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Swallowing this smart nano pill could stop us from making diet mistakes

It’s not always talked about in polite company, but your body produces a lot of gases scientists know little about.

A new smart pill, designed at Melbourne’s RMIT University, could help us learn more and may eventually assist in customising what we eat to suit our bodies.

Researchers from the Centre for Advanced Electronics and Sensors have developed the pill, which can measure intestinal gases, and they have now undertaken the first animal tests using the technology to examine the impact of fibre on the gut.

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Medgadget @ CES 2016: Profusa Unveils Long-Term Implanatable Biosensor

ProfusaLast week at CES, South San Francisco based Profusa showed off an upcoming injectable sensor that can be used to continuously monitor oxygen levels in tissue. Measuring only five millimeters long and a tiny 250 microns in diameter, the biosensor can be injected into tissue with just a hypodermic needle. It consists of a soft hydrogel scaffold that allows it to be biologically compatible with the surrounding tissue without any foreign body response. The sensor also contains a special chemical marker that changes fluorescence depending on the amount of oxygen that reacts with it. An optical reader placed on the skin measures the fluorescence and relays the data to a smartphone. The biosensor can last as long as two years (at which point the chemical marker begins to lose its potency), and because it contains no electronics and is completely biocompatible there’s no need to remove it.

On stage at the CES Digital Health Summit, Profusa CEO Dr. Ben Hwang gave a live demonstration of how the sensor works in action. As two of his colleagues with the sensors implanted and using a blood pressure cuffs performed stretches to simulate changes in blood flow, a graph displayed the live view of the changing tissue oxygen levels at the site of the sensors.

We had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Hwang after his talk, and he shared that the first application of the sensor is the Lumee Oxygen Sensing System, which is designed to monitor oxygen levels during the wound healing process. Sufficient oxygen flow through a wound is vital to the healing process, and Lumee can detect low oxygen levels early in the healing process and even before treatment or surgery begins.

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Researchers gauge quantum properties of nanotubes, essential for next-gen electronics

Loving the progress around Quantum.

Today, a group of scientists — John A. Rogers, Eric Seabron, Scott MacLaren and Xu Xie from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Slava V. Rotkin from Lehigh University; and, William L. Wilson from Harvard University — are reporting on the discovery of an important method for measuring the properties of nanotube materials using a microwave probe. Their findings have been published in ACS Nano in an article called: “Scanning Probe Microwave Reflectivity of Aligned Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes: Imaging of Electronic Structure and Quantum Behavior at the Nanoscale.”

The researchers studied single-walled carbon nanotubes. These are 1-dimensional, wire-like nanomaterials that have electronic properties that make them excellent candidates for next generation electronics technologies. In fact, the first prototype of a nanotube computer has already been built by researchers at Stanford University. The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center is currently developing nanotube transistors for commercial use.

For this study, scientists grew a series of parallel nanotube lines, similar to the way nanotubes will be used in computer chips. Each nanotube was about 1 nanometer wide — ten times smaller than expected for use in the next generation of electronics. To explore the material’s properties, they then used microwave impedance microscopy (MIM) to image individual nanotubes.

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