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Category: engineering – Page 142

Combustion creates Braille display for electronics

Imagine an iPad or a Kindle for the blind, with inflatable Braille that changes shape under a user’s touch. A Cornell-led collaboration has made a crucial component for such a technology: A haptic array of densely packed actuators that cause silicone membrane “dots” to pop up when triggered by combustion.

The team’s paper, “Valveless Microliter Combustion for Densely Packed Arrays of Powerful Soft Actuators,” published Sept. 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author is doctoral student Ronald Heisser.

One of the major hurdles for designing a dynamic Braille display for electronics is figuring out how to apply the necessary amount of force for each dot. Previous attempts have usually involved motors, hydraulics or tethered pumps, all of which are cumbersome, complex and expensive, according to Rob Shepherd, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and the paper’s senior author.

A Biological ‘Time Machine’ With Human Cells Can Help Reverse Cancer

And, depending on how further studies progress, it could be implemented via gene therapy.

Early-stage pancreatic cancer has a ‘reset button’

“These findings open up the possibility of designing a new gene therapy or drug because now we can convert cancerous cells back into their normal state,” said Professor Bumsoo Han of Purdue’s mechanical engineering, who is also the program leader for the university’s Center for Cancer Research, in a blog post shared on the university’s official website. Han has also received a courtesy appointment in biomedical engineering, according to the post. The new time machine (speaking figuratively) from Han’s lab is a lifelike reproduction of a specific structure of the pancreas, called the acinus, which secretes and produces digestive enzymes into the small intestine. When pancreatic cancer strikes, it typically comes from chronic inflammation, which is caused by a mutation that tricks the digestive enzymes to begin digesting the pancreas itself. This is bad.

Liquid metal coating creates effective antiviral, antimicrobial fabric

An international team of researchers has used liquid gallium to create an antiviral and antimicrobial coating and tested it on a range of fabrics, including facemasks. The coating adhered more strongly to fabric than some conventional metal coatings, and eradicated 99% of several common pathogens within five minutes.

“Microbes can survive on the fabrics hospitals use for bedding, clothing and face masks for a long time,” says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and Camille & Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. “Metallic surface coatings such as copper or silver are an effective way to eradicate these pathogens, but many metal particle coating technologies have issues such as non-uniformity, processing complexity, or poor .”

Dickey and colleagues from NC State, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Korea and RMIT University in Australia set out to develop a simple, cost-effective way to deposit metal coatings on fabric.

SpaceX to launch world’s first geostationary propellant depot around the Moon

As part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch that will send a commercial Moon lander on its way to Earth’s nearest neighbor, rideshare organizer Spaceflight Inc and propellant depot startup OrbitFab have revealed plans for the first high Earth orbit propellant depot.

Known as “Tanker-002,” the co-developed spacecraft will technically be the first propellant depot – essentially a gas station in space – to reach a geostationary orbit ~36,000 km (~22,300 mi) above the Earth’s surface. Based around a variant of Spaceflight’s brand new Sherpa OTV space tug vehicles, OrbitFab hasn’t disclosed the planned capacity of its unique GEO depot but the public specifications of Sherpa suggest that the company will be able to deliver a few hundred kilograms (300−800 lb) of hydrazine accessible via several tiny docking ports.

However, Tanker-002 isn’t interesting solely for its unique position as a tanker in GEO. How Spaceflight and OrbitFab plan to get the small spacecraft into position will be a feat of engineering and trajectory design in its own right.

Consciousness & Information | Part II of the Documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind

Quantum physics is directly linked to consciousness: Observations not just change what is measured, they create it… Here’s the next episode of my new documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind (2021), Part II: CONSCIOUSNESS & INFORMATION

*Subscribe to our YT channel to watch the rest of documentary (to be released in parts): https://youtube.com/c/EcstadelicMedia.

**Watch the documentary in its entirety on Vimeo ($0.99/rent; $1.99/buy): https://vimeo.com/ondemand/339083

***Join Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind public forum for news and discussions (Facebook group of 6K+ members): https://www.facebook.com/groups/consciousness.evolution.mind.

#Consciousness #Evolution #Mind #Documentary #Film

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New Solid-State Battery Surprises Researchers Who Created It

The study had been supported by LG Energy Solution’s open innovation, a program that actively supports battery-related research. LGES has been working with researchers around the world to foster related techniques.

Silicon anodes are famous for their energy density, which is 10 times greater than the graphite anodes most often used in today’s commercial lithium ion batteries. On the other hand, silicon anodes are infamous for how they expand and contract as the battery charges and discharges, and for how they degrade with liquid electrolytes. These challenges have kept all-silicon anodes out of commercial lithium ion batteries despite the tantalizing energy density. The new work published in Science provides a promising path forward for all-silicon-anodes, thanks to the right electrolyte.

“With this battery configuration, we are opening a new territory for solid-state batteries using alloy anodes such as silicon,” said Darren H. S. Tan, the lead author on the paper. He recently completed his chemical engineering PhD at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and co-founded a startup UNIGRID Battery that has licensed this technology.