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Feb 20, 2023

First Wearable Device for Vocal Fatigue Senses When Your Voice Needs a Break

Posted by in categories: electronics, wearables

Summary: A newly developed sensor tracks a person’s vocal use and alerts them to overuse before vocal fatigue and potential injury occur.

Source: Northwestern University.

Northwestern University researchers have developed the first smart wearable device to continuously track how much people use their voices, alerting them to overuse before vocal fatigue and potential injury set in.

Feb 20, 2023

Robotaxi tackling ‘two-headed situation’ of self-driving safety, unpredictability: Zoox CEO

Posted by in categories: employment, finance, robotics/AI, transportation

Nice. But I’m more concerned about the jobs that will be lost from this.


#Zoox #youtube #ai #yahoofinance.
This segment originally aired on February 17, 2023.
Zoox CEO Aicha Evans joins Yahoo Finance Live anchors Dave Briggs and Seana Smith to discuss approval of its self-driving auto by the California DMV, the state of the autonomous vehicle industry, and Amazon’s ownership of the company.
Don’t Miss: Valley of Hype: The culture that built Elizabeth Holmes.
WATCH HERE:

Continue reading “Robotaxi tackling ‘two-headed situation’ of self-driving safety, unpredictability: Zoox CEO” »

Feb 20, 2023

ChatGPT Has A Serious Problem

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

It seems it has significant bias.


In this episode we look at the problem of ChatGPT’s political bias, solutions and some wild stories of the new Bing AI going off the rails.

Continue reading “ChatGPT Has A Serious Problem” »

Feb 20, 2023

Stretching-insensitive stretchable and biocompatible triboelectric nanogenerators

Posted by in categories: energy, engineering, nanotechnology, wearables

Professor Juhyuk Lee of the Department of Energy Engineering has developed an elastic triboelectric generator that can be used in the daily lives of frequent movers. The cause of the output reduction of the elastic triboelectric sensor was identified during joint research with Professor Joohun Lee of Hanyang University’s (ERICA campus) Department of Bio-Nanotechnology. Additionally, the professor used graphene to develop a touch sensor with stable output and expand the application of the triboelectric generator. The study is published in the journal Nano Energy.

Along with the rapid growth of various biosensors and due to the continuous development of semiconductors and small electronic components, there has been a growing interest in triboelectric generators for use as sensors or . To use the triboelectric generator in a wearable device, the material that comes into contact with the body must be safe, and the output must be constant despite any deformations caused by movement.

However, the output of conventional elastic triboelectric generators is affected by its change in form. The reason for this relationship was not clearly understood. Similar to previously existing products, there are limitations to precise detection if the output changes along with the change in form, such as stretching.

Feb 20, 2023

Two-dimensional oxides open door for high-speed electronics

Posted by in categories: computing, materials

Advances in computing power over the decades have come thanks in part to our ability to make smaller and smaller transistors, a building block of electronic devices, but we are nearing the limit of the silicon materials typically used. A new technique for creating 2D oxide materials may pave the way for future high-speed electronics, according to an international team of scientists.

“One way we can make our transistors, our , work faster is to shrink the distance electrons have to travel between point A and B,” said Joshua Robinson, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. “You can only go so far with 3D materials like silicon—once you shrink it down to a nanometer, its properties change. So there’s been a massive push looking at new materials, one of which are 2D materials.”

The team, led by Furkan Turker, graduate student in the Department of Materials Sciences, used a technique called confinement hetroepitaxy, or CHet, to create 2D oxides, materials with special properties that can serve as an atomically thin insulating layer between layers of electrically conducting materials.

Feb 20, 2023

Facile and scalable production of a fuel-cell nanocatalyst for the hydrogen economy

Posted by in categories: economics, energy, nanotechnology, transportation

A fuel cell is an electric power generator that is capable of producing electricity from hydrogen gas while discharging only water as a waste product. It is hoped that this highly efficient clean energy system will play a key role in the adoption of the hydrogen economy, replacing the combustion engines and batteries in automobiles and trucks, as well as power plants.

However, the cost of platinum, which can be up to ~30,000 USD per kg, has been a major limitation, making catalysts prohibitively expensive. The production methods of highly-performing catalysts have also been complicated and largely limited. Accordingly, the development of a facile and scalable production method for platinum-based fuel cell catalysts is an urgent challenge, together with enhancing catalytic performance and stability while using a minimum amount of platinum.

To tackle this issue, a research team led by Prof. Sung Yung-Eun and Prof. Hyeon Taeghwan at the Center for Nanoparticle Research (CNR) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), South Korea has discovered a novel method for the production of nanocatalysts.

Feb 20, 2023

‘Flash Joule’ technique efficiently turns would-be pollution into valuable nanomaterials

Posted by in categories: economics, nanotechnology, sustainability

Putting that soda bottle or takeout container into the recycling bin is far from a guarantee it will be turned into something new. Scientists at Rice University are trying to address this problem by making the process profitable.

The amount of waste produced globally has doubled over the past two decades—and plastic production is expected to triple by 2050—with most of it ending up in landfills, incinerated or otherwise mismanaged, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Some estimates suggest only 5% is actually being recycled.

“Waste plastic is rarely recycled because it costs a lot of money to do all the washing, sorting and melting down of the plastics to turn it into a material that can be used by a factory,” said Kevin Wyss, a Rice graduate student and lead author on a study published in Advanced Materials that describes how he and colleagues in the lab of chemist James Tour used their flash Joule heating technique to turn plastic into valuable carbon nanotubes and hybrid nanomaterials.

Feb 20, 2023

Scientists propose using carbon-coated magnetite nanoclusters for synergistic cancer therapy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

Prof. Wang Hui, together with Prof. Lin Wenchu and associate Prof. Qian Junchao from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have recently reported a near infrared (NIR)-II-responsive carbon-coated iron oxide nanocluster that was guided by magnetic resonance imaging and capable of combined photothermal and chemodynamic therapy (CDT), for synergistic cancer treatment.

The results were published in SCIENCE CHINA Materials.

As a promising treatment strategy, CDT has become a hot spot in cancer research due to its simple operation and low side effects. The basic principle of CDT is that the nanozymes activate the intracellular Fenton reaction, leading to the over-production of hydroxyl radicals, which are toxic to . Magnetite nanocrystals are widely used as Fenton reagents due to their non-invasive imaging ability and good biocompatibility. However, the ferromagnetic behavior and easy oxidization of magnetite nanocrystals lead to colloidal instability as nanozymes and limit the imaging-guided cancer therapy in practical applications.

Feb 20, 2023

Smooth sailing for electrons in graphene: Measuring fluid-like flow at nanometer resolution

Posted by in categories: materials, particle physics

Physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have directly measured the fluid-like flow of electrons in graphene at nanometer resolution for the first time. The results appear in the journal Science today.

Graphene, an atom-thick sheet of arranged in a , is an especially pure electrical conductor, making it an ideal material to study with very low resistance. Here, researchers intentionally add impurities at known distances, and find that electron flow changes from gas-like to fluid-like as the temperature rises.

“All conductive materials contain impurities and imperfections that block electron flow, which causes resistance. Historically, people have taken a low-resolution approach to identifying where resistance comes from,” says Zach Krebs, a physics graduate student at UW-Madison and co-lead author of the study. “In this study, we image how charge flows around an impurity and actually see how that impurity blocks current and causes resistance, which is something that hasn’t been done before to distinguish gas-like and fluid-like electron flow.”

Feb 20, 2023

Scientists make stunning discovery, find new protein activity in telomeres

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Once thought incapable of encoding proteins due to their simple monotonous repetitions of DNA, tiny telomeres at the tips of our chromosomes seem to hold a potent biological function that’s potentially relevant to our understanding of cancer and aging.

Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UNC School of Medicine researchers Taghreed Al-Turki, Ph.D., and Jack Griffith, Ph.D., made the stunning discovery that telomeres contain to produce two small proteins, one of which they found is elevated in some human cells, as well as cells from patients suffering from telomere-related defects.

“Based on our research, we think simple blood tests for these proteins could provide a valuable screen for certain cancers and other human diseases,” said Griffith, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. “These tests also could provide a measure of ‘telomere health,’ because we know telomeres shorten with age.”