Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: electronics

What would be really cool is have a “Computer Screen in a Can”; take your polymer spray and instantly create a screen on a table, a window, suitcase, etc. with your “Computer Screen in a Can”; U Can! I can just imagine the infomercials. On a more serious note — NW Univ has developed a new Hybrid Polymer which is going to expand the capabilities of polymer into so many areas in medicine, to manufacturing, electronics, self reparing material & devices, etc.

http://www.compositesworld.com/news/northwestern-university-researchers-develop-a-hybrid-polymer

A completely new hybrid polymer has been developed by Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) researchers.

“We have created a surprising new polymer with nano-sized compartments that can be removed and chemically regenerated multiple times,” said materials scientist Samuel Stupp, the senior author of the study and director of Northwestern’s Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology. The study was published in the Jan. 29 issue of Science.

“Some of the nanoscale compartments contain rigid conventional polymers, but others contain the so- called supramolecular polymers, which can respond rapidly to stimuli, be delivered to the environment and then be easily regenerated again in the same locations. The supramolecular soft compartments could be animated to generate polymers with the functions we see in living things,” he said.

Read more

Q-Dots in your TV in 2016.

Hisense-H10.jpgHisense plans to introduce a total of 22 TVs to the U.S. market in 2016, including 720p, 1080p, and UHD models. All of Hisense’s 2016 UHD TVs (eight models total) will support High Dynamic Range, and screen sizes will range from 43 to 65 inches. The flagship 65-inch H10 (shown here) will feature both HDR and quantum dot technologies and have a full-array LED backlighting with local dimming. The 65H10C will be available in the second half of 2016 for $2,799.99

From Hisense Dedicated to continually pushing the envelope with innovative design, technology and value to the consumer, the number-three TV manufacturer globally is looking to achieve the same position within the U.S. with its groundbreaking, affordable, high-quality televisions.

Since introducing its first 4K model in 2013, Hisense has become the fastest growing 4K TV brand in the U.S., a testament to its dedication to R&D expansion, brand building efforts and nimble operations that ensure consistent value is provided to customers and retailers. In addition, Hisense offers an industry leading warranty program, with more coverage than any other brand.

” At Hisense, the customer is central to everything we do–from product concept through post-purchase experience and support,” said Jerry Liu, Chief Executive Officer of Hisense Americas. He added, “as an agile and modern brand, our global and local capabilities allow us to execute new technologies faster than competitors. We look forward to advancing our distinctive offering in the U.S. by bringing more TVs to market in 2016 than ever before, while continuing to provide our customers and retail partners with exceptional performance, choice and high-quality technologies at more attainable price points.”

Demonstrating this commitment to the U.S. TV market, Hisense has announced the addition of 22 new TV models for 2016, from 720p and 1080p to 4K and the next generation of the company’s proprietary ULED technology. As exemplified by the H7 series in 2015, Hisense will expand the global 4K market in 2016 by making HDR processing accessible to the mass consumer with its H8 model. Hisense will also continue to expand its Roku TV line-up and deliver 1.07 billion colors for a seemingly infinite number of shades with its curved ULED technology.

Better Pixels For More Colors Hisense’s first generation ULED brought viewers blacker blacks and brighter colors with a curved screen that feels larger and creates a more immersive viewing experience. In 2016, Hisense will offer ULED technology and HDR processing in 55” (H9 Series) and feature a second generation ULED in the 65” (H10 Series) screen sizes, with more local dimming zones, quantum dot advanced color technology and the addition of streaming High Dynamic Range (HDR) content from Amazon.

Protected by 17 patents, ULED technology enhances color, contrast, black level, brightness and smooth motion with a combination of advanced hardware and software. The technology is up to three times brighter than OLED with better dynamic range and perception of black and white. The latest iteration of ULED will be even brighter and more colorful with a color gamut of 91.2 percent of Rec.2020 and 99.98 percent of the DCI-P3 color spaces and 1000-nit peak brightness.

Read more

I don’t claim to be the expert on all things Quantum by no stretch; however, this is an amazing discovery and huge step forward for Quantum.

Quantum gas and liquid/ ferrofluid (quantum fluid made of tiny magnets). Now there’s a concept. Q-Dots as ferrofluid flowing through out your system (which is already comprised of about 72% H2O; think about how liquid Q-Dots can be easily absorb as a liquid and given your brain, heart, etc. run on electro charges and sensors; it could definitely open the discussion why even bother with nuero implants when Q-ferrofluid could actually be absorbed and manipulated to target the right areas for fighting diseases or improving brain functions.

The world of quantum mechanics happens only in small scales around a few nanometers. In this nanoworld, particles can behave like waves, and vice versa and have only some probability to be in a particular region. These effects can be directly observed in ultracold dilute gases. For this purpose thousands or a million atoms are cooled down to a few billionth of a degree above absolute zero. At such low temperatures particles become indistinguishable und unite collecitvely to a single giant matter wave called Bose-Einstein condensate which has astonishing properties. The matter wave flows as quantum fluid practically without inner friction, thus it is namedsuperfluid.

Researchers around Tilman Pfau at the Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology IQST in Stuttgart (Germany) created such a quantum fluid made of tiny magnets – that are atoms of the most magnetic element dysprosium. They call it “quantum ferrofluid” since it is superfluid and has magnetic properties similar to classical ferrofluids. Ferrofluids consist of ferromagnetic nanoparticles dissolved in oil or water. When a strong magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the surface of the ferrofluid it undergoes a so-called Rosensweig instability. The surface is no longer smooth like normal fluids, but it generates a regular thorny surface resembling a hedgehog. From the point view of the tiny magnets in a ferrofluid, every south- and northpole attract each other. Therefore, it is energetically favourable to be on top of each other along the field direction, so the fluid grows peaks out of the smooth surface.

For their investigations the researchers from Stuttgart created a quantum ferrofluid with 15,000 atoms and induced a magnetic instability. They observed then the emergence of regular patterns consisting of microscopic droplets, similar to the Rosensweig instability of ferrofluids. Each droplet has a radius smaller than 1 µm and their existence was not expected with the current state of research on these systems. Their observation could thus lead to a new field of research, as the researchers expect quantum fluctuations, related to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,to play an important role in the droplet existence. These quantum fluctuations allow a unique state of matter that connects opposite properties of gases, crystals and superfluids. This connectioncould be the path to a so-called supersolid, a spatially ordered material with superfluid properties.

Read more

Graphene is coming to the market in Q3 2017 by Hexagon Resources. What is also important about this is not only what graphene does for batteries; is 1 day ago when researchers in Italy released their findings in how graphene can be implanted in the brain without damaging brain cells. Therefore, there is huge potential for grapheme beyond batteries and electronics.

Hexagon Resources is on track for first production next year at its McIntosh project in Western Australia, where the country’s biggest flake graphite resource is already demonstrating huge potential for meeting high-value markets and growing significantly in size.

Read more

UT RESEARCHERS DEVELOP ®EVOLUTIONARY CIRCUITS

Researchers of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology and the CTIT Institute for ICT Research at the University of Twente in The Netherlands have demonstrated working electronic circuits that have been produced in a radically new way, using methods that resemble Darwinian evolution. The size of these circuits is comparable to the size of their conventional counterparts, but they are much closer to natural networks like the human brain. The findings promise a new generation of powerful, energy-efficient electronics, and have been published in the leading British journal Nature Nanotechnology.

One of the greatest successes of the 20th century has been the development of digital computers. During the last decades these computers have become more and more powerful by integrating ever smaller components on silicon chips. However, it is becoming increasingly hard and extremely expensive to continue this miniaturisation. Current transistors consist of only a handful of atoms. It is a major challenge to produce chips in which the millions of transistors have the same characteristics, and thus to make the chips operate properly. Another drawback is that their energy consumption is reaching unacceptable levels. It is obvious that one has to look for alternative directions, and it is interesting to see what we can learn from nature. Natural evolution has led to powerful ‘computers’ like the human brain, which can solve complex problems in an energy-efficient way. Nature exploits complex networks that can execute many tasks in parallel.

Read more

Another major leap forward in Quantum; researchers have been able to transport heat consistently ten thousand times further than ever before. This will enable Quantum technology to be leveraged in across multiple areas of manufacturing (clothing, etc.), energy, and electronics due to its heat conductive properties.

Heat conduction is a fundamental physical phenomenon utilized, for example, in clothing, housing, car industry, and electronics. Thus our day-to-day life is inevitably affected by major shocks in this field. The research group, led by quantum physicist Mikko Möttönen has now made one of these groundbreaking discoveries. This new invention revolutionizes quantum-limited heat conduction which means as efficient heat transport as possible from point A to point B. This is great news especially for the developers of quantum computers.

Artistic impression of quantum-limited heat conduction of photons over macroscopic distances

Figure 1. Artistic impression of quantum-limited heat conduction of photons over macroscopic distances. (Image: Heikka Valja)

Read more

Apple’s quietly building a small army of virtual reality developers, and has been working on a headset for several months, but it’s been typically vague about its plans with the public. And on Friday, company representatives confirmed it’s made yet another another acquisition.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Apple told Tim Bradshaw of the Financial Times, confirming its buy of Flyby Media, a company that “is dedicated to building new technology that can elevate, rather than replace, our real-world experiences.”

Flyby Media specializes in SLAM — simultaneous localization and mapping — a technology that uses a camera and sensors to track an object’s position in real time, something needed for augmented and virtual reality. Flyby also worked with Google on Project Tango, which “gives a mobile device the ability to navigate the physical world similar to how we do as humans.”

Read more

But a carbon nanotube coating (shown in clear jacket) replaces the tin-coated copper braid that serves as the outer conductor, ordinarily the heaviest component. Created by researchers at Rice University, the coating was tested by a collaborative group including NIST, which has more than 10 years of expertise in characterizing and measuring nanotu…bes. The coating, only up to 90 microns (millionths of a meter) in thickness, resulted in a total cable mass reduction of 50 percent (useful for lowering the weight of electronics in aerospace vehicles) and handled 10,000 bending cycles without affecting performance. And even though the coating is microscopically thin, the cable transmitted data with a comparable ability to ordinary cables, due to the nanotubes’ favorable electrical properties.

Credit: J. Fitlow/Rice University See More

Read more

When engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, say they are going to make you sweat, it is all in the name of science. Specifically, it is for a flexible sensor system that can measure metabolites and electrolytes in sweat, calibrate the data based upon skin temperature and sync the results in real time to a smartphone.

While health monitors have exploded onto the consumer electronics scene over the past decade, researchers say this device, reported in the Jan. 28 issue of the journal Nature (“Fully integrated wearable sensor arrays for multiplexed in situ perspiration analysis”), is the first fully integrated electronic system that can provide continuous, non-invasive monitoring of multiple biochemicals in sweat.

wristband sweat sensor

The new sensor developed at UC Berkeley can be made into “smart” wristbands or headbands that provide continuous, real-time analysis of the chemicals in sweat.

Read more

Another Quantum Breakthrough through ultra- low temp nanoelectronics- Sub-millikelvin nanoelectronic circuits and is another step on the way to develop new quantum technologies including quantum computers and sensors.

The first ever measurement of the temperature of electrons in a nanoelectronic device a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero was demonstrated in a joint research project performed by Lancaster University, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, and Aivon Ltd.

The team managed to make the electrons in a circuit on a silicon chip colder than had previously been achieved.

Dr Rich Haley, Head of Ultra Low Temperature Physics at Lancaster, said: “This is a notable achievement in that the team has finally broken through the 4 millikelvin barrier, which has been the record in such structures for over 15 years.”

Read more