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Storage tech doesn’t get much better than this. Scientists at TU Delft have developed a technique that uses chlorine atom positions as data bits, letting the team fit 1KB of information into an area just 100 nanometers wide. That may not sound like much, but it amounts to a whopping 62.5TB per square inch — about 500 times denser than the best hard drives. The scientists coded their data by using a scanning tunneling microscope to shuffle the chlorine atoms around a surface of copper atoms, creating data blocks where QR code -style markers indicate both their location and whether or not they’re in good condition.

Not surprisingly, the technology isn’t quite ready for prime time. At the moment, this storage only works in extremely clean conditions, and then only in extreme cold (77 kelvin, or −321F). However, the approach can easily scale to large data sizes, even if the copper is flawed. Researchers suspect that it’s just a matter of time before their storage works in normal conditions. If and when it does, you could see gigantic capacities even in the smallest devices you own — your phone could hold dozens of terabytes in a single chip.

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Lumee™ tissue-O2 monitoring system slated to be available this year in Europe

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 16, 2016 — Profusa, Inc. announced today that it was selected by Pioneers, the global business relationship builder, to showcase the company’s “wear-and-forget” Lumee™ biosensor technology at the Pioneers Festival held at the prestigious Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna, Austria, May 24th-25th.

Making health and disease monitoring as easy as turning on your smart phone, the company’s tissue-integrated sensors for long-term, continuous tracking of body chemistry will be highlighted by Ben Hwang, Profusa’s chairman and chief executive officer, in a talk entitled, “Beyond Fitness Trackers: Let Your Body Speak.”

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Way cool! Your stitches monitors and reports your progress to your doctor/s.

BTW — In 1999, I told a guy from Diamond Intl. that the thread in our clothing would be able to do this in the next 15 to 20 years. He laughed at me; never say never.

For the first time, researchers led by Tufts University engineers have integrated nano-scale sensors, electronics and microfluidics into threads — ranging from simple cotton to sophisticated synthetics — that can be sutured through multiple layers of tissue to gather diagnostic data wirelessly in real time, according to a paper published online July 18 in Microsystems & Nanoengineering. The research suggests that the thread-based diagnostic platform could be an effective substrate for a new generation of implantable diagnostic devices and smart wearable systems.

The researchers used a variety of conductive threads that were dipped in physical and chemical sensing compounds and connected to wireless electronic circuitry to create a flexible platform that they sutured into tissue in rats as well as in vitro. The threads collected data on tissue health (e.g. pressure, stress, strain and temperature), pH and glucose levels that can be used to determine such things as how a wound is healing, whether infection is emerging, or whether the body’s chemistry is out of balance. The results were transmitted wirelessly to a cell phone and computer.

The three-dimensional platform is able to conform to complex structures such as organs, wounds or orthopedic implants.

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Smartphones and tablets are being used more frequently in the battlefield, and that means that battery power is more important than ever. Soldiers often carry spare battery chargers in the 90-pound combat packs they carry into war zones, but the batteries are often lost or broken. BAE Systems wants to help lighten the load with its new system that lets soldiers plug electronics directly into their clothing.

The BAE Systems Broadsword Spine is a harness that can be sewn into a soldiers vest, jacket, or belt that carries a battery pack and hides charging wires. The harness places the battery pack on the small of a soldier’s back and includes eight conductive fabric conduits that can be used to connect to a USB port.

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Stable nanomagnets that ultimately improves data storage on the smallest of devices.

Abstract: So-called “zero-point energy” is a term familiar to some cinema lovers or series fans; in the fictional world of animated films such as “The Incredibles” or the TV series “Stargate Atlantis”, it denotes a powerful and virtually inexhaustible energy source. Whether it could ever be used as such is arguable. Scientists at Jülich have now found out that it plays an important role in the stability of nanomagnets. These are of great technical interest for the magnetic storage of data, but so far have never been sufficiently stable. Researchers are now pointing the way to making it possible to produce nanomagnets with low zero-point energy and thus a higher degree of stability (Nano Letters, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01344).

Since the 1970s, the number of components in computer chips has doubled every one to two years, their size diminishing. This development has made the production of small, powerful computers such as smart phones possible for the first time. In the meantime, many components are only about as big as a virus and the miniaturization process has slowed down. This is because below approximately a nanometre, a billionth of a meter in size, quantum effects come into play. They make it harder, for example, to stabilise magnetic moments. Researchers worldwide are looking for suitable materials for magnetically stable nanomagnets so that data can be stored safely in the smallest of spaces.

In this context, stable means that the magnetic moments point consistently in one of two preassigned directions. The direction then codes the bit. However, the magnetic moments of atoms are always in motion. The trigger here is the so-called zero-point energy, the energy that a quantum mechanical system possesses in its ground state at absolute zero temperature. “It makes the magnetic moments of atoms fluctuate even at the lowest of temperatures and thus works against the stability of the magnetic moments”, explains Dr. Julen Ibañez-Azpiroz, from the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group “Functional Nanoscale Structure Probe and Simulation Laboratory” at the Peter Grünberg Institute and at the Institute for Advanced Simulation. When too much energy exists within the system, the magnetic moments turn over and the saved information is lost.

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Synthetic diamonds and the manufacturing of diamonds in mass quantity (including 3D Printing) is going to explode over the next few years with QC, Medical devices and technologies, smartphones, etc. Again, I hope Intel, Nvidia, HP, Xerox, etc. are listening.

Chicago-based startup Akhan Semiconducton wants to replace the silicon found in most modern-day electronics with diamonds derived from methane gas.

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Faster and better method around Q-dots development which ultimately extends the quality of Quantum Dots plus mass production of Q-Dots is much faster through this new method. Hoping this causes the costs of new cameras, phone displays, monitors/ video displays are now able to be created more cheaply and in larger quantities.

Materials researchers at North Carolina State University have fine-tuned a technique that enables them to apply precisely controlled silica coatings to quantum dot nanorods in a day — up to 21 times faster than previous methods. In addition to saving time, the advance means the quantum dots are less likely to degrade, preserving their advantageous optical properties.

Quantum dots are nanoscale semiconductor materials whose small size cause them to have electron energy levels that differ from larger-scale versions of the same material. By controlling the size of the quantum dots, researchers can control the relevant energy levels — and those energy levels give quantum dots novel optical properties. These characteristics make quantum dots promising for applications such as opto-electronics and display technologies.

But quantum dots are surrounded by ligands, which are organic molecules that are sensitive to heat. If the ligands are damaged, the optical properties of the quantum dots suffer.

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