NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

X-Ray Scanner Is the Size of a Stick of Gum

Machines that take x rays need a lot of power and as a result are generally large, cumbersome contraptions. Anything that needs to be x rayed has to brought to the machine. But there are plenty of reasons develop a portable x-ray machine. A mobile device could be carried into the sports field or battlefield to diagnose injured people or it could be used by security personnel to analyze packages at airports or check concealed shipments at seaports for illegal contents.

Scott Kovaleski, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and some of his graduate students, found a way to make a lowe-power x-ray machine that's only about the size of a stick of gum. That means instead of bringing objects to an x-ray lab for analyze, technicians can bring the x rays to the field.

The key to the small machine is a crystal of lithium niobate, which exhibits a particular property known piezoelectricity. Piezoelectric crystals generate a small electrical current when put under mechanical stress, such as being squeezed. The effect also works in reverse. Running a current through a piezoelectric crystal generates a mechanical action, like a vibration.

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Kovaleski capitalized on this property by attaching an electrode to each side of the lithium niobate crystal, and then hitting it with alternating current. But instead of using 120 volts alternating at 60 times per second -- the standard for household currents -- Kovaleski's group used 10 volts alternating at 40,000 times per second. That frequency is specially tuned to the lithium niobate crystal: it makes it vibrate in a very specific way. “It makes it ring like a bell,” Kovaleski told Discovery News.

All that vibrating generated an electric field equal to 100,000 volts. Kovaleski was able to turn 10 volts into 100,000 because he and his team modified the ends of the crystals with tiny bits of wire shaped like sharp points. The pieces were so small, the points were at the scale of atoms. But electric fields tend to build up at sharp points and so even though the amount of current going in was small, enough energy gathered on those wires to pull electrons from the crystal at strengths of 100,000 volts.

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Electrons moving at that speed produce x rays when they hit anything because the atoms in the material slow or deflect the electrons. That deflection or slowdown takes energy away from the electron, and the energy takes the form of an x-ray photon. To make a portable x-ray generator, all that is needed is a block of dense material with lots of atoms for the electrons to hit -- lead will do. Voilà, you have x rays.

In addition to being small, Kovaleski's x-ray machine is cheap. Just about all the parts can be had at the local electronics supply store, and even lithium niobate crystals are common in telecommunications equipment.

Credit: Peter Norgard, University of Missouri

CES 2013: Samsung Unveils An 'Entertainer's Fridge'

Samsung has expertise with consumer electronics — including TVs, laptops and cameras — and they also develop appliances. Now they're combining the two areas by putting an LCD display on a fridge.

At CES 2013, Samsung unveiled the 32-cubic-feet T9000 Four-Door Refrigerator (we like the four French doors, by the way) and is billing it as "the home entertainer's ultimate refrigerator" for several reasons. For starters, the LCD display can run apps, allowing you to check your calendar, weather and recipes on the screen. At the company's CES press conference announcing the T9000, Samsung put the focus on Evernote, which lets users share photos, videos and recipes. Those whose recipes live on their smartphones may find that a fridge display could reduce greasy fingerprints on iPhone screens.

As a refrigerator, the T9000 parallels industrial coolers in temperature and humidity control. With two compressors, three evaporators and other sensors, the refrigerator's cooling system can keep food fresher for longer.

Perhaps the most compelling reason why the T9000 is billed an entertainer's refrigerator is the ability to alter the function of the bottom-right compartment, which can convert into either fridge or freezer space. That'll be handy for Thanksgiving.

Credit: Samsung

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Baby Jumper Could Prevent Crib Death

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is every new parent's worst nightmare. To keep a close eye on a sleeping baby, some parents rely on a two-way baby monitor or move the crib into mommy and daddy's room. Others stay awake all night worrying and periodically checking on their infant.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration in Berlin propose a different solution: a suit that monitors a baby's breathing.

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It looks like an ordinary “onesie” or “romper suit” but with a major difference: it has commercially available sensors integrated into the cloth. The circuit board for the sensors is printed on polyurethane, which is flexible, stretchable and comfortable for the child. The polyurethane circuit board is contained in a fabric cover that can be removed so that the jumper can be washed separately. 

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The sensors monitor the movement of the chest and stomach by checking both the distance between two points on the chest and responding to strain. If there is a problem -- if the rhythm of breathing or number of breaths is wrong -- it will sound an alarm. It isn't clear what kind of alarm would sound yet; current proposals are for some kind of visual and auditory alert. It's easy to imagine a wireless system firing off a signal to a smartphone.

The circuits themselves are made of ordinary materials and don’t need any specialized manufacturing methods, so the costs can be kept down. Since the electronics are mounted on the polyurethane sheets  rather than being stitched into the fabric, it’s easier to place the components exactly where they need to be on the circuit board.

The idea is similar the Exmobaby suit that appeared early in 2012. The difference is the use of flexible electronics and that the Exmobaby’s ad copy says it’s designed to track emotional states, not operate as a true medical device.

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There are still challenges to mass-producing the suit. One is that polyurethane tends to change shape during the manufacturing process. Even so a number of companies are testing out ways to build them cheaply. 

Baby safety isn’t the only idea the Fraunhofer scientists came up with for their flexible electronics: they also looked at how to make pressure bandages that tell doctors and nurses where the best place to put them is, and even a bandage that can monitor the health of kidneys.

Via Fraunhofer Institute

Credit: Fraunhofer Institute / VERHAERT Masters in Innovation

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CES 2013: What to Expect

Attendees preview the latest gadgets -- and a live trampoline act -- in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Credit: CES

By FoxNews.com

Apple won’t be there. Nor will Google. And for the first time in many years, Microsoft won’t have its own booth. But the International Consumer Electronics Show (Jan. 8 - Jan. 11), one of the largest and longest running tech trade shows around, is still expecting one of its biggest years ever.

Despite a couple tepid years following the recession, CES is back to setting records. The Las Vegas show remains the ultimate platform for thousands of companies to show off their latest wares with aplomb with the arrival of the new year.

CES 2013 will be the biggest CES ever with over 3,000 exhibits showing off 20,000 new products across 1.87 million square feet of floor space, the CEA (the Consumer Electronics Association, the show’s governing body) announced last month. Here’s what we can expect from what is still one of the greatest tech trade shows on Earth.

The Rise of the Startups
Microsoft isn’t the only juggernaut bowing out of the gadget extravaganza. Nokia, Dell and HP are all skipping this year’s CES along with perennial no-shows like Google, Amazon and Apple. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a show that’s traditionally been dominated by heavyweights like Intel and Sony.

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Hardware is the new software and, as The Wall Street Journal reported in August, a new generation of Silicon Valley start-ups are turning their back on the web and actually making stuff now. In the age of Kickstarter, expect big ideas from bit part players (like the Pebble smartwatch, which raised $10 million). From an innovation perspective, this can only be a good thing.

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Samsung’s Big Party
This year could be all about Samsung, which will be one of the biggest players strutting its stuff. The Korean conglomerate has rapidly taken up the mantle of “the other Apple” with an endless array of smartphone and tablet devices, including the blockbuster “iPhone killer” the Galaxy SIII (there are rumors Samsung may even unveil the SIV). Samsung has a lot in store this year, including “unprecedented” smart TVs (check out the teaser) and even a state-of-the-art bendable phone display.

The Ghost of Microsoft
Officially, Microsoft is done with CES, but the company will be there in spirit thanks to the flop that is Windows 8. This will be another chance for Ballmer and co. to push their controversial operating system through a plethora of newly imagined hybrid touchscreen devices. Lenovo, Asus and others will be trying desperately to catch our attention with "post-pc" devices that swivel, twist and fold. 

Smarter TVs, Smarter TV Subscriptions
Another year at CES means another year of bigger, thinner, better TVs. If last year was about 3D, this year is all 4K and OLED, which means higher resolutions, sleeker frames and more vibrant colors. And pricier sets. Much pricier sets.

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The flipside of that is content for our big expensive screens. Intel is introducing its own set-top box and TV service in an effort to get its chips into our living rooms (after missing the boat on getting their chips into our pockets), according to Techcrunch. The proposed service would theoretically allow consumers to pick what channels they’d like to subscribe to versus paying $80 for 200 channels you never watch -- which sounds great, but we’ll believe it when we see it.

The “Internet of Things”
Chips are getting smaller, networks faster (slowly but surely at least) and everyone’s got a smartphone -- which means smarter, well, everything. Indeed, after many false starts, the “smart home” may have finally arrived with Internet-connected appliances, like the Philips Hue and Belkin WeMo. You know, “smart” lightbulbs (and of course, there's an app for that).

Gesture Control
It’s about time we started moving away from the mouse, home row keys and perpetually misplaced remote controls. With the advent of technologies like facial recognition, eye-tracking, voice recognition and gesture control, expect brand new ways to communicate with your machines.

Phones With Gig Screens
Bigger isn’t necessarily better but trust us, it’s inevitable. Phones with even bigger screens are on the way. We’re talking 5 inch screen, or even 5 and a half inchers. Just don’t call it a phablet.

Connected Cars
Over 100,000 square feet of show floor space will be filled just by automakers. Companies like Ford, Audi and Kia will all be hawking cars that seamlessly integrate with your cloud.

The Continued Slow Death of the Point-and-Shoot
The industry response to Android phones with incredible built-in cameras? Cameras with built-in Android. Ugh.

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When Will My Fridge Tweet Me?

Smart appliances will soon become a regular part of the household.

Smart appliances are evolving from sci-fi concept to retail offering this year, with new showroom models that can send a text message when your clothes are dry or notify you when a power outage knocks out your fridge.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, appliance manufacturers Whirlpool and LG are unveiling new washers, dryers and refrigerators that connect with their owner's smartphones or tablets through home-based wi-fi networks, letting them know when to change filters, schedule maintenance or the cheapest time of day to wash a load of clothes.

"We’re not looking at having the fridge tweet to you, but it can send e-mails or SMS," said Warwick Stirling, Whirlpool global director of energy and sustainability. “We’re trying to focus on ways to make tasks easier and simpler, making processes more efficient rather than more gadget-y or gizmo-y.”

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Stirling said the devices will be available for sale in March under its "Sixth Sense Live" brand. Whirlpool’s new Bluetooth-capable CoolVox refrigerator lets consumers play music through the fridge using an app.

Meanwhile, Korean electronics giant LG is introducing a new line at CES that will let users control their washer, vacuum or range by voice command via smartphone, even offering the ability to check what kind of food is inside the refrigerator remotely.

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This convenience comes at a price. A Whirlpool washer/dryer combo with smart connectivity costs $3,600, compared to under $1,000 for entry-level models. While appliance and electronics makers believe consumers will go for convenience over cost, some analysts are skeptical that the public is ready for tweeting fridges or remote controlled vacuums.

"From an appliance standpoint, they are getting there, but it’s still pretty early," said Neil Strother, a senior analyst at Boulder-based Pike Research.

He says there are several big obstacles to consumers jumping from smartphones to smart appliances. They are still 50 to 100 percent more costly that "non-smart" appliances and manufacturers still haven’t agreed on a common household communications platform that would help integrate stereo/TV/computer systems with kitchens and laundries, for example.

Last week, Microsoft purchased R2, a company that makes a Xbox-like controller that attempts to do just that.

But perhaps most importantly, Strother says, overall energy prices are predicted to remain stable or go down in the next few decades. That means a too-expensive, energy-miser appliance may not pay off over the long run (see electric cars).

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Despite a relative glut of inexpensive energy in the United States, some utilities are hoping new smart appliances will play a role in a bigger goal of reducing overall energy demand and the carbon footprint that accompanies it.

Ratepayers in Chicago, California, Texas and other parts of the country are already seeing electricity prices change hourly, meaning that a high-tech washer, for example, could clean clothes more cheaply at night than during the afternoon. Some utilities are developing smartphone apps to help ratepayers regulate their heating and cooling systems remotely as well.

"Everybody in the utility industry seems to be looking at more technology which will help the customer understand their energy use and modify it," said Ron Bilodeau, project manager at NV Energy in Nevada.

Retail analysts like Strother expect that smart appliances, such as the ones debuting at CES, will be purchased by high-end luxury consumers and tech geeks, the usual early adopters of technologically advanced consumer products.

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Even Whirlpool’s Warwick admits that he doesn't expect to be selling lots of these appliances until the per unit price comes down and there’s greater integration among the power utilities, appliance makers and consumers themselves.

"The connected appliance market will be small for now as all the manufacturers try to understand how to deliver it to the consumer," Stirling said. "We are moving from lots of concepts to real products. There will be lots of challenges with the connected home. But consumers do like it."

Photo: iStockPhoto

Detector Alerts Asthmatics to Nasty Air

Asthmatics often feel like we're gambling, discovering triggers a breath too late. AT&T Labs recently developed a prototype for a device that can detect nasty air and alert us before things get bad.

Some asthma are blatant and obvious, and yet every once in a while I've been blindsided by an attack that seemingly comes out of nowhere. Volatile organic compounds or VOCs are a common asthma trigger found all over the place but they can be tricky to spot. AT&T Labs might have a solution.

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A prototype for a trigger detection device, led by head of communications technology research Bob Miller, can pick up on the presence of cleaning products, fragrances, smoke, and even troublesome carpet. Then the portable device can wirelessly transmit data to an online health network so my doctor could potentially spot patterns over time.

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Although the device hasn't been publicly named yet and there are no images available, AT&T Labs did indicate that it will contain a VOC sensor, a microcomputer, a battery and a Zigbee wireless modem. The VOC sensor contains a chip that is heated by a small current.

Talking to Technology Review's Susan Young, Miller said the device could prevent asthmatics from staying in a place where the trigger level is too high. Miller added that one day it might even be connected to a home network and automatically start up the furnace blower to clear the air.

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Asthma is so prevalent in the U.S. that one in every 12 Americans has it. Better prevention means fewer ER visits, fewer absences from school, fewer sick days from work. A device to prevent that first ominous wheeze could help us all breathe easier.

Credit: Jonathan Kos-Read

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Party Horn Only Works If You're Drunk

Now that Christmas is in the rear-view mirror, you're speeding towards one last holiday destination: New Year's Eve, typically one of the most besotted nights on the calendar.

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Once you make that last exit towards Boozetown, here's a little party favor that'll remind you not to get behind the wheel after you've sung those last notes of "Auld Lang Syne."

Although the Buzzed Buzzer, created by Tyler DeAngelo and Sacha De'Angeli, sounds like any old party horn blown on New Year's Eve, it only makes a sound if you're drunk. Maybe not lamp-shade-on-the-head drunk, but alcohol must be present on the breath of the reveler who's blowing it.

Unfortunately, you have to buy the materials and put it together yourself. Think of it as your last craft project of 2012.

All you have to do is take a traditional party horn, add a micro-controller, an alcohol sensor, a resistor, a buzzer, a battery and a battery charger. Yeah, I know, it sounds a little more complicated than just Scotch-taping everything together. Fortunately, there are detailed instructions on how to make your own. Just a heads up, you're going to need your soldering iron, wire cutters, wire strippers, needle nosed pliers and a computer installed with Arduino IDE and Teensyduino. You might want to do this before you start in on the cocktails.

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Another word to the wise: Buzzed Buzzer is not a breathalyzer device, so don't think it's going to give you your blood alcohol level and let you know if you should drive or not. Better just to throw your keys in a bowl, uncork the champagne, get out the lamp shades and blow your horn.

Bottoms up.

via Gizmag

credit: Buzzed Buzzer

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Future Phones Could Have See-Through Vision

Smartphone imaging is pretty advanced these days. You can use the camera to takes videos, high-def photographs and even make panoramic images. One day you might be able to use your camera to see through walls. 

That capability could come from a new kind of computer chip that operates in the part of the radio spectrum, known as the terahertz range. In this range, wavelengths of radiation are longer than infrared light and shorter than those of high-frequency radio.

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Terahertz radiation can penetrate solids in a way similar to X rays, but because it doesn’t carry as much energy, it won't damage tissue. Terahertz frequencies are also better than X rays at seeing inside less dense materials, such as water or flesh, and a terahertz scanner is able to detect whether an embedded object is made of metal or plastic. An X-ray machine can only reveal the shape.

Such devices have been making their way into law enforcement and security. But they are big and expensive to set up. Even the portable versions resemble a bulky professional TV camera.

Electrical engineers Ali Hajimiri and Kaushik Sengupta of the California Institute of Technology have managed to bring the size down to something that could fit into a handheld device. They built a microchip that both broadcasts and receives terahertz radiation.

The chip itself is made with the same technologies used in ordinary cell phones and computers. The challenge was making one that would transmit and receive terahertz frequencies. It turned out that having several transistors on the device operating at the same time was the best way to accomplish that. The transistors are synchronized in such a way that the waves they generate reinforce certain frequencies and cancel out others.

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The researchers still needed had to get past another problem: above a certain frequency, a transistor won’t work and thus won’t amplify a signal. This is called the cut-off frequency. By operating the transistors in a synchronized way, the engineers were able to get around that problem and make the chip transmit. They also were able to control the direction of the signal.

A third obstacle was putting an antenna on a silicon chip; silicon tends to absorb radio energy. By giving both the antenna and the silicon a certain shape, they made something like the resonator on a guitar that broadcasts terahertz frequencies.  

One use for it is data transmission -- the higher the frequency of a radio wave, the more information you can cram on it. Since the signal is a higher frequency than Wi-Fi, it could make for faster downloads. "You could use it to download pictures from your digital camera in a few seconds," Hajimiri told Discovery News.

If such a fingernail-sized chip were on a smartphone, it could be used to broadcast terahertz radiation through layers of soft tissue, clothing or the thin walls of a box. The reflected signal would be picked up by an adjacent chip and a computer program would then analyze that information and display an image on the phone's screen. That's what we call a penetrating shot.

Credit: Kaushik Sengupta/Caltech

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Stretchy Electronics Made from Stiff 'Islands'

A checkerboard of rigid electronic components have been embedded into a flexible surface that can be stretched three times its normal length. The technique makes it possible to keep stiff circuit boards safe from kinks, while at the same making wearable flexible computers more feasible.

"We want to put this on something like rubber," André Studart told Discovery News. Studart is a professor of complex materials at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and one of the co-authors of the paper in Nature Communications outlining the work.

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Rather than try to make the electronics stretch, Studart and his colleagues decided to make a surface for the electronics to sit on that had both stretchy and stiff regions. The stretchy areas give the flexibility while the stiff regions protect the rigid electronic circuits. 

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The surface is comprised of polyurethane, the same substance used in skateboard wheels and floor coatings. Polyurethane can me made stiffer or softer depending on what it's mixed, or doped, with. The researchers used laponite, which is a kind of clay, and micrometer-sized bits of aluminum. The polyurethane doped with aluminum is stiffer than that with laponite, which in turn is stiffer than polyurethane not mixed with anything.

To make their polyurethane both stretchy and stiff, the team made a sheet of it that consisted of several layers. The bottom layer is the most flexible, and made of undoped polyurethane. The middle layer is made of polyurethane doped with laponite. The very top layer is the the most rigid, the one doped with aluminum. While the stretchiest layer on the bottom is a large sheet, the stiffer ones are laid down in cut-out squares and bonded to the undoped polyurethane layer.

The team tested the surface by installing an LED circuit on the stiff island. The LED stayed lit even when the sheet was stretched to 150 percent of its length.

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This isn't the only way to do flexible electronics. John Rogers, at the University of Illinois, has been working on several methods to stretch electronics, dissolve them and even stick them to skin. He said the work here is "a nice, new addition to the toolbox."

Rogers said his lab has been focused at the level of designing systems, which sometimes involves coming up with new ways to build semiconductors. In one case he used a serpentine pattern of metal wires, which could stretch like a spring on the surface of a balloon. "The latest work from Switzerland could have value in the context of an application of this sort, as an alternative to the interconnection wiring that we used."

Credit: Rafael Libanori, Randall M. Erb and André R. Studart

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Contact Lenses Could Send Texts to Your Eyes

Belgian technologists just created curved liquid crystal display for contact lenses, a novel step toward having augmented reality literally right before our eyes. They've got an eye on displaying text messages this way.

Unlike previous developments in contact lens displays, University of Ghent researcher Jelle De Smet focused on creating a curved LCD that would be incorporated into a contact lens rather than embedding LED technology into one. This approach means De Smet and his colleagues at the Center of Microsystems Technology have a larger display area, according to the university.

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The group achieved their curved display by using extremely thin conductive polymer films that were integrated into a smooth spherical cell. Resembling an old-school calculator display, their first prototype can show basic patterns like a dollar sign that recalls cartoon characters thinking about money.

While onlookers could potentially see the symbols being displayed in someone else's contacts, the wearer would still have problems viewing them. As University of Washington's Babak Amir Parviz explained to me last year while describing his computerized contact lens development, humans have a mimimum focal distance for even seeing a single pixel.

The Belgian team seems to understand that limitation, indicating in a university press release that the initial applications for their liquid crystal-based contact lens display might be to help control light transmission in people with damaged irises or replace colored contacts, allowing wearers to change the color or pattern on the go. They also imagine these contacts working as adaptable sunglasses.

Here's a video from De Smet that shows the thin, curved display working in the lab:

Since the lenses can project images sent to them wirelessly, the potential is there for these displays to show directions or even texts from a smart phones. "This is not science fiction," De Smet told The Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield recently, adding he expects commercial applications will be available within five years.

Being so myopic myself, I'm cautious about the prospect of extra functionality in my contacts. At least if there's a problem with your phone you can restart it. Removing contacts would get really annoying, especially if you're on the road.

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I admire De Smet's enthusiasm about one day getting text sent straight into our eyes. Whether we'll actually be able to read them remains to be seen.

Photo: A prototype contact lens display shows dollar signs over the eyes, like a cartoon. Credit: University of Ghent.

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