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

Kids Get Ultrasounds at Children's Hospitals

If you want to reduce the odds of a child getting an X ray and being exposed needlessly to radiation, take them to a children's hospital. That's the upshot of a recent study that looked at children who had been evaluated for appendectomies at a children's hospital as compared with a general hospital.

When kids get diagnosed with appendicitis, often it's via X rays -- specifically, CT scans. But CT scans expose children to more radiation than many doctors would like.

There is one solution: ultrasounds. The problem is most children won't get those unless they go to a children's hospital, and ultrasounds also require a lot of specialized expertise to interpret. That's something not a lot of general hospitals will have.

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A recent study by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, published in the journal Pediatrics, bears this out. If a patient went to St. Louis children's hospital they were more likely to be checked with an ultrasound than with a CT scan.

The study covered 423 children who had appendectomies at St. Louis Children's Hospital. Of the 423, 205 were initially evaluated at general hospitals and 215 at Children's. Some 85 percent of patients who went to a general hospital to be evaluated got CT scans before surgery, and 45 percent of children initially seen at St. Louis Children's Hospital had CT scans. Meanwhile, over half of children initially seen at St. Louis Children's Hospital got ultrasounds, while at general hospitals the rate was 20 percent. Seven percent were not scanned at all and 15 percent got both ultrasound and CT.

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The authors of the study noted that even though reading an ultrasound is a bit harder, it's probably worth finding a way to do them for more patients, especially children. That said, it isn't clear whether what applies at a children's hospital, with a lot of experts in diagnosing kids, is transferable to general hospitals. The other factor is what happened to those patients whose scans, either ultrasound or CT, ruled out the need for an appendectomy -- an important question to answer is whether they showed symptoms afterwards, needed an appendectomy later, or were healthy.

In the meantime, the takeaway seems to be that if you want to reduce the odds of a child getting exposed to radiation via an X ray, take them to a children's hospital.

Credit: Pascal Deloche/Godong/Corbis

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These Smartphones Are Actual 'Cell' Phones

Want to get kids doing science? Harness their iPhones.

At the American Society for Cell Biology Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Eva Schmid, a postdoctoral researcher in bioengineering and biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, outlined a way for middle school students to use the CellScope, a diagnostic-quality microscope invented by the university's Daniel Fletcher. The microscope is designed to work with smartphones. Slide an iPhone into the specially designed cradle, turn on the camera app and vóila, you have a microscope that can magnify at anywhere from 80x to 1200x. Schmid told Discovery News the team has also designed a version for the iPad.

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This is a perfect solution for biology classrooms, especially in schools that often don't have a microscope available for each student. Schmid and her team tested the CellScope at the San Francisco Friends School for a year. The middle schoolers took pictures of objects around them, both with the microscope and without. The images were displayed in real time on the phone's touch screen and were viewed simultaneously by multiple people so the students could talk about them with teachers. The kids even geotagged the photos and set up a map here.

The Fletcher Lab has also developed two other, similar devices to the CellScope -- an otoscope (the thing a doctor looks into your ear with) and a dermascope, which can look at skin cells closely. The lab staff originally saw it as a way to get good equipment to developing countries, but Schmid also realized that there was a need in classrooms in the United States, too.

Schmid said the image quality is every bit as good as the typical binocular microscopes, which was important for using them as diagnostic tools in developing nations. It isn't quite practical yet to equip every school with one -- the cost for each unit is a few hundred dollars -- but that should come down once they are mass-produced.

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The CellScope is similar to the Magnifi, a Kickstarter project that raised its funding earlier this year. The difference is the CellScope is designed specifically for microscopy, using additional optics. Magnifi simply aligns the phone's camera over an eyepiece.

Credit: University of Caifornia Berkeley

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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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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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Face Aging Web App Helps You Save Money

Have you thought lately about what you'll look like in 30 or 40 years or how much your saggy, liver-spotted face will resemble a melted Halloween mask? Of course not. You're out seizing the day and sucking on the marrow of youth.

You know what else you're probably not thinking about? Retirement. Have you started saving? Will you have enough?

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Merill Edge (Merrill Lynch's online discount brokerage firm) thinks these questions need to cross your mind. That's why they've created Face Retirement, a Web app that snaps a photo of your face using your laptop's camera and then with a facial aging algorithm, gradually shows you what you'll look like in 20, 30, 40, even 70 year.

The wrinkled, droopy results might give you a good shock. And that's exactly what Merill Edge wants to happen.

"In a Stanford University experiment, people who saw age-enhanced images of themselves were more likely to save more for retirement, compared to those who weren't exposed to their future selves," said Alok Prasad, head of Merrill Edge, in a press release. “Face Retirement is designed to minimize that gap by giving consumers a preview of their future self, encouraging them to take control of long-term financial planning.”

If haggard pictures of your future self aren't enough to make you immediately open an IRA account with Merril Edge, then maybe Face Retirement's other scare tactics will. Along side your grizzled mug are cost-of-living projections that not-so-subtly remind you that a gallon of gas could cost $40 in 2082.

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Sure, Face Retirement is a glorifed commercial for Merrill Edge and Bank of America, but it's core message of saving for the future is valuable advice. So if Big Banks leave a rancid taste in your mouth, start stuffing that cash under your mattress or go bury your gold in the back yard.

Or, screw it, live for today and go blow that money on a bunch fireworks, booze and trampolines and "don't worry 'bout tomorrow."

via Wired

Credit: Merill Edge

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Print Your Own 3D Holiday Gifts

When it comes to crafting your own holiday gifts, sure, it's the thought that counts. Still, some of these thoughts could use a little more brio, especially if you're the one gluing uncooked macaroni to a picture frame at the last minute.

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Openhouse, an NYC-based company that specializes in creating pop up events, wants you to put down the noodles and glue gun and instead:

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Imagine a corner store where you can print chairs, doorknobs, espresso cups, toys and more. Replacement parts for cars, new headphones, custom halloween masks, shoes and accessories. Where you can buy and test out printers and software, too.

Doesn't sound too different than Santa's workshop, does it? In some ways it is, though Openhouse calls it 3DEA, a month-long holiday 3-D printing pop-up shop that they believe may be the precursor to a permanent store.

Openhouse partnered with Shapeways, Ultimaker and UP! to bring 3DEA to the Eventi Hotel. The pop-up event is free and open to the public through December 27. So if you're in a holiday gift-giving rut, I suggest popping in for these reasons:

3DEA features an Inventor Bar, Customization Center, DIY Hub, Body Scanning, classes, lectures, and a whole section for children. At 3DEA, you can customize, invent and replicate products with the help of expert consultants. You’ll be able to browse home printers from Ultimaker and UP!, order holiday gifts through Shapeways.com and learn the ropes of the manufacturing revolution. 3D printing is nothing short of teleportaton: If you can think it, you can make it here.

To help spread a little more of that naughty holiday cheer, there's even an adult-themed section behind a curtain for those 18 and over.

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Now, if you can get your mind out of the gutter, what gift would you print at 3DEA? Let us know in the comments below.

via Inhabitat

Credit: 3DEA

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Coated Sapphire Is Invisible to Infrared Cameras

Infrared detectors are used to see objects otherwise hidden under cover of darkness. The dectors pick up the heat given off by living bodies, warm buildings and vehicles and reveal them as glowing objects when viewed through infrared goggles or cameras. If a building, body or vehicle is cold, the detector typically can't visualize it.

Now new technology from researchers at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences could turn infrared detection on its head. The technique not only makes hot objects appear cold to infrared detectors -- which could help hide soliders from their enemies at night -- but it can be also used to make an infrared camera so sensitive that even cold objects would look relatively bright.

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The researchers coated a millimeter-thick sheet of sapphire with a 180-nanometer layer of vanadium dioxide, which is used as an insulator. Next, they heated the layered material to 154 degrees Fahrenheit (68 degrees Celsius). At that temperature, the crystal structure of the vanadium dioxide became altered, changing it from an insulator to a metallic conductor.

When the scientists shone infrared light onto the altered material, they found it was a near-perfect absorber, soaking up 99 percent of the infrared light that hit it. It worked because the infrared light waves bounced off the sapphire get absorbed by the vanadium dioxide, and any light waves that escape destructively interfere with each other so that they cancel out.

When the scientists cooled the layers down, the materials returned to their former states.

Mikhail Kats, the lead author of the research, told Discovery News that vanadium dioxide, unlike other materials, absorbs infrared radiation differently depending on its temperature -- it can be tuned.

If one could coat a vehicle or building with this material, it would make the objects invisible -- or at least black -- to an infrared camera, since any infrared radiation emitted by the objects would be absorbed by the material before it could escape.

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And because the material is so sensitive to infrared light, it could also work as a detector. Any imaging device has to absorb light in order to translate it into electrical signals and make a picture. The more sensitive the sensor, the better the detector.

One big challenge was making the vanadium dioxide crystals pure enough. Any flaws would mean it lost its unique reaction to temperature.

The research appears in the latest issue of Applied Physics Letters.

via Harvard University

Credit: Harvard University / Kirill Nadtochiy

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First Photo of DNA Helix Taken: DNews Nugget

First Photo of DNA Helix Taken: For the first time, scientists have imaged DNA's iconic spiraling helix. The photo was taken by Enzo di Fabrizio from the University of Genoa, Italy, using an electron microscope. Until now, scientists only knew that DNA was a helix shape because of their knowledge of molecular theory and an imaging technique called X-ray crystallography, which converts patterns of dots into an image. But now they can see the molecule up close and in person.

Di Fabrizio made the image by pulling a strand of DNA between two nanoscopic silicon pillars. An electron microscope bounces electrons off of objects and the energy created is used to make an image, so di Fabrizio needed a way to shine the electrons onto the DNA. To do it, he drilled tiny holes in the base of the nanopillar bed and shone beams of electrons through it. He published the image in the journal Nano Letters. via iO9.com

Credit: Enzo di Fabrizio

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Get a 3-D Model Of Your Unborn Child

Lots of expecting couples get ultrasounds of their babies, and even take the grainy black-and-white pictures home. Now a clinic in Japan is offering models of the fetus, using 3-D printing technology.

Fasotec, an engineering company and Parkside Hiroo Ladies clinic have teamed up to offer the service since July 30. The way it works is similar to an ultrasound, but in this case they use MRI scans. (X rays can be harmful to a developing fetus). The next step is a technology called Bio-Texture modeling, which converts the MRI data and into a 3-D image. A 3-D printer builds up the three-dimensional image using two different resins that produce two different colors. The result is a fetus represented in a creamy color surrounded by the mother's tissue, represented as transparent (see image above).

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The resolution of the image isn't perfect -- but the clinics say that many expectant mothers are delighted by the service, which costs 100,000 yen (about $1,200 at current exchange rates), not including the cost of the MRI.

For those who would like a less-pricey version, the company will start offering a 3-D model of the face of the fetus for half that price at 50,000 yen in December.

The technology is about more than providing mementos to mothers, though. Fasotec says the printer can output 3-D models of organs, as well, which could be used to train physicians. In fact, the fetus-printing idea was a spin-off the company is using to publicize the more general organ-imaging it does.

Image: Fasotec

Via DigInfo TV, Wired UK

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