Xerox Printable Electronics

clipped from hackaday.com Xerox ink will print circuits Xerox has announced a breakthrough in printable circuits. They’ve developed a conductive ink called “silver bullet” that can be printed on many different types of substrate to create circuits. The key part of the new ink is its lower melting point. Plastic film substrate melts at 150 degrees Celsius but the ink is liquid when ten degrees cooler to avoid damaging the film. This begs the question: how do you then solder components to the circuit? clipped from www.xerox.com Xerox Scientists Develop "Silver Bullet" Needed to Replace Silicon Circuits with Low-Cost, Durable Plastic Integrated circuits are made up of three components - a semiconductor, a conductor and a dielectric element - and currently are manufactured in costly silicon chip fabricating factories. By creating a breakthrough silver ink to print the conductor, Xerox has developed all three of the materials necessary for printing plastic circuits.

Sources:

1. Xerox ink will print circuits - Hack a Day
2. Xerox Scientists Develop "Silver Bullet" Needed to Replace Silicon Circuits with Low-Cost, Durable Plastic

Related:

1. Xerox's Fabric-Printable Circuitry Coming to Production, Heralds Electronic Clothing | Popular Science
2. Xerox hopes to print computing smarts on fabric, plastic | Deep Tech - CNET News
3. Xerox make flexible electronic circuits a reality with new silver ink – Computer Chips & Hardware Technology | Geek.com
4. Xerox Develops Ink To Print Circuits On Nearly Anything - Xerox printable circuits - Gizmodo
5. Xerox develops silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics | VentureBeat
6. Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough - Reviews by PC Magazine
7. Xerox Develops Silver Ink for Cheap Printable Electronics
8. Xerox Scientists Develop Silver Bullet Needed to Replace Silicon Circuits with Low-Cost, Durable Plastic | Reuters
9. Xerox Document Management, Color Printers, Copiers, Business Consulting Services

Muscle-Computer Interface

clipped from www.livescience.com

The Future of Video Game Input: Muscle Sensors

Electromyography (EMG) sensors can decode muscle signals from the skin's surface as a person performs certain gestures. Researchers attached such sensors to their forearms, and built a gesture recognition library by monitoring muscle signals related to each gesture. The project emerged as a collaborative effort between Microsoft, University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Toronto in Canada.

clipped from www.livescience.com

clipped from www.youtube.com

UIST'09: Enabling Always-Available Input with Muscle-Computer Interfaces

Presented at UIST (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology) http://www.acm.org/uist/

clipped from www.technologyreview.com

Muscle-Bound Computer Interface

Forearm electrodes could enable new forms of hands-free computer interaction.

The new muscle-sensing project is "going after healthy consumers who want richer input modalities," says Desney Tan, a researcher at Microsoft. As a result, he and his colleagues had to come up with a system that was inexpensive and unobtrusive and that reliably sensed a range of gestures.

clipped from research.microsoft.com

Muscle-Computer Interfaces

Muscle-computer interfaces directly sense and decode human muscular activity rather than relying
on physical actuation or perceptible user actions. Using a wireless EMG armband, we have shown
relatively high accuracies decoding simple finger gestures both when the arm is rested on a surface,
but also when the gestures are performed in free space.
More info...

clipped from www.reghardware.co.uk

Geeks play Guitar Hero without guitars

The muscle computer interface does away with all that unnecessary button bashing

Sources:

1. The Future of Video Game Input: Muscle Sensors | LiveScience
2. YouTube - UIST'09: Enabling Always-Available Input with Muscle-Computer Interfaces
3. Technology Review: Muscle-Bound Computer Interface
4. Desney Tan - Projects
5. Geeks play Guitar Hero without guitars • Register Hardware

Related:

1. Desney Tan - Professional Homepage

Bridgestone Color E-Paper

clipped from techon.nikkeibp.co.jp Bridgestone Corp announced an electronic paper (e-paper) device based on its "Quick-response Liquid Powder" Oct 26, 2009. The company expects that the device will be used for browsing electronic books and electronic data. It will be tested with the assistance system for liaison officers at Kansai Urban Banking Corp from the spring of 2010. clipped from techon.nikkeibp.co.jp Bridgestone's new e-paper device clipped from creativezone.eyeblaster.com Full-colour, flexible e-Paper is finally here According to ePaperCentral, “unlike other e-paper devices like the Kindle and Sony’s 505/700, the Bridgestone model does not use E Ink based technologies. Instead, it uses a powerful technology built in house that could completely revolutionize e-paper called QR-LPD.” Bridgestone QR-LPD Color E-Paper Demonstration Bridgestone Color E-Paper Featured on a Japanese Show

clipped from www.epapercentral.com

The Technology

The technology behind the screen itself is based on Bridgestone’s own QR-LPD electronic powder, which provides the quick rendering of black and white images that are as clear and paper-like as E Ink’s technology, and uses about the same battery life. Color is provided by a series of filters that go over each individual pixel that create the impression of a high definition, true color display.

The touch screen surface is provided by a WACOM tablet, much like the touch screen surface used in Sony’s PRS 700 and the IRex Iliad. As you can see in the example videos, the touch screen updates really quickly, but the actual full display refresh can be very slow. Depending on the model and the image displayed, the full screen refresh can be anywhere from .8 seconds to a full 15 seconds.

Sources:

1. [FPDI] Bridgestone Unveils 'World's 1st' Flexible E-paper Device -- Tech-On!
2. Full-colour, flexible e-Paper is finally here | Eyeblaster Creative Zone - Blog
3. Bridgestone Debuts Color E-Paper Display - Epaper Central

Related:

1. Tire maker Bridgestone shows world’s first flexible e-book reader
2. Bridgestone announces flexible touchscreen color e-reader
3. Bridgestone Announces Flexible Touchscreen E-Paper Display - Gadget.Com – Gadget.com

A Bacterial Ratchet Motor

clipped from medgadget.com

Scientists Enslave Bacteria to Power Tiny Microsized Motor

Italian scientists from the University of Rome managed to harness free floating E. coli bacteria to turn a tiny crankshaft. Although potential uses for such a tiny and unusual motor drive are not yet clear, no doubt interesting applications in medicine and life sciences should present themselves over time.

clipped from glass.phys.uniroma1.it

Luca Angelani

Micromotors pushed by bacteria Micromotors pushed by biological entities constitute a fascinating way to convert chemical energy into mechanical work at the micrometer scale. We show that a properly designed asymmetric object can be spontaneously set into the desired motion when immersed in a chaotic bacterial bath.

clipped from glass.phys.uniroma1.it

Self-starting micromotors in a bacterial bath

Micromotors pushed by biological entities, constitute a fascinating way to convert chemical energy into mechanical work at the micrometer scale. We show that a properly designed asymmetric object can be spontaneously set into the desired motion when immersed in a chaotic bacterial bath. [more]

clipped from glass.phys.uniroma1.it

A Bacterial Ratchet Motor

A nano-fabricated asymmetric gear (48 μm external diameter, 10 μm thickness)
rotates clockwise at 1 rpm when immersed in an active bath of motile
E.coli cells, visible in the background.

Sources:

1. Scientists Enslave Bacteria to Power Tiny Microsized Motor
2. Luca Angelani - Home
3. Roberto Di Leonardo - Home
4. RDL - Tube

Related:

1. Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Self-Propelling Bacteria Harnessed to Turn Gears
2. Bacteria Harnessed To Power Micro-Motor | Singularity Hub
3. [0812.2375] Self-Starting Micromotors in a Bacterial Bath
4. [0910.2899] A bacterial ratchet motor
5. Miss Atomic Bomb: Letting bacteria work for you
6. Random motion of bacteria could drive micromotors - physicsworld.com
7. Column: The crucible

Digital Rosetta Stone

clipped from www.forbes.com Storage for the Millennium If people can read this story a millennium from now, they may have Tadahiro Kuroda to thank. Kuroda, an electrical engineering professor at Keio University in Japan, has invented what he calls a "Digital Rosetta Stone," a wireless memory chip sealed in silicon that he says can store data for 1,000 years. Kuroda’s Rosetta stone will be a stack of four thin wafers, each one 15 inches in diameter and roughly 12-thousandths of an inch thick, embedded with 1,100 tiny chips. Together, says Kuroda, the four wafers will have 312 gigabytes of memory, the equivalent of 480 standard cds. The wafer stack is sealed in silicon dioxide, which keeps the humidity below 2%, preventing corrosion. clipped from nextbigfuture.com Kuroda's method: Instead of moving data as electrons through wires, as occurs in standard semiconductors, Kuroda’s sealed stack of wafers allows information to be beamed wirelessly on radio waves. This is a variation on radio-frequency identification technology, used in everything from scannable passports to inventory tracking. clipped from news.bbc.co.uk 'Rosetta stone' offers digital lifeline The Rosetta Stone is built on silicon wafers used in the chip industry Hard drives are susceptible to magnetic fields clipped from www.gcoee.keio.ac.jp Tadahiro Kuroda

Sources:

1. Storage for the Millennium - Forbes.com
2. Digital Rosetta Stone for Digital Storage for 1000 years
3. BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Rosetta stone' offers digital lifeline

Related:

1. Global COE program of Keio University » Tadahiro Kuroda
2. Global COE program of Keio University » Outline of Research
3. Technical analysis for shorts & longs Message Board - Msg: 26023585
4. IEEE Spectrum: Digital Data Written in Stone
5. IEEE Spectrum: Solid-State Circuits, in 3-D!
6. The 12th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference Technical Program

Why extremists tend to dominate debates

clipped from news.yahoo.com Why Extremist Views Dominate A new study suggests a possible reason: People with extreme views seem more willing to share their opinions than others, but only if they believe, even falsely, that their views are popular. clipped from ts-si.org Extremists Assume Majority Status When Sharing Opinions Those that take the extreme version of their group’s viewpoint may believe that they actually represent the true views of their group. “When people with extreme views have this false sense that they are in the majority, they are more willing to express themselves,” said Kimberly Rios Morrison, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at The Ohio State University (OSU). clipped from www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Volume 45, Issue 4, July 2009, Pages 740-747 clipped from researchnews.osu.edu EXTREMISTS MORE WILLING TO SHARE THEIR OPINIONS, STUDY FINDS The key is that the extremists have to believe that more people share their views than actually do, the research found. Kimberly Rios Morrison

Sources:

1. Why Extremist Views Dominate - Yahoo! News
2. Extremists Assume Majority Status When Sharing Opinions
3. ScienceDirect - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology : Expressing deviant opinions: Believing you are in the majority helps
4. Extremists More Willing To Share Their Opinions, Study Finds

Related:

1. Extremists more willing to share their opinions, study finds
2. Prof: Extremists tend to dominate debates • The Register
3. Global Debate: Study Shows "Extreme" Views Dominate Public Debates
4. Distinguishing Between Silent and Vocal Minorities: Not All Deviants Feel Marginal : Center for Social Innovation (CSI)
5. OSU School of Communication: Dr. Kimberly Rios