Friday 15 May 2015

Wearable wireless devices: Low cost radio frequency antenna printed with graphene ink

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Scientists have moved graphene -- the incredibly strong and conductive single-atom-thick sheet of carbon -- a significant step along the path from lab bench novelty to commercially viable material for new electronic applications. Researchers have printed a radio frequency antenna using compressed graphene ink. The antenna performed well enough to make it practical for use in radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and wireless sensors, the researchers said. Even better, the antenna is flexible, environmentally friendly and could be cheaply mass-produced.
via Science Daily

Against the Stream

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Scientists have created microbe-sized beads that can utilize energy in the environment to self-propel upstream by purely physical

The post Against the Stream has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Used cigarette butts offer energy storage solution

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Scientists have developed a new way to store energy that also offers a solution to a growing environmental problem.
via Science Daily

Eagle Nebula Print

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: astronomy, space, nasa, galaxy, photography, art, best, popular, top, gift, unique, the best, the most popular, custom, customizable, pretty, prettiest, quality, eagle nebula, business gift, corporate gift, corporate gifts, special gift, special gifts, laureen, laureenr

This eerie, dark structure in IC 4703 (the Eagle nebula) is a column of cool molecular hydrogen gas and dust that is an incubator for new stars. The stars are embedded inside finger-like protrusions clearly seen extending from the top of the column. Each "fingertip" is somewhat larger than our own solar system. The pillar is slowly eroding away by the ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars, a process called "photoevaporation". As it does, small globules of especially dense gas buried within the cloud are uncovered. These globules have been dubbed "EGGs" ; an acronym for "Evaporating Gaseous Globules". The shadows of the EGGs protect gas behind them, resulting in the finger-like structures at the top of the cloud.

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First large-scale graphene fabrication

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One of the barriers to using graphene at a commercial scale could be overcome using a new method. Graphene, a material stronger and stiffer than carbon fiber, has enormous commercial potential but has been impractical to employ on a large scale, with researchers limited to using small flakes of the material.
via Science Daily

The dark side of creativity

Science Focus

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Creativity — the generation of novel and useful ideas, products, or solutions — is seen as a valuable trait for people and organizations to possess.

Organizations harness it to develop innovative products, services, or processes, all of which promote profitability, long-term sustainability, and a competitive advantage. For the individual, research has shown that creativity is often associated with humor and altruism, more positive moods, and personal resiliency. Sharon Kim, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, Jack Goncalo, a professor at Cornell University, and I found that under certain conditions, creativity can help individuals rationalize and cope with the negative effects of social rejection.

Yet creativity isn't always embraced — in fact, certain ideas can initially be viewed as so implausible that they are outright rejected. In the history of the Post-it note, several accidents and failures serendipitously came together to create an immensely successful product that revolutionized and redefined 3M.

In 1968 Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M, was working on developing a strong and durable adhesive for building aircraft. At one point, he created a very weak adhesive. While it lacked the necessary strength, it had the remarkable qualities of leaving no residue and being reusable.

Nonetheless, 3M deemed the product useless, put it aside, and forgot about it.

Years later, Art Fry, a chemical engineer at 3M and church choir member, was frustrated about losing his place in his hymnal. Fry, who'd been aware of Silver's invention, had an idea: he coated some paper with Silver's failed adhesive, marked the hymnal pages with the pieces of paper, and then removed the paper after the church service without damaging the pages.

Seeing potential value in the product, Fry reintroduced it to his superiors. They panned the idea, and ordered that he cease working on the project.

Nonetheless, Fry defied those orders and continued with the project. He built a machine to produce the Post-it notes, distributing the prototypes to 3M's secretaries, who loved them. Fry ignored his managers' requests, used company property without permission, and bypassed the established protocols of the company — all to pursue his idea.

3M eventually saw the product's value and manufactured it. Post-it notes became wildly successful and profitable: Fry had taken what was considered a useless product and applied it in a unique and useful way. But the story of the Post-it note demonstrates both the positive and the dark sides of creativity. On the one hand, a creative idea resulted in value and profit; on the other, an individual was willing to be intentionally dishonest in order to execute his idea.

It is this dark side of creativity — particularly the relationship between creativity and dishonesty — that has piqued the interest of researchers.

For example, Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard University, and Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University, found that creative thinking allows individuals to justify their dishonesty (e.g. "I am not stealing this; I am just borrowing it"). It's a slippery slope: as soon as a person can justify a behavior, he or she is more likely to engage in that behavior.

My research demonstrates that a dark side of creativity can surface in people who aren't objectively creative, but simply think that they are. For example, people who view themselves as creative can develop a sense of entitlement — the belief that they're more deserving than others. They view their ideas as unique, novel, and important, and, as a result, think they are entitled to either act in a certain way, or be rewarded for their efforts. For example, they may view stealing as a justified means of claiming something that they feel they deserve.

Returning to the story of the Post-it note, Art Fry may have believed that his product was so valuable and important that he was entitled to break the rules and be dishonest in order produce it.

The irony is that these negative behaviors may spur more creativity. Francesca Gino and Scott Wiltermuth, a professor at USC, found that being dishonest can actually promote creativity. In this study, participants who cheated on a math and logic task by looking at the answers performed better on a subsequent creativity task than participants who did not cheat. When someone is dishonest, it often requires he or she to break a set of rules; yet this rule-breaking may promote creativity because it allows people to flout convention and expectations. Again, in the story of the Post-it note, despite Art Fry's disobedience and dishonesty, he ended up creating a wildly successful product.

Additionally, Emily Zitek, a professor at Cornell University, and I found that temporary feelings of entitlement can also promote creativity.

It's like a self-fulfilling loop: while individuals who self-identify as creative may feel more entitled, it's possible that this entitlement will cause them to take creative risks that they otherwise may have shied away from.

The Conversation

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/441515/dark-side-creativity
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Mapping lunar landscapes in panorama

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A rugged camera technology successfully captured 360 degree panoramic views of the moon during China’s first lunar landing in 2013.
via Science Daily
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Star Birth in Constellation Cygnus, The Swan Star Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, star clusters, nebulae, gstlnrsr, rcw120, breathtaking astronomy images, star nurseries, inspirational stars, ionised gas clouds, starfields, galaxies, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous star forming region in Constellation Cygnus (The Swan). This Hubble image shows a dust-rich, interstellar gas cloud with a new-born star in the centre of the hour-glass shape. The glowing blue of the hydrogen in this nebula is due to the jets being emitted from the forming star as dust falls into into it and this causes the heating and turbulence of the hydrogen. The star, known as S106 IR, is reaching the end of its birth and will soon enter the much quieter period of adulthood known as the main stage.

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Image code: cygsb

Image credit: NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

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Towards a tunable graphene-like two-dimensional material

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A new porous material exhibits high electrical conductivity as a bulk material that is potentially tunable and has unusual temperature dependence, suggesting new fundamental physics.
via Science Daily

Jupiter, Ganymede, Great Red Spot

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In this sharp snapshot, the Solar System's largest moon Ganymede poses next to Jupiter, the largest planet. Captured on March 10 with a small telescope from our fair planet Earth, the scene also includes Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the Solar System's largest storm. In fact, Ganymede is about 5,260 kilometers in diameter. That beats out all three of its other fellow Galilean satellites, along with Saturn's Moon Titan at 5,150 kilometers and Earth's own Moon at 3,480 kilometers. Though its been shrinking lately, the Great Red Spot's diameter is still around 16,500 kilometers. Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is about 143,000 kilometers in diameter at its equator. That's nearly 10 percent the diameter of the Sun.

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Researchers demonstrate method that reduces friction between two surfaces to almost zero at macroscopic scale

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(Phys.org)—A team of researchers working at Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, has found a way to dramatically reduce friction between two macroscopic scale surfaces—to near zero. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how they accidently discovered the method and why they believe it might be useful for real world applications.

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Within colors of bees and butterflies, an optical engineer's dream is realized

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Evolution has created in bees, butterflies, and beetles something optical engineers have been struggling to achieve for years—precisely organized biophotonic crystals that can be used to improve solar cells, fiber-optic cables, and even cosmetics and paints, a new Yale-led study has found.

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Fireworks in Space Cover For The iPad Mini

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: starburst, star, cluster, shows, celestial, fireworks, stars, nasa, hubble, space, image, images, astronomy

A space image photo of a star cluster with thanks to NASA/Hubble created from their July release "Starburst Cluster Shows Celestial Fireworks".

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Artificial photosynthesis could help make fuels, plastics and medicine

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The global industrial sector accounts for more than half of the total energy used every year. Now scientists

The post Artificial photosynthesis could help make fuels, plastics and medicine has been published on Technology Org.

 
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New study shows how babies’ lives were saved by 3D printing

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Kaiba was just a newborn when he turned blue because his little lungs weren’t getting the oxygen they

The post New study shows how babies’ lives were saved by 3D printing has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Graphene enables tunable microwave antenna

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Graphene antennae in the microwave part of the spectrum can be tuned by an applied voltage. This is the latest result, published in the renown physics journal Applied Physics Letters, by a pan-European collaboration between Romania, Greece, Italy, and Ireland, using Graphenea graphene.

High-frequency electronics is a complicated matter, due to giant losses that metals and most other conductors suffer at frequencies larger than several 10s of GHz. Electrons that oscillate rapidly experience a sort of friction with the conductor material itself, losing energy to heat. Graphene offers a different platform, in which electrons can oscillate quickly with little loss, due to the peculiar relativistic behavior of charge carriers in graphene. This advantage provided by graphene has resulted in transistors that operate at frequencies up to several terahertz (one terahertz is a thousand gigahertz).

In the microwave part of the spectrum, which is very important for communication, navigation, radar, and radio astronomy, researchers have been looking for the right material to make antennae which can be tuned with an external voltage. Advances have been made using exotic ferroelectrics, ferromagnetics, and liquid crystals, but all those materials, although allowing tunability, exhibited strong losses, preventing efficient microwave antennae.

Now researchers have demonstrated an antenna made from graphene, operating in the microwave part of the spectrum and tunable with external voltage. With a simple fabrication procedure and using a standard CVD graphene layer on a SOI substrate, the researchers show modulation of both the antenna efficiency and its operating frequency in the important X band, just by applying voltage. The antenna behavior is well described with standard microwave modelling tools, allowing for its use as part of more complex circuits.

Photo: Graphene microwave antennae

The research also shows that the antenna, due to its small size compared to the centimeter-long wavelength in this frequency band, radiates in two directions, which could be useful or detrimental, depending on the application. Directionality can be controlled with an added thin reflector layer on the antenna back side. Overall the antenna is less than 1mm thin, with a planar diameter of 4 inches, making it one of the smallest microwave antennas in the world.

The authors of the paper predict that the main applications of this antenna lie in RF communication, where the antenna tunability will allow switching of communication channels. Working in reverse, the antenna could also serve as a radio frequency sensor. Radio frequency and terahertz applications will be among the most prominent uses of graphene, according to the Graphene Flagship application roadmap.


via Graphenea

Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Star Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: star clusters, galaxies, starfields, constellation puppis, the stern, star nurseries, nebulae, space exploration, universe photographs, hrbstslr stlrnrsry, european southern observatory, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous set of oval stickers showing the area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas.

The image, looking like a colourful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region - the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionised gas.

The bright star at the centre of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

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image code: stlrnrsry

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Glowing Stellar Nurseries RCW120 Room Stickers

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: nebulae, gstlnrsr, breathtaking astronomy images, star nurseries, star clusters, ionised gas clouds, galaxies and stars, starfield rcw120, european southern observatory, star forming regions, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic astronomy picture featuring a colour composite image of RCW120.

It reveals how an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps where new stars are then formed.

The 870-micron submillimetre-wavelength data were taken with the LABOCA camera on the 12-m Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope. Here, the submillimetre emission is shown as the blue clouds surrounding the reddish glow of the ionised gas (shown with data from the SuperCosmos H-alpha survey). The image also contains data from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey (I-band shown in blue, R-band shown in red).

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image code: gstlnrsr

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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NGC 3314 iPad MINI COVERS

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: ngc 3314,interacting,overlapping,spiral,galaxies,nasa,hubble,space,image

NGC 3314 is a pair of interacting or overlapping spiral galaxies thanks to a June 2012 Hubble NASA space image.

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