John Rogers
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John Rogers returns with a silicon-silk circuit that dissolves inside your body
While you'd be forgiven for not knowing who John Rogers is, he's certainly graced these pages more than once. He's the research chief at the University of Illinois that's previously broken new ground in the world of invisibility cloaks and wearable technology. This time, his team has cooked up a silicon, magnesium, magnesium oxide and silk circuit that's designed to dissolve in the body in the same way that absorbable sutures are used in minor surgeries. It's thought that the tech could eventually be used to implant monitors that never need removal, reducing invasive medical procedures, or even build devices that eventually turn into compost rather than E-waste -- although we're not sure we'd appreciate our smartphone doing the same thing when we're making calls in the rain. [Image Credit: Fiorenzo Omenetto / Science]
Metamaterial printing method inches us closer to invisibility cloaks
In theory, metamaterials are all kinds of awesome -- they can boost antenna strength, focus lasers, and create invisibility cloaks. But, they've been limited to day dreams lab experiments because producing the light-interfering materials in any practical quantity has been difficult and time consuming. John Rogers, a professor at the University of Illinois has figured out a way to print a layered, nano-scale mesh that bends near-infrared light in much larger amounts than previously possible. The new method, based around a plastic stamp, has been used to create sheets of metamaterial measuring a few square inches, but Rogers is confident he can scale it up to several feet. Who knows, by the time the second installment of The Deathly Hallows hits theaters in July you could get the best Harry Potter costume -- one that lets you sneak in without shelling out $13. [Thanks, Plum G.]
Reebok sets sights on flexible computing sportswear, partners with startup team
Science has prototyped flexible versions of just about everything a ever-loving geek needs: displays, memory, batteries, LEDs, speakers and an input device or three. Now, Reebok's looking to put some of that computing power up our sleeves. The apparel manufacturer's teamed up with MC10 -- a startup founded by our old friend John Rogers, who helped pioneer the field -- with the intent to build "conformable electronics" into high-performance clothing for athletes over the next couple of years. Though the company told MIT Technology Review the devices typically consist of thin silicon strips printed onto flexible materials, and that they might they might measure metabolism and performance using embedded sensors, hard details are few -- the only thing we know for sure is that a flexible tech scientist just scored a partnership with a major company, and we're hopeful they'll make something neat. PR after the break.
Flexible, implantable LEDs look set to start a new body modification craze
LED lights are cool, you're cool, why not combine the two, right? We doubt that's quite the reasoning that led to this international research project, but it's certainly an appealing way to look at it. Our old buddy John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has headed up a research team with participants from the US, China, Korea, and Singapore, who have together produced and demonstrated a new flexible and implantable LED array. Bettering previous efforts at inserting lights under the human skin, this approach allows for stretching and twisting by as much as 75 percent, while the whole substrate is encased in thin silicon rubber making it waterproof. Basically, it's a green light to subdermal illumination, which could aid such things as monitoring the healing of wounds, activating light-sensitive drug delivery, spectroscopy, and even robotics. By which we're guessing they mean our robot overlords will be able to color-code us more easily. Yeah, that must be it.
World of Warcraft, as seen on television
Our favorite game made not one but two big appearances on TV this past week. First up, looks like the writer of TNT's Leverage (that Dan already interviewed a while back) is wasting no time getting his characters to fly the Horde flag, as you can see in the clip above (thanks to Massively for digging that up for us). The writer, John Rogers, told Dan that Blizzard actually vetted the dialogue above, which makes us wonder why they were ok with saying Burning Crusade, but didn't want to mention the second expansion by name. Maybe the episode was filmed so long ago that the name hadn't quite been confirmed yet.And in other television news, we're told World of Warcraft made an appearance as a category on Jeopardy this week. We don't have video of that one (yet), but you can see a quick teaser over on Jeopardy's webpage that mentions the game as a category. World of Warcraft has of course appeared in the game show before as an answer, but this time around, there was a whole column of questions about it. If you see video anywhere online, let us know, and we'll add it here to the post.
TNT's Leverage is the latest stretch-o-vision victim
Anyone watching Tuesday's episode of Leverage (The Wedding Job) probably quickly noticed that instead of the crisp 720p image we've become accustomed to, it was being delivered in TNT's disorienting stretch format, taking a 4x3 picture and adjusting whatever it thought we weren't looking at to fill the gaps. Why TNT still uses this at all in 2009 is beyond us, but we got in contact with Executive Producer (and blogger) John Rogers to find out what happened. We still don't know the details, but he let us know via email that it was a simple case of someone transmitting the wrong version, so we should be able to look forward to properly formatted TV for the rest of its run (let it be known: if someone screws up The Closer, there will be consequences & repercussions.) Read - AVS Forum Read - Kung Fu Monkey
Television writer is for the Horde!
John Rogers résumé is long and varied. Physics graduate, television writer and avid online gamer. He's credited with writing an early draft of the "Transformers" movie and creating "The Jackie Chan Adventures" animated series. His latest endeavor is the new action series "Leverage," premiering tonight on TNT at 10/9c. Every week on the new show a group of professional cons takes down corrupt authority figures using their unique skills. And they're not above using World of Warcraft to get the job done.Wait...what?You see while reading John's blog, I saw a single line about an upcoming episode of "Leverage" having a WoW reference in it, joining the ranks of "How I Met Your Mother," "Big Bang Theory" and "Stargate Atlantis." I contacted him to find out more about his new show, his love of the game and further confirmation that WoW is the new golf.
Stretchy silicon circuits wrap around complex shapes, like your wife
The first "completely integrated, extremely bendable circuit" was just demonstrated to the world. The team behind the research is led by John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The process bonds circuit sheets measuring just 1.5 micrometers (50 times thinner than human hair) to a piece of pre-stretched rubber. That allows the circuits to buckle like an accordion when pulled or twisted without losing their electrical properties. Unfortunately, the materials used thus far are not compatible with human tissue. In other words, no X-ray vision implant for you. X-ray contacts perhaps... quantum-computers now, please Mr. Scientists? Watch a circuit buckle in the video after the break.[Via BBC, thanks YoJIMbo]
