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Researchers develop ice-repellent coating for windshields and more
Having to scrape ice off your windshield in freezing temperatures before heading off to work is awful. When ice builds up on airplanes and other equipment, it can go from being a nuisance to causing serious danger. To combat icy buildup, researchers at the University of Michigan developed a spray-on ice repellent coating that can be applied to equipment, aircraft and car windshields to make removing the frozen stuff a breeze. In fact, the team of engineers say all it takes to clear off a treated surface is the force of gravity or a light breeze thanks "iceophobic" material.
Spray-painted solar cells promise cheap power on seemingly any surface
Scientists have dreamed of painting solar cells to generate energy on just about any surface, but efficiency has been a problem; researchers were happy to get one percent just a couple of years ago. At last, though, it looks like viable paint-on power is close at hand. A team at the University of Sheffield has developed spray-on cells that should be both cheap and capable. The trick is to coat an object in perovskite, a calcium titanium oxide mineral -- it's inexpensive like organic solar cells, but absorbs light nearly as well as silicon.
Cell-infused 'spray-on-skin' helps leg ulcers heal more quickly
Spray-on medical solutions packed with cells certainly seem to be catching on. A new study published in The Lancet highlights a spray infused with skin cells and blood clotting proteins that helps leg ulcers heal quicker. Normally, the open wounds only undergo a compression bandage treatment and typically heal after six months. Patients who were also spritzed with the cell-imbued solution, however, experienced a rapid decrease in ulcer sizes soon after being treated. Three months into the regimen, 70 percent of those who had the mist applied were healed of the malady. Not only does the new remedy speed up the healing process, but it also avoids the need for a skin graft, another method used to hasten rehabilitation. Cost is a potential concern, but further tests are still needed to determine the therapy's practicality. [Image credit: Shutterstock]
Researchers develop cell spray to repair hearts, healthy dose of electricity included
Spray-on solutions have found a place in green technology and even in transmitting radio waves, and they're no strangers to medical research, either. Researchers at the British Heart Foundation are working on a bioelectric spray composed of heart cells to help mend that most vital of organs. Because the cells need to be extremely thin to form a sheet of heart tissue, they are passed through a conductive needle that charges them with up to 30,000 volts. Exposing the cells to an electric field turns the solution into small droplets, which in turn form the cardiac sheet. The scientists can also add other types of cells to create "three-dimensional" tissue, which can be grafted onto injured hearts or sprayed onto scar tissue to help patients' tickers pump more strongly. As is so often the case, the next step will be testing the technology on animals, and the project's ultimate goal is to use this spray-on solution rather than making patients wait for donor hearts.
Spray-on antenna revealed: best thing to come in a can since Easy Cheese (video)
Ever found yourself without a signal and wished you could just spray one on like magic? Well, maybe soon, you'll be able to do just that. Chamtech Enterprises has developed a spray-on antenna it says is more lightweight and energy-efficient than current technology. Revealed at Google's inaugural Solve for X shindig, the antenna can be "painted" onto almost anything, including trees, walls and fabrics. Chamtech's already talking with government-based customers, and as such can't spill too much detail on how it works, but said it uses organic elements to tinker with magnetic and radio-frequency fields. The start-up's CTO, Rhett Spencer, claims the antenna could increase mobile energy efficiency by 10 percent. It was also found to work particularly well under water, and being organic, we presume, would make it ideal for sub-aquatic telecom infrastructure, and of course, rainy days.
Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video)
Leave it to the Fighting Irish to take a stab at solving the world's energy woes. Notre Dame researchers have successfully developed solar cells that can be easily painted on to any conductive surface. Imagine, for a moment, applying this solution to your home rather than attaching solar panels to the roof. The paint mixture incorporates quantum dots of titanium dioxide, which is then coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide, and is then suspended in mixture of water and alcohol to create a spreadable compound that's capable of generating electricity. While its efficiency isn't currently much to crow home about -- which hovers around one-percent -- scientists are now actively pursuing ways to improve this aspect while making a more stable compound. Most importantly, the paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities, which suggests that even if efficiency remains in the doldrums, it may be a very worthwhile pursuit. Touchdown Jesus is already watching the video after the break.
Quantum dots could coat the world in nano-sized solar panels
We've long believed in the mystical power of quantum dots, so it makes perfect sense to us that one day they'll be used to fully harness the Sun God's rays and thereby save the planet. The nano-particles turn light into electricity, and could potentially be manufactured cheaply and abundantly enough to coat surfaces in current-generating paint. The main obstacle to this has so far been efficiency: the clever little dots just don't work very hard. However, scientists at the University of Toronto now claim to have discovered a fix. Instead of using a single layer of particles, which can only harvest one meager wavelength from the full gamut of solar light, they added a second coat on top and configured it to be sensitive to an additional part of the spectrum. By adding third and fourth layers, the researchers hope to achieve a commercially viable efficiency of 10-percent within the next five years. We humbly call on Ra to be pleased with their efforts.
Over the counter, spray-on stem cell treatment could heal burns on the go
Research at the University of Utah could lead to burn treatment on the go that makes use of your body's own cells. Surgeons Amit Patel and Amalia Cochran are researching the use of stem cells in conjunction with several chemicals as a spray-on jelly which has, in early testing, shown to accelerate the healing process of burns. While the team is starting with small burns, its goal is to be able to provide fast and effective, actual regeneration of a patient's own cells to be grafted onto large area burns. Video of the project is after the break.
SPRay trailer oozes into sight
Hey, look! It's an offbeat action/puzzler all about your quest to spray everything with various liquids! You might think we've been here before (uh, except for the spraying), and you might be right. Not that this means we're making any predictions about the fate of Tecmo's SPRay. Nope, we're just going to sit back and insist that you look at the footage. That we can recommend. The voiceover? Not so much.
Stream some new SPRay videos
We're a bit conflicted about Tecmo's SPRay. On one side, we think that a game built around the concept of using fluids with various useful properties to cover terrain is a unique and fun idea for a platformer. In the above video, a thick coating of a sticky slime allows the player to walk upside down. However, this concept also lends itself to an overreliance on grossout humor, which would be kind of a shame in an inventive adventure game like this one. We hope nothing like that happens in this game.After the break, a video in which ghost vomit is used to reveal invisible walkways.
Tecmo spritzes out a Spray announcement
Tecmo has taken a break from hemorrhaging employees to work on a game. Spray is a brand new game to be shown at E3, about a prince who must save his village ... by spraying various liquids on its buildings and streets? We aren't sure how that makes any damn sense, but according to the press release announcing the game, Prince Ray has control of two "liquid spraying spirits" who enable him to spray enemies and other stuff with "water, oil, goo, and other liquids." The different liquids will have varying effects on enemies, and can be combined in combos with sword attacks.Spray seems to be a confluence of Wii trends -- it takes the "covering surfaces with stuff" gameplay of De Blob and combines it with the "tiny monarch" character archetype found in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Little King's Story, and MySims Kingdom. But you're a tiny prince, so it's totally different.
Blow off clothes in body spray advergame
Most online advertising games are pretty dull -- extremly basic sports and racing games are par for the course. But there's something a little more titillating in the latest online advergame from Dare Digital. Lynx Blow doesn't have much of a setup, just a full screen video of a scantily clad woman in a barren winter landscape and an entreaty to blow into a microphone or headset "to make me hot." Indeed, constant blowing thaws out the woman and eventually blows her top off, at which point she runs off and you can start all over again. Don't want to bother with blowing for your PG-13 fun? Check out this flickr set of the photo shoot or this video of clips from the game. While the game certainly captured our attention, we can't really vouch for its effectiveness as advertising. We had to search the interwebs for ten full minutes just to figure out what the heck this Lynx product was. No, it's not a portable game system or a text-based web browser -- apparently it the British version of America's Axe body spray. I suppose most of the game's target audience would already know this, but would it have killed them to at least squeeze a link to the product page in with the scantily clad goodness? [Via Coolzor]
