universityofcincinnati
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Body sensor collects vital data by making you sweat
Medical sensors that sample your sweat are great, as they can accurately gather some of the data you'd get from blood without having to poke through your skin. There's just one problem: this usually means going for a run or otherwise doing something taxing to produce that sweat. However, researchers have an elegant solution. They've devised a relatively small sensor (about the size of a Band-Aid) that stimulates the sweat glands on a small patch of skin so that you can get sweat data without exerting yourself. The device uses a tiny electrical current (0.2mA) to send carbachol, a chemical found in eyedrops, into the upper layer of your skin. From there, it's just a matter of measuring the electrolytes concentrated in your sweat.
UPS wants UAVs to cover its 'last mile' deliveries
Drone-based deliveries are quickly moving out of the realm of science fiction. Amazon, 7-11 and a host of startups are already toying with the idea. Now, UPS, one of the biggest parcel delivery services on the planet, is testing a system that will drop packages at your door while the driver moves on to the next house.
Combat AI beats the Air Force's top tactical experts
A new artificial intelligence flight combat system dubbed ALPHA has taken on one of the Air Force's top tactical experts and won. Retired USAF Colonel Gene Lee -- an experienced combat instructor with "considerable fighter aircraft expertise" -- was repeatedly shot down during engagements with ALPHA in a high-fidelity air combat simulation. Lee called his computerized opponent "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date."
Truck firm wants to deploy delivery drones on the move
Amazon's drone-delivery service may be a little fanciful, but it looks as if another company is working to make something similar to it a reality. Workhorse has applied to the FAA for special permission to begin testing drone deliveries made from the back of one of the firm's electric cargo vans. The idea is simple enough: as the truck makes its rounds, the roof-mounted HorseFly UAV selects, transports and drops off a parcel right outside the recipient's front door. The neat trick to all of this would be that the system is autonomous, with the human operator only keeping an eye on the landing to ensure there's no accidents.
New electrowetting technique could do e-paper on real paper, lead to disposable Kindles
Wahey, another day another theoretical display that will revolutionize the world, this time one that fits right in with your disposable, capitalistic lifestyle. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found a new way to utilize electrowetting, modifying the water repellency forces of a given surface to move colored ink and create a reflective display -- a technique that has long been the domain of Liquavista. This new version of that technique enables the creation of e-paper on actual paper, requiring no glass or fancy circuitry and, in theory, creating displays nearly as cheaply as magazines are printed today, opening the door to disposable e-readers and the like. No word on when such devices might be available outside of a lab, but we'll go ahead anyway and take this opportunity to remind you should always recycle your high-tech future e-readers.
Gamma Dynamics high-contrast, high-speed electrofluidic e-paper gets closer to reality
E Ink more or less has a lock on the e-reader market, as competitor after competitor sees delays or simply disappears altogether. Today we have an update from another would-be foe, and there's some real potential here. It's electrofluidic e-paper from Gamma Dynamics and the University of Cincinnati, which we first heard about last April. The tech is similar to that in E Ink but, instead of simple microcapsules having both black and white ink plus a clear oil, the Gamma Dynamics pixels have a colored fluid in a pixel that's split by a reflective sheet. Using voltage applied to these pixels the ink can be forced up above or pulled down below the reflective separator, forming an image in a video-capable 20ms and delivering a near paper-matching 70 percent reflectivity. There's a picture below showing how the tech works and, thanks to confirmation that it can be produced in an LCD manufacturing facility, it's looking closer to production than ever. How close is that? Oh, about three years, meaning E Ink still has that market cornered -- for now.
Researchers craft all-electric spintronics, vie for guest spot on Mindfreak
Unfortunately for us, we've no certified rocket scientist on staff. That said, we're absolutely convinced that the whiz-kids over at the University of Cincinnati are more than up to the task of improving a science that may or may not actually be useful in real things before 3028. As we continue to hear more about spintronics (described as "transistors that function by controlling an electron's spin instead of its charge"), a team of UC researchers have stumbled upon a novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means. In fact, one member calls this discovery the "holy grail of semiconductor spintronics," though we're guessing it'll still be a few years centuries before our hard drives are fetching data 100,000x faster and our batteries last longer than our desire to use them.
Electrofluidic display tech improves color e-ink, makes you sound smarter
The race to develop a mass-market color e-ink display is at fever pitch, and there's a new challenger on the scene: electrofluidic display, or EFD. Developed at the University of Cincinnati in partnership with a handful of private companies, the new tech apparently blows everything else out of the water -- according to professor Jason Heikenfeld, EFD has superior brightness, color saturation, and video speed, all in a 15-micron thick panel that can eventually be used in rollable displays. No word on when we'll see any products, but the partnership is spinning off a new company called Gamma Dynamics to commercialize the tech, so hopefully it'll be soon.[Thanks, Wendy]Read - University of Cincinnati press releaseRead - EFD paper in Nature
Robot surgeons compete with humans aboard the vomit comet
We were always of the opinion that robot surgery was edgy enough as it is, but you know how those science peoples always have to kick things up a notch. SRI International and the University of Cincinnati hitched a ride on NASA's DC-9 "vomit comet" to pit human surgeons against semi-autonomous robots in suturing and incision tasks on simulated tissue -- while experiencing periods of zero gravity and 1.8g acceleration. Surprisingly, the robots kept pace just fine until SRI's fancy compensation software was switched off, which we're guessing is exactly the point SRI was trying to prove. Right now SRI is building a robotic operating room for the battlefield called Trauma Pod, which is mostly autonomous, and they're also working on a fully autonomous system for NASA that could treat an astronaut on Mars, where the 20 minute delay would make telesurgery not an option. Field testing for the trauma pod should begin in 2009.[Via Slashdot]
