Category Technology/Electronics

1. An array of the temperature sensor chips is shown. 2, Near-zero-power temperature sensor runs on 113 picowatts of power. Photos by David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Electrical engineers at the UCSD have developed a temperature sensor that runs on only 113 picowatts of power – 628 times lower power than the state of the art and about 10 billion times smaller than a watt. This near-zero-power temperature sensor could extend the battery life of wearable or implantable devices that monitor body temperature, smart home monitoring systems, Internet of Things devices and environmental monitoring systems.

The technology could also enable a new class of devices that can be powered by harvesting energy from low-power sources, such as the body or the surrounding environment...

A diagram of the VES-4, a scorpion-milking machine.

A new scorpion-milking robot designed could replace the traditional manual method. Scorpion venom is used in medical applications such as immunosuppressants, anti-malarial drugs and cancer research, but the extraction process can be potentially life-threatening. “This robot makes venom recovery fast and safe,” says Mr Mouad Mkamel who designed the robot with a team of researchers from Ben M’sik Hassan II University, Morocco.

“The extraction of scorpion venom is a very difficult task and usually takes at least two experimenters,” says Mr Mkamel. “There are numerous risks including potentially deadly scorpion stings and electric shocks from the stimulators used to extract the venom...

An Intrinsically Stretchable and Compressible Supercapacitor Containing a Polyacrylamide Hydrogel Electrolyte, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2017). DOI: 10.1002/anie.201705212

A polyacrylamide hydrogel electrolyte renders supercapacitors extraordinarily stretchable and compressible. Flexible, wearable electronics require equally flexible, wearable power sources. Chinese scientists have introduced an extraordinarily stretchable and compressible polyelectrolyte which, in combination with carbon nanotube composite paper electrodes, forms a supercapacitor that can be stretched to 1000% in length and compressed to 50% in thickness with even gaining, not losing capacity.

Supercapacitors bridge the gap between batteries, which are merely energy-storing devices, and normal capacitors, w...

The sample here contains hundreds of thousands of nanoparticles that manipulate the incoming light. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANUy

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have designed a new nano material that can reflect or transmit light on demand with temperature control, opening the door to technology that protects astronauts in space from harmful radiation. Dr Mohsen Rahmani from ANU said the material was so thin that hundreds of layers could fit on the tip of a needle and could be applied to any surface, including spacesuits.

“Our invention has a lot of potential applications, such as protecting astronauts or satellites with an ultra-thin film that can be adjusted to reflect various dangerous ultraviolet or infrared radiation in different environments,” said Dr Rahmani, an A...