humidity tagged posts

A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently shown that nearly any material can be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air. The secret lies in being able to pepper the material with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter. The research appeared in the journal Advanced Materials.

“This is very exciting,” says Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering in UMass Amherst’s College of Engineering and the paper’s lead author. “We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”

“The air contains an enormous amount of electricity,” says Jun Yao, assistant...

Yale researchers have pinpointed a key reason why people are more likely to get sick and even die from flu during winter months: low humidity. While experts know that cold temperatures and low humidity promote transmission of the flu virus, less is understood about the effect of decreased humidity on the immune system’s defenses against flu infection.

The Yale research team, led by Ak...

Unusual property of the ultrastrong material could be harnessed for twisting or pulling motions. Researchers have found that spider silk produces a strong twisting motion when exposed to humidity, and may be usable for future artificial muscles or actuators. Spider silk, already known as one of the strongest materials for its weight, turns out to have another unusual property that might lead to new kinds of artificial muscles or robotic actuators, researchers have found.

The resilient fibers, the team discovered, respond very strongly to ...

This schematic shows the concept behind the team’s plant-inspired microrobot. Credit: Image courtesy of American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics

The future of bio-inspired engineering or robotics will greatly benefit from lessons learned from plants eg tiny robots powered exclusively by changes in humidity. To generate motion, plants and some seeds – such as mimosa leaves, Venus flytraps and pine cones – simply harness the supply or deprival of water from plant tissues.

“Some seeds consist of a head that contains all its genetic information, along with a long appendage called an ‘awn’ that is responsible for locomotion – just like an animal’s sperm,” explained Prof Ho-Young Kim...