Implantable sand-sized sensors to monitor internal goings on in real time

Health and fitness monitors may have come along in leaps and bounds, but there's still a whole lot they don't know about us. Placing miniaturized sensors deep inside our bodies would be one way to change that, and now it seems such a technology mightn't be so far away. Scientists have developed tiny wireless sensors they call "neural dust", which track nerve signals and muscles in real time, opening up a wide array of potential applications that range from checking internal organs to wirelessly controlling prosthetics with your mind. 

Neural dust is more than just a catchy name. The researchers, from the University of California, Berkeley, have managed to squish the sensors into 1 mm cubes around the size of a large grain of sand, and implanted them into the muscles and peripheral nerves of rats. These cubes house piezoelectric crystals that turn ultrasound vibrations (applied from outside the body) into electricity. This provides a power source for a miniature on-board transistor that rests in contact with the nerve to measure electrical activity.

When there is a voltage spike in the adjacent nerve, it modifies the circuit and in turn the vibrations of the piezoelectric crystals. When the vibrations are bounced back to an ultrasound device on the outside of the skin, the change in echo can be analyzed to reveal the voltage of the nerve.

"Having access to in-body telemetry has never been possible because there has been no way to put something supertiny superdeep," says Michel Maharbiz, one of the study's co-authors. "But now I can take a speck of nothing and park it next to a nerve or organ, your GI tract or a muscle, and read out the data."

In their current form, the researchers say the sensors could be used outside the brain not just for monitoring, but also stimulating nerves and muscles to treat things like epilepsy, inflammation or fire up the immune system. Eventually, they hope to develop tinier versions that can be packed into the brain, an advance that could mean big, big things.

"The beauty is that now, the sensors are small enough to have a good application in the peripheral nervous system, for bladder control or appetite suppression, for example," says neuroscientist Jose Carmena, a member of the research team. "The technology is not really there yet to get to the 50 micron target size, which we would need for the brain and central nervous system. Once it's clinically proven, however, neural dust will just replace wire electrodes. This time, once you close up the brain, you're done."

A 50-micron sensor would measure about half the width of a human hair, and planted in the brain it could represent a game-changing development in the way our minds communicate with machines.

Our ever-improving ability to track the electrical signals coming from the brain has already opened up some exciting possibilities, from mind-controlled drones to mind-controlled colleagues, but these involve immobile, specialized caps or implanting electrodes into the brain, which then degrade within a couple of years.

If working with the neural dust instead, scientists could implant them in the brain by the hundreds, seal up the wound and be done with it. This would avoid infection and undesired movement of the electrodes and could potentially last for decades, where they could perform the role of relaying brain signals to be turned into control inputs for prosthetics.

There's still a lot of work to do before this happens. Not only are the researchers working to make the device smaller, but the sensors are currently coated in surgical grade epoxy. They are looking to improve on this by using biocompatible thin films instead, which they say could last for decades. They are also working towards improving the ultrasound transmitter and even expanding the sensors' capacity to pick up on non-electrical signals, like oxygen and hormone levels.

"The vision is to implant these neural dust motes anywhere in the body, and have a patch over the implanted site send ultrasonic waves to wake up and receive necessary information from the motes for the desired therapy you want," says Dongjin Seo, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley. "Eventually you would use multiple implants and one patch that would ping each implant individually, or all simultaneously."

The research was published in the journal Neuron, and the video below provides an overview of how the sensor works.

Source: NewAtlas, University of California, Berkeley

Read More

"Play"- The new way of Learning

Any parent who has ever spent time helping Kids learn their subjects in the primary years have always been in tune with the child’s learning practices, their likes and dislikes. Kids in general are very picky learners. They tend to hold bias in their minds over the subjects they learn. They love learning a few subjects while tend to neglect others. This can be observed in the manner they express enthusiasm towards a few subjects as against the others. Parents can even observe the spark in children when they are learning their favourite subjects. So, it is safe to surmise that children learn best when they are interested and engaged. And their engagement and interests are at a high when they love what they are about to learn.

Using children’s interests as a basis while designing curriculum helps to ensure that learning is not only interesting but is also meaningful and relevant to them. The usual subjects of dislike to them such as math and science cannot be avoided. Regardless of children’s likes-dislikes, bitter pills such as these have to be administered to them for their own well being. But, if there were mechanisms where kids intuitively preferred math and science and took more interests in these subjects, it would be desirable and save parents the trouble of force-feeding them with these subjects. But the daunting task of making math and science simplified enough for young children to comprehend them has always been a challenge fraught with risks. Making the subjects simple enough usually renders them juvenile and illogical. Hence, educators have always been sceptical of tinkering with the way the important concepts of math and science are tutored at school.

When considering the balance between such important aspects of learning, it helps when we observe the various facets of children’s interests and look for the key psychology behind these interests.  Studies show that kids enjoy learning when they have to use their dexterity in the task. They learn from constructive activities such as assembling blocks, creating art and even making mud castles. These activities awaken their primal instincts of learning that has led to us evolve as a species. So, why not use similar activities to make them learn math and science in a manner that is both engaging and does not let feel the burden of comprehending concepts.

The good folks at Kidobotikz believe our Kits serve the same purpose. The kits of kidobotikz are no more a toy than brightly coloured plastic bricks that kids love to assemble. The kits of kidobotikz are no less fun than a remote controlled car or helo. But, there is something that makes our kits stand out from the plethora of play options available at any toy store. It is the skills of math, science that a kids gets acquainted with when he uses the kit that makes the kit stand out. It is the joy a kid gets from indirectly learning his academics that makes the kits stand out. With the Kidobotikz kit, it is never a “pause” from learning because it is always “play” learning.

Happy Roboting ! !

Read More

Facebook's lightbulb moment for drone-based internet access

If you think your internet is slow, spare a thought for the estimated 4 billion people on the planet who have no access at all. Rather than the costly process of building towers and burying cables, Facebook is taking the internet to the sky to get those people online, much like Google's Project Loon. After last year unveiling the drones that would beam data-laden lasers down to remote areas, the social networking giant's Connectivity Lab has now solved the problem of how those beams of light are received, achieving speeds of up to 2 Gbps.

Transmitting information wirelessly using light, or free-space optical communication, has the potential for very high bandwidths and data capacity. The problem is, it's a precise science at the best of times, and aiming a tiny laser at a tiny photodetector across vast distances is no easy task, especially when the laser is moving. Using mechanical systems to reorient the detector so the laser hits it is one solution, but it's not an elegant one.

Instead, the Connectivity Lab team designed a lightbulb-shaped light collector, made up of a bundle of fluorescent, plastic optical fibers. With a surface area of 126 sq cm (19.5 sq in), the unique shape of the device allows it to collect light from any angle, which it then concentrates onto a small photodetector. The fibers also contain organic dye molecules that absorb blue light but emit green.

"The fact that these fluorescent optical fibers emit a different color than they absorb makes it possible to increase the brightness of the light entering the system," says research lead, Tobias Tiecke. "This approach has been used in luminescent concentrators for solar light harvesting, where the speed of the color conversion doesn't matter. We showed that the same concept can be used for communication to circumvent pointing and tracking problems while accomplishing very high speeds."

The high speeds in question can reach up to 2 Gbps, which is even more impressive when you consider that the system only has a bandwidth of 100 MHz. The speeds are thanks to the use of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), which is a method of encoding data that allows multiple streams to be transmitted simultaneously. The fact that it takes less than two nanoseconds for the device to absorb blue light and emit green light helps as well.

The researchers say blistering speeds of up to 10 Gbps may be possible in future, if the system can be adapted to incorporate materials that work with infrared wavelengths.

"We achieved such high data rates using commercially available materials that are not designed for communications applications," says Tiecke. "We want to get other groups interested in developing materials that are tailored for communications applications. This is a very new system, and there is a lot of room for future development."

The research was published in the journal Optica. 

Source: The Optical Society, New Atlas

Read More

Does all play and no work always make Jack a mere toy?

Does all play and no work always make Jack a mere toy?

If you are probably wondering what this above question is in reference to, it is the famous saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; all play and no work makes Jack a mere toy”. The premise of this saying involves the activities of work and play by kids and the necessity for a balance between the two. While this saying encapsulates the importance of maintaining a balance between the two, more often than not kids tend to slide away from either ends of the balance. The effect this has on their persona and productivity has been discussed immensely in general literature and countless number of editorials.

However, today let’s take a step back from the regular stand and discuss the merits of the second part of the argument “ All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy ”. Does a lot of play really make jack a mere toy? Perhaps. But that depends on the prism through which the activity of play is viewed at. Play is generally viewed as an unproductive activity that kids engage themselves in when there are no other pressing commitments such as homework and school to attend to. It is viewed as an activity that kids are left to engage in when the elders of the home attend to other important chores. Playtime of kids is even viewed by parents as a time that they get for themselves to rest and relax. But why should play be reduced to a mere activity of time killing. Why should it be viewed as something that only festers unproductivity?

Studies show that Play is something that kids should mandatorily engage in as a part of their character building and physical growth. However, conventional wisdom tells us that when Kids partake in play they more likely to get exposed to bad influences and the monitoring of their exposure is not feasible.

But we at Kidobotikz dare to ask a question that most people fail to. What if the entire activity of play did not add to the unproductivity of the pupil but rather improved his/her productivity? What if play was used as a time slot where kids actually learned concepts of academics in a format that they would not expect education to be placed in. Did we succeed in developing such a method? Why yes, we did. The kits offered by Kidobotikz are usually viewed by our students as something of a play item. While we never envisaged for it to be one, the fun and interaction built into the kit has actually caused the kit to move out of the bookshelves to the study areas and balconies of our students. Kidobotikzians view our kit as something of a stress buster. They use it to unwind after a long day at school where they’ve written down dozens of pages as a part of their class notes. However, what they’ve failed to realize is the fact that they are still learning the same school concepts while working on the kits. We at Kidobotikz have conveniently forgotten them to remind them of the same. And we don’t think we’ll ever remind them of it. Let the learning and playing continue together.

Happy Roboting ! !

Read More

Smart sutures send wireless status reports from wound sites

Flexible electronics that work with the body have been advancing quickly, doing everything from measuring our blood oxygen levels through our skin to monitoring our muscles using a tattoo. Now, a team of researchers from Tufts University has taken flexible electronics to their next logical step, embedding them in sutures that can monitor the body from the site of the stitching and broadcast their findings to a Bluetooth-enabled device.

The sutures are made from a variety of materials that are able to absorb and channel bodily fluids. "We have a suite of threads," Tuft's Sameer Sonkusale told Gizmag. "Cotton coated with carbon nanotubes, cotton coated with graphitic carbon, and threads electroplated with copper, platinum or silver." He also said that his team invented stretchable polyurethane threads covered with carbon nanotubes.

Once stitched in place in both mice and tissues samples in a lab dish, the threads were able to collect data on their surroundings including the pressure, stress and temperature at the suture site. They were also able to measure the pH and glucose levels, which can be key markers in determining how well a site is healing and whether or not infection has set in.

Sonkusale said, for example, that the electrical resistance of polyurethane threads coated with carbon nanotubes changes with strain induced on them. By tracking that resistance, it's possible to gauge how well a wound is closing and this marker was used in the study to monitor wound closure in mice. Similarly, the resistance in metallic threads changes based on temperature, so by monitoring them, it's possible to know if a wound site is extra hot, which would be a sign of infection. This component of the work is similar to previous research done with temperature-sensing sutures.

In the studies, the threads were attached to a circuit board that measured about the size of half a credit card, which was located on the skin of the mice. That board, using Bluetooth, was able to send data to a smartphone and a computer. Sonkusale, who directs Tuft's Nano Lab, told us that there is no reason why the circuit board couldn't be shrunk down in future iterations of the system and be the size of a single silicon chip.

"The ability to suture a thread-based diagnostic device intimately in a tissue or organ environment in three dimensions adds a unique feature that is not available with other flexible diagnostic platforms," said Sonkusale. "We think thread-based devices could potentially be used as smart sutures for surgical implants, smart bandages to monitor wound healing, or integrated with textile or fabric as personalized health monitors and point-of-care diagnostics."

The work of Sonkusale and his team was published online today in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

Source: New Atlas, Tufts University

Read More

ARmKeypad Air keeps your grubby mitts off the interface

Making interfaces touch-free is a problem with a number of solutions, such as voice control to hand gesture recognition. NEC's ARmKeypad brings augmented reality (AR) into the mix to display a virtual interface onto the user's arm, with input registered through vibrations from the tapping of fingers on the arm. Now the company has announced a new, tap-free version called the ARmKeypad Air that provides a completely contact-free interface.

After we first heard about the ARmKeypad back in 2011, things kind of went quiet until November last year, when it resurfaced in the form of a trial model. 

That unusual capitalization in the name is there to reflect the fact the device uses AR smart glasses to display customizable virtual keyboards on the forearm and detect the position of the forearm and the user's fingers, while a modified watch reads when keys have been pressed courtesy of the vibrations produced as the user taps away.

Unlike its predecessor, the ARmKeypad Air doesn't rely on physical tappings, but instead tracks the movements of a person's fingers as they hover over the arm. That contactless interaction, along with the removal of the wearable sensor part of the system, makes it perfect for use in sterile environments like operating theaters or during food preparation.

"Moving forward, NEC will use the ARmKeypad and ARmKeypad Air to help improve workplace efficiency in sectors where hands-free operation is required, such as manufacturing, medicine, security, and distribution," says Yukio Maruyama, of the company's System Integration & Services Market Development Division.

NEC is exhibiting the ARmKeypad Air at the International Modern Hospital Show in Tokyo this week.

Source: NEC, New Atlas

Read More

Unveiling Kidobotikz's robo-palooza ! !

If there’re a few months of the academic year that students hate, it must be August and September. These are the two dry months with very meagre holidays. There’s the mid-term that is the first after schools reopened in June and kids still have a good one and a half months before the Dussehra vacations. These are two months that Kids find it hard to pass and have nothing much to get excited about. This is something we sympathize with. We at Kidobotikz believe that the minds of bored kids are breeders of unproductivity. So we decided to give them something to get excited. We have decided to conduct an event that gets them all pumped up in excitement and puts the boring weekends of their August to good use. We are gonna get them engaged doing the thing they love the most- building robots.

If you already have a guess on what we are talking about, Yes! you got it right. We are talking about the KRG ! Yes, it is the same event that got kids enthused in April and we are back with it in a grander form! For those of you who aren’t quite aware of what’s being discussed here, here it goes. KRG, which is an abbreviation for Kidobotikz Robo Games, is the high octane robotics event initiated and conducted by Kidobotikz for all the schoolyard robotic wizards of chennai. It is an event that we conduct roughly thrice every year depending on the demand to settle “robotic” battle scores from previous editions. However, so far the excitement and euphoria at the end of each KRG have always simmered and spilt over into the subsequent editions forcing us to scale up every successive edition. This edition is no different either.
Talking more about the August edition, this is the 2nd KRG edition of 2016 and the 9th edition overall. It is being organized to bring in fray more robots to battle out their respective prowess on the makeshift arenas. One thing about these arenas, they’ve gotten bigger with each edition to manage the ever increasing influx of robots that ram into each other and knock out others in the process. Oh, and did we tell you that it is open for all students across all types of robots. Besides, we have rolled out a broad category of events for students to participate in. So, it is advised that readers bring your own binoculars to spot the bot you are supporting amidst the carnage of robots that fight it out on the big arena. And before we forget, the theme of this edition’s project display is Clean India. In line with the Shri Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and the core principles it espouses, we have set Clean India as our theme for this event. So, we already have students thronging the Makerspace of Kidobotikz to get their “Clean India”-themed bots ready. So, we promise you a realm of mopping and vacuuming robots on display at KRG this time. We request you to not be late to the party and get your robots ready and registered well before the 11th hour. The registrations for the project display have commenced as well. In case you are wondering why has there been no mention of the venue until now, then you’re in for a bit of disappointment. We are still keeping the venue and the dates for event on the “qt” to prevent any media attention until the last moment.

So, the likelyhood of you getting to know about the venue and dates in hush-hush tones at the Kidobotikz offices is an ever present spoiler. But don’t give in to rumours. We will be updating you with the date and venues well in advance to provide you with ample time for preparation. For students who are reading this article, you can find your problem statements by visiting the Kidobotikz website or also by simply clicking here. Stay updated on the blog and you’ll find it out yourself.

Happy Roboting ! !        

Read More