The masks could screen for the coronavirus at airports, hospitals, and offices. They could also double as a diagnostic test.
Sensors produce a fluorescent light when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes into the mask.
BACKGROUND
A closed-loop system of insulin delivery (also called an artificial pancreas) may improve glycemic outcomes in children with type 1 diabetes.
METHODS
Continue reading “A Randomized Trial of Closed-Loop Control in Children with Type 1 Diabetes” »
THOR puts high-powered microwaves to fry drone swarms’ electronics in a rugged and deployable package.
China’s Xiaomi has launched a new TV as part of the 10th anniversary celebration that also saw the announcement of the Mi 10 Ultra smartphone. The Mi TV Lux Transparent Edition brings sci-fi into the living room with an edge-to-edge self-luminous television that you can see through.
We’ve seen a few transparent televisions and screens from industry big hitters like Samsung, LG and Panasonic over the years, but Xiaomi says its Mi TV Lux Transparent Edition is the first to go into mass production.
The 55-inch OLED panel is just 5.7-mm thin and sits on a rounded base and, when the TV isn’t powered on, the display looks like a window between you and whatever is behind it – though it can be set to show arty display images if desired. But Xiaomi is promising an “unprecedented visual experience” when it’s switched on, with “extra rich blacks and unmatched brightness.”
A new feature will allow Android devices to collect readings from smartphone sensors and warn users when a tectonic shake-up is imminent.
Electronic components that can process information with high levels of efficiency are crucial for the development of most contemporary devices and computational tools. Reconfigurable electronics, flexible systems that can change configurations to best utilize available hardware resources, are a possible solution for enhancing processing efficiency.
Researchers at Nanjing University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan have recently designed new reconfigurable circuits with advanced shape-morphing and information processing capabilities. These logic and neuromorphic circuits, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, were fabricated using 2-D tungsten diselenide, an inorganic compound commonly used in the development of electronics.
“Current mainstream reconfigurable circuits (such as the field programmable gate array, FPGA) are based on traditional silicon circuits, using P-type or N-type field effect transistors with ‘fixed’ electrical characteristics,” Feng Miao, the researcher who led the study, told TechXplore. “For example, PN junction is always reverse-biased, and varying the drain polarity does not add new switching functionalities. Thus, these reconfigurable circuits need to use a lot of transistor resources to build complex circuit structures and eventually realize reconfigurable computing capabilities at the circuit level.”
Circa 2006
Aiming to create a miniature motor capable of 1 million revolutions per minute, electronics researchers at ETH Life in Zurich are half-way to their goal.
The gas turbine-powered device produces force equivalent to 100 watts and is 95 percent fuel efficient, and gets 10 hours of operation out of the tank.
A team of researchers working on the Borexino project has announced that they have observed carbon/nitrogen/oxygen (CNO) fusion neutrinos from the sun for the first time. Co-spokesman for the group, Gioacchino Ranucci, a physicist at the University of Milan, announced the observation at this year’s virtual Neutrino 2020 conference.
The Borexino solar-neutrino project is an experiment being conducted underground at Gran Sasso National Laboratories in Italy—it has been in operation since 2007. Its mission is to observe neutrinos that are emitted from the sun via two kinds of fusion reactions. The laboratory is located beneath a kilometer of rock to filter noise. Inside, it houses a huge balloon made of nylon and filled with 278 tonnes of liquid hydrocarbons surrounded by water in a tank. The temperature inside the tank is kept constant by heat exchangers and a blanket cover. Photon sensors line the tank. Neutrinos can be observed when they collide with electrons inside the balloon, creating a tiny flash. The researchers determine the characteristics of the flashes, information that can be used to isolate their source.
Researchers on the project observed neutrinos from a type of fusion reaction called a proton-proton chain back in 2012—they are believed to represent 99 percent of the energy released from the sun. Spotting neutrinos produced during CNO reactions has presented more of a challenge because there are far fewer of them. In both cases, hydrogen is fused into helium. The elements that are part of the reaction are referred to as chains because they allow such reactions to proceed. In his presentation, Ranucci, claimed that the team had “…unraveled the two processes powering the sun.”
If you’re on the look out for a desktop PC that’s small enough to sit under a TV, Chinese brand XCY has a very small computer they’d like to sell you.
As Liliputing reports, the XCY X51 is about as small as you could possibly make a fully-featured desktop PC. It measures 2.4-by-2.4-by-1.7-inches and weighs a mere 121 grams. However, inside you’ll find a quad-core Intel Celeron N4100 clocked at 1.1GHz (2.4Ghz burst frequency) complete with UHD Graphics 600 GPU. The processor is complemented by 8GB of 2,133MHz DDR4 RAM, a 128GB M.2 SSD, and a micro SD card slot for further storage expansion.
Continue reading “XCY Squeezes a 4K-Capable Desktop PC Into a 2.4-Inch Case” »
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China and one in the U.S. has found that semiconducting crystals of indium selenide (InSe) have exceptional flexibility. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes testing samples of InSe and what they learned about the material. Xiaodong Han with Beijing University of Technology has published a Perspective piece outlining the work by the team in China in the same journal issue.
As the researchers note, most semiconductors are rigid, which means they are difficult to use in applications that require varied surfaces or bending. This has presented a problem for portable device makers as they attempt to respond to user demand for bendable electronics. In this new effort, the researchers in China have found one semiconductor, InSe, that is not only flexible, but is so pliable that it can be processed using rollers.
InSe, as its name implies, is a compound made from indium (a metal element often used in touchscreens) and selenium (a non-metal element). Selenium is also a 2-D semiconductor, and has come under scrutiny after researchers discovered that its bandgap matched the visible region in the electromagnetic spectrum. It has previously been studied for use in specialty optoelectronic applications. In this new effort, the researchers looked into the possibility of using it as a semiconductor in bendable portable electronic devices.
