Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In considering materials that could become the fabrics of the future, scientists have largely dismissed one widely available option: polyethylene.
The stuff of plastic wrap and grocery bags, polyethylene is thin and lightweight, and could keep you cooler than most textiles because it lets heat through rather than trapping it in. But polyethylene would also lock in water and sweat, as it’s unable to draw away and evaporate moisture. This antiwicking property has been a major deterrent to polyethylene’s adoption as a wearable textile.
Now, MIT engineers have spun polyethylene into fibers and yarns designed to wick away moisture. They wove the yarns into silky, lightweight fabrics that absorb and evaporate water more quickly than common textiles such as cotton, nylon, and polyester.
A new path toward sending and receiving information with single photons of light has been discovered by an international team of researchers led by the University of Michigan.
Their experiment demonstrated the possibility of using an effect known as nonlinearity to modify and detect extremely weak light signals, taking advantage of distinct changes to a quantum system to advance next generation computing.
Today, as silicon-electronics-based information technology becomes increasingly throttled by heating and energy consumption, nonlinear optics is under intense investigation as a potential solution. The quantum egg carton captures and releases photons, supporting excited quantum states while it possesses the extra energy. As the energy in the system rises, it takes a bigger jump in energy to get to that next excited state that s the nonlinearity.
Electrochemical Sensor Platform for Fast, Sensitive Detection of Biomarkers in Whole Blood
Written by AZoSensorsFeb 15 2021
Many life-threatening medical conditions, such as sepsis, which is triggered by blood-borne pathogens, cannot be detected accurately and quickly enough to initiate the right course of treatment.
In patients that have been infected by an unknown pathogen and progress to overt sepsis, every additional hour that an effective antibiotic cannot be administered significantly increases the mortality rate, so time is of utmost essence.
The challenge with rapidly diagnosing sepsis stems from the fact that measuring only one biomarker often does not allow a clear-cut diagnosis. Engineers have struggled for decades to simultaneously quantify multiple biomarkers in whole blood with high specificity and sensitivity for point-of-care (POC) diagnostic applications as this would avoid time-consuming and costly blood processing steps in which informative biomarker molecules
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IMAGE: Wyss Institute researchers have developed eRapid technology as an affinity-based, low-cost electrochemical diagnostic sensor platform for the multiplexed detection of clinically relevant sepsis biomarkers in whole blood. view more
Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
(BOSTON) Many life-threatening medical conditions, such as sepsis, which is triggered by blood-borne pathogens, cannot be detected accurately and quickly enough to initiate the right course of treatment. In patients that have been infected by an unknown pathogen and progress to overt sepsis, every additional hour that an effective antibiotic cannot be administered significantly increases the mortality rate, so time is of utmost essence.
Tiny Crustacean Redefines Ultra-Fast Movement
The world’s most technologically advanced robots would lose in a competition with a tiny crustacean.
Just the size of a sunflower seed, the amphipod Dulichiella cf. appendiculata has been found by Duke researchers to snap its giant claw shut 10,000 times faster than the blink of a human eye.
The claw, which only occurs on one side in males, is impressive, reaching 30% of an adult’s body mass. Its ultrafast closing makes an audible snap, creating water jets and sometimes producing small bubbles due to rapid changes in water pressure, a phenomenon known as cavitation.