polymer

Engineers at Cornell are building a handheld pathogen detector that will help health care workers around the world test for pathogens such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and HIV and get results in as little as 30 minutes, instead of waiting days.

Dan Luo, professor of biological and environmental engineering, has been using synthetic DNA to amplify tiny samples of pathogen DNA, RNA, or proteins. Because of $25 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge to 12 teams developing point-of-care diagnostics, Luo will be combining forces with Edwin Kan, a Cornell professor of electrical and computer engineering, who has built a computer chip that can respond quickly to those amplified samples.

The engineers describe their novel device as something akin to a molecular-level Lego builder.… Read more

As I accelerated out of the rain-slicked Turn 2 of Infineon Raceway, I could feel the rear end of the Lexus LFA begin to slip and spin. "Holy crap," I thought, "how am I going to be able to pay for this $375,000 Lexus?"

Fortunately, my moment of terror was, despite the slippery conditions, both brief and isolated. But before I get into that, let's discuss how I came to find myself on a wet racetrack behind the most exotic vehicle to ever come out of Japan.

Lexus LFA performance driving schoolThe day's … Read more

Ultrabooks will adopt lots of cutting-edge laptop technology, not unlike what Apple did to perfect the design of its MacBook Air, according to research from TrendForce.

The first Ultrabooks from Lenovo, Toshiba, and Asus already tap into some impressive technology. Lenovo's 0.6-inch thick U300s, for example, boasts a "breathable" keyboard to reduce heat and RapidDrive solid-state drive technology to deliver a 10.5-second boot time.

Apple's MacBook Air has been the highest profile example of a laptop that continues to push the envelope on design with novel display, battery, and motherboard designs. "Intel, along … Read more

Ultrabooks are coming. The first wave of superslim laptops are expected to hit in force by the holiday season. Earlier this week, I spoke with Greg Welch, director of Intel's Ultrabook group, to get a better idea of what an Ultrabook is.

Though Intel won't make Ultrabooks, it will supply the core components, so it is intimately involved in the platform. And, as Welch, describes it, the Ultrabook is "an initiative to advance the state of the art of the notebook experience across several years."

Question: Can you talk about some of the new technologies Intel … Read more

Canadians will be packing more plastic in their wallets with the launch of new polymer bills that replace paper-cotton notes.

The Canadian dollar has traded above parity with the U.S. greenback for months, and gets technologically tougher with the new plastic money designed to thwart counterfeiters.

The polypropylene substrate lasts 2.5 times longer and makes it harder to copy than the existing paper-cotton money, according to the Bank of Canada. It marks the first full-scale use of a substrate other than paper for Canada's currency.

The two-windowed $100 note enters circulation in November and celebrates Canadian contributions to science. Aside from images of DNA, an ECG, insulin, and a researcher using a microscope, it has two portraits of Prime Minister Robert Borden. One is a unique holographic likeness set in a clear plastic window that changes colors with the viewing angle.

As seen in the promo vid below, other security features include raised ink, transparent text, and hidden numbers. If you look through the frosted maple leaf emblem at a single-point light source and hold it close to your eye, you'll see a hidden circle of numbers that match the face value of the note. … Read more

Microsoft could be looking to give touch screens more of a tactile feel.

A patent filed by the software giant in 2009 and published last week details a light-induced shape-memory polymer display screen. In a nutshell, that means a touch screen that has a real texture and tactile feedback to it, making people feel as if they're touching an actual object.

Invented by Erez Kikin-Gil, the screen would be coated with polymers that could change or hold their shape when different wavelengths of ultraviolet light hit the pixels from underneath, according to an article in New Scientist.

The screen … Read more

Are fish smart enough to tell the difference between real fish and replicant fish? Apparently not. Researcher Maurizio Porfiri is developing robot swimmers that can interact with schools of fish and even lead them around.

You might think Porfiri, an engineering professor at Polytechnic Institute of New York University, might be aiming to use these infiltrator bots to lead large groups of fish into a net for a free aquarium. That seems to be theoretically possible, but the goal of Porfiri's project is to get robots to help fish avoid hazardous areas like power plant turbines.

The prototype robot … Read more

Hyundai has released preview images and details of its i-flow concept, which will bow at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. The concept will be powered by Hyundai's first diesel-electric hybrid power train and should slip through the air with a slippery 0.25Cd drag coefficient.

At the heart of the i-flow's power train his Hyundai's new 1.7-liter turbodiesel engine that shares motivational duties with a yet-undisclosed electric motor and a lithium ion-polymer battery pack. Hyundai also makes no mention of what sort of hybrid system the i-flow will use. Judging by the size of the engine … Read more

A new sugar-based polymer could be used to make common food containers compostable at home right alongside your potato peels and egg shells.

A team of engineers and scientists at the Imperial College London led by Charlotte Williams in partnership with BioCeramic Therapeutics have created a degradable material from sugars derived from the breakdown of lignocellulosic biomass.

Williams noted in the group's announcement that while they're not the first to come up with a "biorenewable plastic," many of those have previously been made from sugar beet- or corn-based biomass.

It's a fairly accurate estimate.

In … Read more