University of Arkansas scientists have developed a neural probe that demonstrates significantly greater electrical charge storage capacity than all other neural prosthetic devices, making it possible to stimulate nerves and tissues with less damage and sense neural signals with better sensitivity. The probe, made of gold and iridium oxide nanowires grown vertically on a polymer or titanium substrate, has also displayed superior biocompatibility and mechanical strength compared to similar silicon structures.

The researchers repeatedly demonstrated an electrical storage capacity of 48.6 Coulombs per square centimeter. Because storage capacity relates directly to electrical current density needed to stimulate nerves and muscle cells, the probe can transfer charge into biological cells and tissues using less voltage – and less battery power – and thus can operate longer with less tissue and cell damage.

“Our goal is to develop functional systems that can simultaneously stimulate nerves or muscle cells and record physiological changes in the human body,” said Hargsoon Yoon, research assistant professor in the College of Engineering and lead researcher on the project. “Our approach can minimize cell damage and even provide higher electrode efficiency than commonly used electrodes.”

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Engineers at the University of California at Berkeley, are reporting a new way of creating computer chips that could revitalize optical lithography, the dominant patterning technique in integrated circuits manufacturing. The researchers were able to create line patterns only 80 nanometers wide at speeds up to 12 meters per second. They combined metal lenses that focus light through exciting electrons or plasmons on the lens’ surface with a flying head that resembles the stylus on the arm of LP turntable and is similar to those used in hard disk drives.

“Utilizing this plasmonic nanolithography, we will be able to make current microprocessors more than 10 times smaller, but far more powerful,” said Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and head of the research team. “This technology could also lead to ultra-high density disks that can hold 10 to 100 times more data than disks today.”

To overcome the diffraction limit of light needed for lithography, the UC Berkeley researchers took advantage of a well-known property of metals: the presence at the surface of free electrons that oscillate when exposed to light. These oscillations are known as evanescent waves and are much smaller than the wavelength of light. The engineers designed a silver plasmonic lens with concentric rings that concentrate the light to a hole less than 100 nanometers in diameter. The researchers packed the lenses into a flying plasmonic head, so-called because it would “fly” above the photoresist surface during the lithography process.

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Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have developed a low- cost, high-resolution imaging system that can be attached to a helicopter to create a complete and detailed picture of an area devastated by a hurricane or other natural disaster. The resulting visual information can be used to estimate the number of storm refugees and assess the need for health and humanitarian services. Aid organizations currently don’t have a quick and accurate way to determine how many people need assistance. Satellites can collect images of areas affected by a natural disaster, but there are dissemination restrictions and cloud cover can prevent collection of images.

The imaging system – designed by David Price and senior research engineer Gary Gray – is called the “Mini ModPOD,” which stands for “Miniature Modular Photographic Observation Device.” It consists of an off-the-shelf Canon Digital Rebel XTi digital camera, a global positioning system receiver, a small circuit board that uploads mission parameters, and an inertial measurement unit that measures the aircraft’s rate of acceleration and changes in rotational attributes, including pitch, roll, and yaw. The images collected from the system can be stitched together to create a complete picture of the affected area.

The Mini ModPOD was developed with funding from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and agency officials would like to begin using this device as soon as possible. After responding to the recent devastation caused by Hurricanes Hanna and Ike, the CDC asked GTRI to accelerate delivery of the imaging device for use during the 2008 hurricane season.

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Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology and their colleagues have been able to observe a young star-forming galaxy as it appeared only two billion years after the Big Bang and determine how the galaxy may eventually evolve to become a system like our own Milky Way. The team made their observations by coupling two techniques: gravitational lensing, which makes use of an effect first predicted by Albert Einstein in which the gravitational field of massive objects, such as foreground galaxies, bends light rays from objects located a distance behind, thus magnifying the appearance of distant sources; and laser-assisted guide star (LGS) adaptive optics (AO) on the 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii. Adaptive optics corrects the blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere by real-time monitoring of the signal from a natural guide star or an artificial guide star.

Gravitational lensing, together with the enhanced resolution provided by adaptive optics, allowed the team to determine the internal velocity structure of the remote galaxy, located 11 billion light-years from Earth, and hence its likely future evolution. The researchers found that the distant galaxy, which is typical in many respects to others at that epoch, shows clear signs of orderly rotation. The finding, in association with observations conducted at millimeter wavelengths, which are sensitive to cold molecular gas (an indicator of galactic rotation), suggests that the source is in the early stages of assembling a spiral disk with a central nucleus similar to those seen in spiral galaxies at the present day.

The research provides a demonstration of the likely power of the future Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the first of a new generation of large telescopes designed to exploit AO. When completed in the latter half of the next decade, TMT’s large aperture and improved optics will produce images with an angular resolution three times better than the 10-meter Keck and 12 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope, at similar wavelengths. Because of the significant improvement in angular resolution provided by AO, the TMT will be able to study the internal properties of small distant galaxies, seen as they were when the universe was young.

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For the first time, seismic signals that precede a volcanic eruption have been simulated and visualized in 3D under controlled pressure conditions in a laboratory. The ability to conduct such simulations will better equip municipal authorities in volcanic hot spots around the world in knowing when to alert people. Nearly 500 million people live near enough to the Earth’s 600 active volcanoes to endure physical and economic harm should a serious eruption occur. An international research team conducted the experiments at the University of Toronto.

Scientists tested fracture properties of basalt rock from Mount Etna, the active volcano found on the island of Sicily in southern Italy, and were able to record the seismic signals that are routinely generated during earthquakes that occur before volcanic eruptions. The knowledge generated from investigation into rock fracturing also has direct application in a wide variety of areas, such as mining, construction of buildings and bridges, oil and gas exploration, and in earthquakes and other earth sciences phenomena.

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