CalTech’s new battery can draw energy from human sweat

The irony of a fitness tracker is that it can’t, because of battery limitations, track your fitness infinitely. Every few days, the tracker needs to be taken off, charged, and then be worn again. By that logic, is the wearable truly tracking your health and fitness? Or just 99% of your health and fitness?

The California Institute of Technology is working on an electronic skin, a sensor-filled sticker, that can turn human sweat into energy enough to power basic devices like heart-rate sensors, glucose-level trackers, or even a low-energy Bluetooth radio. These stickers work by harvesting ‘lactate’ from the sweat we produce. The lactate is absorbed by the electronic skin’s fuel cells – which are made from carbon nanotubes that host a platinum/cobalt catalyst and an enzyme that uses oxygen in the air to break down the lactate into water and a substance called pyruvate. CalTech’s researchers say these stickers can generate a continuous stream of energy (as much as “several milliwatts per square centimeter”), making it enough to offset the need for a battery, which the technology hopes to eventually replace.

While the technology isn’t completely ready to replace the battery on your Apple Watch, it’s promising to see that scientists are looking at ways of harvesting bio-energy to power health wearables. It is, in many ways, an extension of the innovation built into automatic watches that use the wearer’s movement to keep the timepiece running, or more specifically, something like the PowerWatch 2, which runs almost entirely on body-heat generated by the wearer.

Image Credits: CalTech

Caltech fires up LIGO to hunt for more gravitational waves

Nearly a year after LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, made physics history this past February, Caltech researchers have finally finished upgrading its capabilities and are ready to resume their hunt for gravitational wave...

Caltech develops 3D Imaging Sensor for Smartphones


3D printing requires a digital model with height, width, and depth of the object to be replicated. To 3D scan an object today a relatively large system has to be used. The California Institute of...

Caltech laser accelerometer research may bring fine-tuned position tracking, grocery ads

DNP Caltech laser accelerometer research may bring finetuned position tracking, grocery ads

One way that sensors can track your position without using an array of satellites is by measuring your acceleration as you move around -- but unless you're piloting a jumbo jet, current devices aren't very accurate. Researchers at Caltech hope to change all that with a new, ultra-sensitive accelerometer they developed, which uses laser light to detect motion changes. The scientists managed to shrink a so-called large-scale interferometer down to micro-scale sizes, creating a device "thousands of times faster than the most sensitive sensors used today." That could allow a smartphone with such a micro-sensor to detect your exact position even while inside a grocery store, and flash "ads and coupons for hot dog buns" while you're in the bread aisle, according to Caltech. All that sounds good, but we can perhaps think of more inspiring uses for the new tech.

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Caltech laser accelerometer research may bring fine-tuned position tracking, grocery ads originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Deezmaker 3D Printer Store opens in Pasadena, will sell you a slice of the future for $600

Deezmaker 3D Printer Store opens in Pasadena, will sell you a slice of the future for $600

If the MakerBot store in Manhattan is the East coast's vanguard for 3D printer stores, Deezmaker's just-opened store in Pasadena, California is the equivalent pioneer for the West coast crew. As of now, you can walk through the doors at 290 North Hill Avenue and at least see the store's own Bukobot printer in action, even if high demand through Kickstarter pre-orders precludes walk-in sales for the next few weeks. When you can make that impulse purchase, however, you'll find the Bukobot at a relatively cheap $600 and may see some alternatives during your visit. Store owner and Bukobot creator Diego Porqueras stresses to Ars Technica that he wants Deezmaker lasting for the long haul, and he may have chosen just the right area to make that happen -- the shop is a stone's throw from the experimenters (and simply curious) at Caltech, NASA's JPL and Pasadena City College. No matter how it all shakes out, we're hoping that the two near-simultaneous store openings are the start of a larger trend that takes 3D printing into the mainstream.

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Deezmaker 3D Printer Store opens in Pasadena, will sell you a slice of the future for $600 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fake jellyfish made from rat cells have a place in our hearts (video)

Fake jellyfish made from rat cells have a place in our hearts (video)

There's a whole sea of jellyfish out there ready to sting indiscriminately. So, why do we keep trying to make them? Scientists from Harvard and Caltech have a pretty good reason for creating fake jellies -- they hope to mend broken hearts by adapting their 'pumping' style of movement. Much like our own vital organ, the creatures are a mass of muscle adept at shifting fluid, meaning the research has several medical applications, such as bioengineered pacemakers for busted tickers. In creating the Medusoids, the team used a silicon scaffold coated in functional rat cardiac tissue, copying the muscle layout of a real jellyfish as best they could. When immersed in salt water and treated to bursts of current, the cells contract and cause the silicon sheet to move in a way eerily similar to the real thing. Next step for the team? An autonomous version that can move and potentially feed without their influence, of course. And, after seeing the little swimmers in action, we've certainly got palpitations. See what we mean after the break.

Continue reading Fake jellyfish made from rat cells have a place in our hearts (video)

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Fake jellyfish made from rat cells have a place in our hearts (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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