EE Times: Latest News
- Is that a Nano in your pocket?
http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.162541&articleID=175801372
Laurie Sullivan
TechWeb News
(01/04/2006 4:59 PM EST)
Several companies have separately developed thin conductive materials that manufacturers can sew into shirts, pants, jackets, and other consumer products to house electronic controls for devices. The materials and garments are being showcased at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
Elam EL Industries Ltd. and Eleksen Ltd. are two companies that have separately developed thin conductive materials that manufacturers can sew into shirts, pants, jackets, and other consumer products from hiking equipment to camping gear. The products are dry-cleanable and machine-washable. Geared toward both the consumer and the industrial markets, the idea is to integrate technology into apparel. Everything from light sources to electronic controls for devices such as bar-code scanners, computers, walkie-talkies, cellular phones, MP3 players and other mobile devices is available.
"The real challenge is educating consumer and industrial markets about smart fabrics," said John Collins, vice president of marketing and business development at Eleksen, which initially focused on the consumer market.
Industrial applications are on Eleksen's roadmap. It is working with a U.S. manufacturer for industrial products to integrate handheld-device capabilities into wearable applications where the keypad is embedded into a shirt or a glove.
Research firm Venture Development Corp. (VDC) forecasts the global wearable electronics market will reach $535 million in 2007, up from $360 million last year. The estimates include general-purpose computing and communications wearable systems, such as finger-worn bar code or radio frequency identification (RFID) scanners and other warehouse applications, as well as the biophysical wearable market for monitoring devices, such as shirts and armbands to measure heart rate, blood pressure, and sleep state.
And although VDC is reluctant to forecast the infotainment-wearable market, such as conductive fabrics for Apple Computer Inc.'s iPods and Bluetooth headsets, Eleksen in 2005 sold more than 80,000 sensors for wearable apparel and sporting goods that manufacturers embedded into jackets and backpacks. Some sensors were sold to Kenp Inc. and sewn into the Kenpo Jacket for iPod that were sold through Macy's, Dillard's, and CompUSA during the 2005 holiday season.
- Boost to nanobiology, nanoelectronics research
Centre`s nod to set up three centres
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&leftnm=lmnu2&leftindx=2&lselect=1&chklogin=N&autono=211122
Ati Balasubramanyam / Hyderabad January 10, 2006
Research in nanoelectronics and nanobiology is set to receive a major thrust this year with the Union government approving the establishment of world-class research and development centres at Chandigarh, Mumbai and Bangalore.
Besides the plan to set up a nanobiology institute at Chandigarh, two centres that would focus on nanoelectronics are on the cards this year. A joint proposal earlier made by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, to establish research and development centres in nanoelectronics at these two institutes has been approved by the Union government.
Speaking to Business Standard, R Chidambaram, principal scientific advisor to the Government of India and former chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, said, “The joint proposal has been recently approved by the government. Work has commenced and the centres would be ready in two to three years.”
The centres, to be established at a cost of Rs 100 crore, would deal with the fabrication and characterisation of chips, he said. Chidambaram was here to deliver a public lecture at the recently concluded Indian Science Congress.
Setting up of a national nanotechnology institute with the focus on nanobiology at Chandigarh was part of the seven-point agenda laid down for the year 2006 by Kapil Sibal, Union minister of state for science and technology and ocean development, at the inaugural session of this year’s Indian Science Congress.
The establishment of the institute is part of a larger plan to establish clusters for developing linkages between industry and research and the Chandigarh centre has been planned to be the first such international cluster.
In the the nanoworld one essentially manipulates with things (say chips) and elements (say a few atoms) of the order of a nanometre (a billionth of a metre).
This completely different behaviour of an element from its original properties, say a metal, when dissected to perform operations at the nano or atomic level, is what ticks nanoresearch.
Though the nanofield is highly sophisticated and competitive with experiments becoming very demanding, highly impressive accomplishments present possible breakthroughs in materials and manufacturing, medicine and healthcare and electronics.
- LA051001 A laser for nanomedicine
From German S&T Newsletter from Indian Embassy, Germany
A modified femtosecond laser can correct poor eyesight and identify malignant melanomas. In addition, it represents an effective tool for laser nanomedicine: It can be used for example to drill nanoholes in cellular membrances and to transfer genes into cells by means of light.
Karsten König and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT are working on eliminating these side effects. ”We are attempting to remove tissue constituents gently ad very precisely using extremely low pulse energies of just a few nanojoules,” expains König. This made possible by a heavily modified femtosecond laser system with a very high pulse sequene, which can focus its beam with great accuracy using precision optics from Zeiss.
- MN 051001 Crystal clear solutions: A base system at Nanolevel
From German S&T Newsletter received from Indian Embassy, Germany
The Darmstadt based company Aquanova was supported in its beginning by Steinbeis and belongs today to the 100 firms in Germany, which utilize the nanotechnological know-how for the production and marketing of products at the nanolevel.
Inorder to transport raw and active substances into the inner parts of the body, one would need suitable “transporters”, so that these substances can pass through the intestine-blood-barriers and reach subsequently the cell and the interior. Their success depends on the so-called bioavailability of the raw or active substances. It measures the quantity of micro-substance, which the body can absorb from the chemical connections. This bio-availability gains always where micro emulsions and liposomes have proved to be problematic and unsuitable so far the Darmstadt company Aquanova has created an innovative solution in cooperation with scientists having a nanotechnological approach.
The developed micelle – a base capsule at nanolevel – shows an average size of 30nm not yet reached, one hundredth of the hitherto possible particle sizes. In addition it allows to be processed into end products without the hitherto necessary production steps in between and work very steadily into end products , and can be loaded 40% more with raw/active substances than a liposome and transports the substances simultaneously as fat soluble and water soluble. The active substances packed in the product-micelle can be absorbed four times higher and faster and it can taken on by the body. The bioavailabbility thus gained allows a clear sinking of the substance concentration and simultaneously allows additional quantities. Similary the substance concentrations reveal clearly a burden on effect. These properties lessen the burden on human beings and the environment. They promise human beings and the environment. They promise “crystal clear solutions” – not only in the optical sense.
- MN051002 The entire one is more than sum of its parts: Conquering the nanoworld through synergies
From German S&T Newsletter received from Indian Embassy, Germany
Nine competence net works all over Germany are assuring the high standard of Germany in the Nanotechnology, one of the most important key technologies of the future. The are supported in this by the management office of Kompetenznetz.de in the VDI Technology Center GmbH through Online, searching for suitable cooperation partners and for intiating the contact. With few European countries already partnerships are built up. Together with the French regional development agency DATAR, for example, the cooperation of countries and regions is supported. In 2005 the network with Japanese research clusters and polish partners are in focus.
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