Fabbing components, parallel processing with rats, and synthetic neurons.

Antarctica Starts Here. » Antarctica Starts Here. 2015-07-28

Summary:

Life being what it is these days, I haven't had much time to write any real posts here. If I'm not working I'm at home studying because I'm back on the "get letters after my name" trail, and if I'm not studying or in class I'm helping get family moved out and set up on the west coast. Or I'm at the gym because I'm fighting alongside my essential vanity by trying to lose weight; people tell me that I look good these days but there's a fine line between looking healthy and needing new clothes. So there you have it, from the depths of my psyche just above some of the interfaces. I do have one or two interesting things in the pipeline that I need to write about - in fact, they're going to be submitted to a couple of conferences if all goes according to plan. But I think I'd better get the conference papers written first because you never can tell if the organizers will pitch a fit (or threaten legal action - they're being held in the US, after all) if you blog about something you're going to present. But enough about that. Some years ago, after the field of 3D printing really took off, a number of hackers began working on the problem of fabricating circuit boards with 3D printers instead of going through the process of laying out and etching circuit boards with chemical processes that are often nasty and messy. But then the question of acquiring components comes up - Radio Shack is as dead as Walt Disney so it's not as if you can jander down to the strip mall and pick up the parts you need anymore (mostly - some Micro Center outlets have entire sections dedicated to this sort of thing, as do Fry's outlets) if you really need something for a project and can't wait to order it online. A couple of days ago research teams at the University of California at Berkeley and the National Chiao Tung University of Taiwan published a paper last week in Nature's open access journal Microsystems and Nanoengineering which detailed how they used a 3D printer to fabricate reasonably standard electronic components. Their 3D printer was a dual extruder model which laid down successive layers of structural plastic and sacrificial wax to form hollow spaces inside the figure that were later cleaned out to make room for multiple injections of silver paste which formed the conducting portions of the components. The hollow spaces were engineered to have certain electrical properties so that different kinds of components could be constructed, among them inductors and resistors. From these basic components electrical circuits were constructed; as a proof of concept the research team built a "smart milk cap" which had what amounts to a simple lab-on-a-chip to keep tabs on whether or not the milk in the carton had gone bad or not by analyzing changes in the electrical properties of the milk. Data was transmitted from the smart milk cap via a passive RF transmitter that blipped out data whenever an RF probe energized it. The size of their components? Before cleaning them up they fit comfortably on top of a penny with room to spare. The resolution of their printer (a 3D Systems ProJet HD 3000) is 30 μm or 30 millionths of a meter. This ain't your dad's breadboard.A long-awaited technology for many is direct neural interface, connecting directly to the central nervous system to create a symbiotic link between the organic and the electronic. It's not an easy thing because interfacing with individual neurons is hard, to say the least. Sticking even microscopic electrodes into neurons causes irritation, rejection, and scarring, causing the connection to degrade until it's no longer usable. It probably kills some neurons, too. There are new techiques of connecting to neurons that seem like they might not have that problem but it's too early to tell. Regardless, something incredible happened in a laboratory recently.

Link:

http://drwho.virtadpt.net/archive/2015/07/27/fabbing-components-parallel-processing-with-rats-and-synthetic-n

From feeds:

Gudgeon and gist » Antarctica Starts Here. » Antarctica Starts Here.

Tags:

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Authors:

The Doctor

Date tagged:

07/28/2015, 02:30

Date published:

07/27/2015, 15:00