(Press-News.org) RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Imagine an automobile crash test that uses test dummies painted all over with a substance that can change color according to the levels of stress that various parts of the dummies' bodies will endure. Such a "color map" could provide vital information to engineers designing safer automobiles.
Or imagine baseball gloves that when worn show the batters if they are using the appropriate amount of pressure to grip their bats, resulting in better performance.
New technology developed at the University of California, Riverside may now make the above and similar ideas a reality. Indeed, the technology could be applied to improve everyday devices, such as smartphones, that for operation rely on the right amount of pressure applied to them.
"We have developed a high-resolution pressure sensor that indicates pressure by varying its color — a sensor that all of us can use with just our eyes," said Yadong Yin, an associate professor of chemistry, whose lab led the research.
The lab used a self-assembly method to string together gold nanoparticles which they then embedded into a polymer film. The film deformed when pressed, stretching the gold nanoparticle strings by increasing the separation between neighboring gold nanoparticles.
"This increased separation alters the way the nanoparticles interact with light," Yin explained. "When linked together, the gold nanoparticles originally appear blue. But they gradually change to red with increasing pressure as the nanoparticles start disassembling. This easily and visually helps us figure out how much pressure has been applied."
Study results appear this month in Nano Letters.
The sensor that Yin's lab developed differs from commercially available pressure sensor films. The latter indicate pressure by changing the intensity of just one color (for example, a pale red to a darker red). They tend to be difficult to interpret and have low resolution and contrast.
The new technology produces a mosaic of easy-to-distinguish colors and has the benefit of higher contrast and resolution. It can potentially be used in many safety devices for revealing pressure distribution over even very complex surfaces.
"The many electronic stress sensors commercially available are bulky and not suitable for certain applications," Yin said. "For example, it is difficult to tell the stress distribution over a particular area if the contact surfaces are not flat and uniform. Our sensor films can be painted on the contact surfaces so that the color variance in different areas clearly shows the stress distribution over the contact surface."
While his lab used gold in the experiments, silver and copper could also work, Yin added. The sensor the lab developed is a solid plastic film. Under stress, it deforms like conventional plastics. The new color that arises persists after the stress is removed.
"This is why we are calling it a 'colorimetric stress memory sensor,'" Yin said.
One of the research interests of his lab is the design of materials with new properties via the self-assembly process. The lab first makes nanoparticles and then organizes them together to produce new properties arising from particle-particle interactions.
"In the case of our sensor, we initially found a way to organize gold nanoparticles together to form strings," Yin said. "That process is accompanied by a sharp color-change from red to blue. We speculated that the reverse — disassembly — process might have the reverse color change: from blue to red. We found to our surprise that mechanical force could achieve this disassembly. Considerable effort has been made by researchers to study nanoparticle self-assembly. Indeed, gold nanoparticles have conventionally been used as sensors based on the self-assembly process. What is novel about our work is that it shows that the disassembly process can also find great applications if the assembly is designed to be reversible."
INFORMATION:
Yin was joined in the research by Xiaogang Han, a former postdoctoral researcher in his lab; and Yiding Liu, a graduate student who recently won the graduate student silver award at the Materials Research Society in San Francisco, Calif.
The research was funded by a grant to Yin from the National Science Foundation.
The UCR Office of Technology Commercialization has filed a patent on the technology reported in the research paper.
The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 21,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.
New revolutionary sensor links pressure to color change
Technology developed at UC Riverside has wide applications, from designing better cars and smartphones to high-tech baseball gloves
2014-04-30
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
EARTH Magazine: Precise to a fault: How GPS revolutionized seismic research
2014-04-30
Alexandria, Va., - Global Positioning System (GPS) technology was conceived in the 1960s to provide precise time and location data to the U.S. military, but it was soon embraced by geodesists and earth scientists. The first major test of GPS as a seismic tool occurred on Oct. 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco just as the third game of the World Series was about to begin at Candlestick Park. The quake killed 63 people, injured several thousand and caused an estimated $6 billion in damage.
Prior to the quake, geoscientists had placed GPS markers ...
Simple sequence repeats for population-level studies of pines
2014-04-30
Simple sequence repeats, abbreviated SSRs and frequently referred to as microsatellites, are highly variable sections of the genome. 'Sequence repeat' refers to the fact that a nucleotide motif is repeated. 'Simple,' because the repeated sequence often consists of only a couple of nucleotides—for example, ATAT.
Because these markers typically have high rates of molecular evolution, the number of repeats present in the genome often differs between individuals. By isolating SSRs and comparing length differences between taxa, evolutionary relationships can be inferred. Their ...
Regenerative medicine approach improves muscle strength, function in leg injuries
2014-04-30
PITTSBURGH, April 30, 2014 – Damaged leg muscles grew stronger and showed signs of regeneration in three out of five men whose old injuries were surgically implanted with extracellular matrix (ECM) derived from pig bladder, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Early findings from a human trial of the process and from animal studies were published today in Science Translational Medicine.
When a large volume of muscle is lost, typically due to trauma, the ...
Frozen meal eaters get more vegetables including greens, beans and whole grains but with lower total calories vs. fast food restaurant eaters
2014-04-30
SAN DIEGO (April 30, 2014) – New analysis of data from the 2003-2010 What We Eat In America (WWEIA) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicates that consumers of frozen meals (1) compared to consumers of quick service restaurant (QSR) meals (2) had lower calorie intakes and better Healthy Eating Index (HEI) score. In fact, the analysis revealed that those who consumed frozen meals consumed 253 fewer calories than those who consumed a quick service restaurant meal.
These results ...
Competition for ecological niches limits the formation of new species
2014-04-30
The rate at which new species evolve is limited by competition for ecological niches, report scientists from the University of Chicago in Nature on April 30. The study, which analyzes the evolutionary and genetic relationships between all 461 songbird species that live in the Himalayan mountains, suggests that as ecological niches within an environment are filled, the formation of new species slows or even stops.
To study what controls the process of speciation, Trevor Price, PhD, professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, Dhananjai Mohan of the ...
Initial research: Mango's effects on ulcerative colitis & bone parameters in animal models
2014-04-30
SAN DIEGO, CA – April 30, 2014 – Three new mango-related studies were presented this week at the 2014 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in San Diego, revealing initial findings on the effects of mango consumption on ulcerative colitis and bone parameters in animal models.
"The mango industry's nutrition research program is committed to advancing our understanding of the role mangos can play as part of a healthy diet," said Megan McKenna, Director of Marketing for the National Mango Board. "These studies provide important insights that ...
Multiple consecutive days of tornado activity spawn worst events
2014-04-30
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Significant tornado outbreaks and especially strong tornadoes are more likely occur within periods of activity lasting three or more days, according to a Purdue University tornado expert.
Jeff Trapp, a professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, examined 30 years of U.S. weather records and found that an outbreak of 20 or more reported tornadoes had a 74 percent probability of occurring during a period of tornado activity lasting three or more days. During those same periods, a tornado rated 3 or higher on the Enhanced Fujita scale had ...
MS researchers find brain & cognitive reserve protect long-term against cognitive decline
2014-04-30
West Orange, NJ. April 30, 2014. Multiple sclerosis researchers have found that brain reserve and cognitive reserve confer a long-term protective effect against cognitive decline: Sumowski JF, Rocca MA, Leavitt VM, Dackovic J, Mesaros S, Drulovic J, Deluca J, Filippi M. Brain reserve and cognitive reserve protect against cognitive decline over 4.5 years in MS. Neurology. 2014 Apr 18. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000000433 [Epub ahead of print]. James Sumowski, PhD, lead author of the article, and John DeLuca, PhD, are at Kessler Foundation. Co-authors are from the Manhattan ...
'US Should significantly reduce rate of incarceration,' says new report
2014-04-30
WASHINGTON -- Given the minimal impact of long prison sentences on crime prevention and the negative social consequences and burdensome financial costs of U.S. incarceration rates, which have more than quadrupled in the last four decades, the nation should revise current criminal justice policies to significantly reduce imprisonment rates, says a new report from the National Research Council.
A comprehensive review of data led the committee that wrote the report to conclude that the costs of the current rate of incarceration outweigh the benefits. The committee recommended ...
Seeing the bedrock through the trees
2014-04-30
University of California, Berkeley, geologist William Dietrich pioneered the application of airborne LIDAR – light detection and ranging – to map mountainous terrain, stripping away the vegetation to see the underlying ground surface.
But that didn't take him deep enough. He still couldn't see what was under the surface: the depth of the soil, the underlying weathered rock and the deep bedrock.
He and geology graduate student Daniella Rempe have now proposed a method to determine these underground details without drilling, potentially providing a more precise way to ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
McGill discovery sheds new light on autism, intellectual disabilities
Cellular changes occur even below the hexavalent chromium limit
Study suggests a new way to curb social media’s body image toll
Plant doctor: An AI system that watches over urban trees without touching a leaf
Study tracks chromium chemistry in irradiated molten salts
Scientists: the beautiful game is a silver bullet for global health
Being physically active, even just a couple of days a week, may be key to better health
High-fat diet promote breast cancer metastasis in animal models
A router for photons
Nurses and AI collaborate to save lives, reduce hospital stays
Multi-resistance in bacteria predicted by AI model
Tinker Tots: A citizen science project to explore ethical dilemmas in embryo selection
Sensing sickness
Cost to build multifamily housing in California more than twice as high as in Texas
Program takes aim at drinking, unsafe sex, and sexual assault on college campuses
Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.
Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis
KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision
Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response
Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid
Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia
Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients
Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years
Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations
New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients
New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans
Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production
New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination
Study examines lactation in critically ill patients
UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award
[Press-News.org] New revolutionary sensor links pressure to color changeTechnology developed at UC Riverside has wide applications, from designing better cars and smartphones to high-tech baseball gloves