PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Engineers tap into good vibrations to power the Internet of Things

New material converts vibrations into electricity

2023-05-03
(Press-News.org)

In a world hungry for clean energy, engineers have created a new material that converts the simple mechanical vibrations all around us into electricity to power sensors in everything from pacemakers to spacecraft. 

The first of its kind and the product of a decade of work by researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto, the novel generating system is compact, reliable, low-cost and very, very green.

“Our breakthrough will have a significant social and economic impact by reducing our reliance on non-renewable power sources,” said Asif Khan, a Waterloo researcher and co-author of a new study on the project. “We need these energy-generating materials more critically at this moment than at any other time in history.”

The system Khan and his colleagues developed is based on the piezoelectric effect, which generates an electrical current by applying pressure — mechanical vibrations are one example — to an appropriate substance.

The effect was discovered in 1880, and since then, a limited number of piezoelectric materials, such as quartz and Rochelle salts, have been used in technologies ranging from sonar and ultrasonic imaging to microwave devices.

The problem is that until now, traditional piezoelectric materials used in commercial devices have had limited capacity for generating electricity. They also often use lead, which Khan describes as “detrimental to the environment and human health.”

The researchers solved both problems.

They started by growing a large single crystal of a molecular metal-halide compound called edabco copper chloride using the Jahn-Teller effect, a well-known chemistry concept related to spontaneous geometrical distortion of a crystal field.

Khan said that highly piezoelectric material was then used to fabricate nanogenerators “with a record power density that can harvest tiny mechanical vibrations in any dynamic circumstances, from human motion to automotive vehicles” in a process requiring neither lead nor non-renewable energy.

The nanogenerator is tiny — 2.5 centimetres square and about the thickness of a business card — and could be conveniently used in countless situations. It has the potential to power sensors in a vast array of electronic devices, including billions needed for the Internet of Things — the burgeoning global network of objects embedded with sensors and software that connect and exchange data with other devices.

Dr. Dayan Ban, a researcher at the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, said that in future, an aircraft’s vibrations could power its sensory monitoring systems, or a person’s heartbeat could keep their battery-free pacemaker running.

“Our new material has shown record-breaking performance,” said Ban, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “It represents a new path forward in this field.”

The study, Large piezoelectric response in a Jahn-Teller distorted molecular metal halide, appears in the journal Nature Communications.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Texas A&M researcher receives $3M National Science Foundation manufacturing grant

2023-05-02
Dr. Zhijian “Z.J.” Pei and his intercollegiate team recently received the Future Manufacturing Research Grant from the National Science Foundation’s Future Manufacturing program, which funds researchers to develop new manufacturing capability that does not exist today. The focus of this research grant is to substitute products made from petroleum-based plastics or natural wood with biomass. “Our idea is to use living matter, including fungi, algae, bacteria, plus agriculturally derived biomass and use 3D printing to make products,” said Pei, professor in the Wm Michael Barnes ’64 ...

Crossroads: The role of biomarkers in the management of lumps in the breast

Crossroads: The role of biomarkers in the management of lumps in the breast
2023-05-02
“A biomarker or set of biomarkers to inform on the individual progression risk would be beneficial to the patient and cost-effective for the healthcare system." BUFFALO, NY- May 2, 2023 – A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 24, 2023, entitled, “Crossroads: the role of biomarkers in the management of lumps in the breast.” Here, Dr. Georg F. Weber from the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center discusses a long-standing issue in women’s health: ...

Openseize: A novel open-source software to analyze large-scale digital signals

2023-05-02
Electroencephalography (EEG) is an indispensable tool used by clinicians to diagnose neurological diseases and by researchers to study and discover brain circuit mechanisms that support sensory, mnemonic, and cognitive processing. A new software - Openseize - created by Dr. Matthew Caudill, an investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, can now analyze massive amounts of one-dimensional digital ...

JSA Awards $558K for Initiatives Fund Program for FY2023

JSA Awards $558K for Initiatives Fund Program for FY2023
2023-05-02
WASHINGTON, DC – Jefferson Sciences Associates (JSA) has announced the award of $558,060 through its JSA Initiatives Fund Program. The program supports projects by staff and scientific users at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The FY23 program awards leveraged over $800,000 in matching funds, and taken together, the program and matching awards total over $1.3 million. Project awards include scientific meeting support, education and career development, and outreach activities, ...

Deep neural network provides robust detection of disease biomarkers in real time

Deep neural network provides robust detection of disease biomarkers in real time
2023-05-02
Sophisticated systems for the detection of biomarkers — molecules such as DNA or proteins that indicate the presence of a disease — are crucial for real-time diagnostic and disease-monitoring devices. Holger Schmidt, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz, and his group have long been focused on developing unique, highly sensitive devices called optofluidic chips to detect biomarkers.   Schmidt’s graduate student Vahid Ganjalizadeh led an effort to use machine learning to enhance ...

How the brain's dopamine circuitry helps regulate cognitive flexibility and reward-seeking

How the brains dopamine circuitry helps regulate cognitive flexibility and reward-seeking
2023-05-02
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) is hosting a free webinar, “How the Brain's Dopamine Circuitry Helps Regulate Cognitive Flexibility and Reward-Seeking” on Tuesday, May 9, 2023, at 2:00 pm EST. The presenter will be Nikhil Urs, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Florida and a recipient of a 2018 BBRF Young Investigator Grant. The webinar will be hosted by Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and host of the public television series Healthy Minds. Register today at BBRFoundation.org Dopamine ...

AI in medical imaging could magnify health inequities, study finds

AI in medical imaging could magnify health inequities, study finds
2023-05-02
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the medical field has the possibility to automate diagnoses, decrease physician workload, and even to bring specialized healthcare to people in rural areas or developing countries. However, with possibility comes potential pitfalls. Analyzing crowd-sourced sets of data used to create AI algorithms from medical images, University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers found that most did not include patient demographics. In the study published April 3 in Nature Medicine, the researchers also found that the algorithms did not evaluate for inherent biases either. That means they have ...

Cybersickness more likely to affect women, ongoing research to understand why

Cybersickness more likely to affect women, ongoing research to understand why
2023-05-02
AMES, IA — Iowa State researchers in psychology and engineering found women experience cybersickness with virtual reality headsets more often than men. Their ongoing work, supported by a new $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, explores why this difference exists and options to help individuals adapt.   Psychology professor Jonathan Kelly studies human computer interaction, spatial cognition and virtual reality. He says gender discrepancies in cybersickness may not seem that important when it’s related to video games and other forms of entertainment. "But it’s still a problem, and when VR gets to the point ...

A method to access genetic information in blood samples and find correlations with mental health problems

2023-05-02
Using blood samples to study diseases that originate in the brain is a difficulty faced by psychiatric genetics in the search for markers of mental health disorders. Researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) in Brazil have shown that this hindrance can be surmounted by analyzing microRNAs in extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are produced by most cells in the body, including neurons and other nervous system cells. The study was supported by FAPESP and is reported ...

Air pollution may increase risk of dementia, complicated by genetics

Air pollution may increase risk of dementia, complicated by genetics
2023-05-02
Three years ago, an international study commissioned by the journal Lancet listed 12 modifiable factors that increased the risk of dementia, including three new ones: excessive alcohol, head injury and air pollution. Writing in the May 2, 2023 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, a team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego, further elaborate on how exposure to the last of those new factors — ambient air pollution, such as car exhaust and power plant emissions — is associated with a measurably greater risk of developing dementia over time. Senior author William S. Kremen, PhD, professor ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

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

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

[Press-News.org] Engineers tap into good vibrations to power the Internet of Things
New material converts vibrations into electricity