Electricity from the Nose: Engineers Make Power from Human Respiration

Graduate Student Jian Shi and Materials Science and Engineering Professor Xudong Wang demonstrate a material that could be used to capture energy from respiration. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Engineering)

Science Daily  — The same piezoelectric effect that ignites your gas grill with the push of a button could one day power sensors in your body via the respiration in your nose.

In certain materials, such as the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) used by Wang's team, an electric charge accumulates in response to applied mechanical stress. This is known as the piezoelectric effect. The researchers engineered PVDF to generate sufficient electrical energy from respiration to operate small electronic devices.

Writing in the September issue of the journal Energy and Environmental Science, Materials Science and Engineering Professor Xudong Wang, postdoctoral Researcher Chengliang Sun and graduate student Jian Shi report creating a plastic microbelt that vibrates when passed by low-speed airflow such as human respiration.

"Basically, we are harvesting mechanical energy from biological systems. The airflow of normal human respiration is typically below about two meters per second," says Wang. "We calculated that if we could make this material thin enough, small vibrations could produce a microwatt of electrical energy that could be useful for sensors or other devices implanted in the face."

Researchers are taking advantage of advances in nanotechnology and miniaturized electronics to develop a host of biomedical devices that could monitor blood glucose for diabetics or keep a pacemaker battery charged so that it would not need replacing. What's needed to run these tiny devices is a miniscule power supply. Waste energy in the form or blood flow, motion, heat, or in this case respiration, offers a consistent source of power.

Wang's team used an ion-etching process to carefully thin material while preserving its piezoelectric properties. With improvements, he believes the thickness can be controlled down to the submicron level. Because PVDF is biocompatible, he says the development represents a significant advance toward creating a practical micro-scale device for harvesting energy from respiration.

Laser Light Used to Cool Object to Quantum Ground State

A scanning electron microscope image (a) of the nanoscale silicon mechanical resonator used in the laser cooling experiment. The outer "cross" patterning forms the shield while the central beam region, the SEM image of which is shown in (b), forms an optical cavity where laser light is used to cool the mechanical motion of the beam. Numerical simulations of the localized optical field and mechanical breathing motion of the nanobeam are shown in panels (c) and (d), respectively. (Credit: Caltech/Painter, et al.)

Science Daily — For the first time, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in collaboration with a team from the University of Vienna, have managed to cool a miniature mechanical object to its lowest possible energy state using laser light. The achievement paves the way for the development of exquisitely sensitive detectors as well as for quantum experiments that scientists have long dreamed of conducting.

As described in the paper, Painter and his colleagues have engineered a nanoscale object -- a tiny mechanical silicon beam -- such that laser light of a carefully selected frequency can enter the system and, once reflected, can carry thermal energy away, cooling the system.

"We've taken a solid mechanical system -- one made up of billions of atoms -- and used optical light to put it into a state in which it behaves according to the laws of quantum mechanics. In the past, this has only been achieved with trapped single atoms or ions," says Oskar Painter, professor of applied physics and executive officer for applied physics and materials science at Caltech and the principal investigator on a paper describing the work that appears in the October 6 issue of the journalNature.

By carefully designing each element of the beam as well as a patterned silicon shield that isolates it from the environment, Painter and colleagues were able to use the laser cooling technique to bring the system down to the quantum ground state, where mechanical vibrations are at an absolute minimum. Such a cold mechanical object could help detect very small forces or masses, whose presence would normally be masked by the noisy thermal vibrations of the sensor.

"In many ways, the experiment we've done provides a starting point for the really interesting quantum-mechanical experiments one wants to do," Painter says. For example, scientists would like to show that a mechanical system could be coaxed into a quantum superposition -- a bizarre quantum state in which a physical system can exist in more than one position at once. But they need a system at the quantum ground state to begin such experiments.

To reach the ground state, Painter's group had to cool its mechanical beam to a temperature below 100 millikelvin (-273.15°C). That's because the beam is designed to vibrate at gigahertz frequencies (corresponding to a billion cycles per second) -- a range where a large number of phonons are present at room temperature. Phonons are the most basic units of vibration just as the most basic units or packets of light are called photons. All of the phonons in a system have to be removed to cool it to the ground state.

Conventional means of cryogenically cooling to such temperatures exist but require expensive and, in some cases, impractical equipment. There's also the problem of figuring out how to measure such a cold mechanical system. To solve both problems, the Caltech team used a different cooling strategy.

"What we've done is used the photons -- the light field -- to extract phonons from the system," says Jasper Chan, lead author of the new paper and a graduate student in Painter's group. To do so, the researchers drilled tiny holes at precise locations in their mechanical beam so that when they directed laser light of a particular frequency down the length of the beam, the holes acted as mirrors, trapping the light in a cavity and causing it to interact strongly with the mechanical vibrations of the beam.

Because a shift in the frequency of the light is directly related to the thermal motion of the mechanical object, the light -- when it eventually escapes from the cavity -- also carries with it information about the mechanical system, such as the motion and temperature of the beam. Thus, the researchers have created an efficient optical interface to a mechanical element -- or an optomechanical transducer -- that can convert information from the mechanical system into photons of light.

Importantly, since optical light, unlike microwaves or electrons, can be transmitted over large, kilometer-length distances without attenuation, such an optomechanical transducer could be useful for linking different quantum systems -- a microwave system with an optical system, for example. While Painter's system involves an optical interface to a mechanical element, other teams have been developing systems that link a microwave interface to a mechanical element. What if those two mechanical elements were the same? "Then," says Painter, "I could imagine connecting the microwave world to the optical world via this mechanical conduit one photon at a time."

The Caltech team isn't the first to cool a nanomechanical object to the quantum ground state; a group led by former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Andrew Cleland, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, accomplished this in 2010 using more conventional refrigeration techniques, and, earlier this year, a group from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, cooled an object to the ground state using microwave radiation. The new work, however, is the first in which a nanomechanical object has been put into the ground state using optical light.

"This is an exciting development because there are so many established techniques for manipulating and measuring the quantum properties of systems using optics," Painter says.

The other cooling techniques used starting temperatures of approximately 20 millikelvin -- more than a factor of 10,000 times cooler than room temperature. Ideally, to simplify designs, scientists would like to initiate these experiments at room temperature. Using laser cooling, Painter and his colleagues were able to perform their experiment at a much higher temperature -- only about 10 times lower than room temperature.

The work was supported by Caltech's Kavli Nanoscience Institute; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Microsystems Technology Office through a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research; the European Commission; the European Research Council; and the Austrian Science Fund.

Venus Has an Ozone Layer Too, Space Probe Discovers

Artist's rendering of Venus Express. (Credit: ESA - D. Ducros)

Science Daily  — The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft has discovered an ozone layer high in the atmosphere of Venus. Comparing its properties with those of the equivalent layers on Earth and Mars will help astronomers refine their searches for life on other planets.

Venus Express made the discovery while watching stars seen right at the edge of the planet set through its atmosphere. Its SPICAV instrument analysed the starlight, looking for the characteristic fingerprints of gases in the atmosphere as they absorbed light at specific wavelengths.The results are being presented at the Joint Meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The ozone was detectable because it absorbed some of the ultraviolet from the starlight. Ozone is a molecule containing three oxygen atoms. According to computer models, the ozone on Venus is formed when sunlight breaks up carbon dioxide molecules, releasing oxygen atoms.

These atoms are then swept around to the nightside of the planet by winds in the atmosphere: they can then combine to form two-atom oxygen molecules, but also sometimes three-atom ozone molecules.

"This detection gives us an important constraint on understanding the chemistry of Venus' atmosphere," says Franck Montmessin, who led the research.

It may also offer a useful comparison for searching for life on other worlds. Ozone has only previously been detected in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars. On Earth, it is of fundamental importance to life because it absorbs much of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Not only that, it is thought to have been generated by life itself in the first place.

The build-up of oxygen, and consequently ozone, in Earth's atmosphere began 2.4 billion years ago. Although the exact reasons for it are not entirely understood, microbes excreting oxygen as a waste gas must have played an important role.

Along with plant life, they continue to do so, constantly replenishing Earth's oxygen and ozone. As a result, some astrobiologists have suggested that the simultaneous presence of carbon dioxide, oxygen and ozone in an atmosphere could be used to tell whether there could be life on the planet.

This would allow future telescopes to target planets around other stars and assess their habitability. However, as these new results highlight, the amount of ozone is crucial.

The small amount of ozone in Mars' atmosphere has not been generated by life. There, it is the result of sunlight breaking up carbon dioxide molecules. Venus too, now supports this view of a modest ozone build-up by non-biological means. Its ozone layer sits at an altitude of 100 km, about four times higher in the atmosphere than Earth's and is a hundred to a thousand times less dense.

Theoretical work by astrobiologists suggests that a planet's ozone concentration must be 20%of Earth's value before life should be considered as a cause. These new results support that conclusion because Venus clearly remains below this threshold.

"We can use these new observations to test and refine the scenarios for the detection of life on other worlds," says Dr Montmessin.

Yet, even if there is no life on Venus, the detection of ozone there brings Venus a step closer to Earth and Mars. All three planets have an ozone layer.

"This ozone detection tells us a lot about the circulation and the chemistry of Venus' atmosphere" says Håkan Svedhem, ESA Project Scientist for the Venus Express mission. "Beyond that, it is yet more evidence of the fundamental similarity between the rocky planets, and shows the importance of studying Venus to understand them all."

North Cliffs Failure - Amazing Cliff Collapse caught on Camera!

FIVE MUST HAVE BUDGETING BEST PRACTICES

Budgeting is key to any good business. Despite this fact, many are not well trained to handle this process or would rather not commit the time that it deserves. These best practices explain how important budgeting is and how a tight, successful budget can be maintained!

Alliancetac highlights…

• Budget issue: Budget development should be linked to corporate strategy
  The budget expresses how resources will be allocated and how progress will be measure. When the budget is linked to corporate strategy, all managers and employees have a clearer understanding of strategic goals. This leads to greater support for goals, better coordination of efforts, and, ultimately, to stronger companywide performance.
  Best budgeting practice: Make certain strategic goals are set goals before budgeting begins.  This not only makes it easier for budget developers at all levels, fewer budget revisions are required.  Budget development then becomes not only faster and less costly but also far less frustrating.

• Budget issue: Develop procedures to allocate resources strategically
  Competition for resources is inevitable.  Every business unit needs funding for both capital and operating expenses.  Because needs typically exceed actual resources available, resources must be allocated to support key strategies.
  Best budgeting practice: While it is often said that resource allocation is part science, part art, applying best practices can leads to better results.  One such practice is to give managers insight into the ways in which changes in one budget affect the other.  It is also important to develop measures such as the company’s weighted average cost of capital and the degree of risk involved in competing plans of action, the costs or advantages associated with deferring action, as well as factors such as expected developments in interest rates.  By monitoring the results of allocation efforts, companies can refine and improve their procedures.

• Budget issue: Avoid incentives strictly tied to meeting budget targets
  While is seems logical to evaluate managers primarily on how closely they hit budget targets, this can tempts managers to “win” by playing games with budget targets.  Such game playing isn’t always in the company’s best interest or ethical standards.
  Best budgeting practice: Make meeting budget targets secondary to other performance measures.  Business unit managers should be involved in identifying the measures that are most relevant for their operations. While some measures may be financial, other appropriate nonfinancial measures could include product defect rate, customer satisfaction ratings and others.

• Budget issue:  Understanding the budget process
  Strive to reduce budget complexity and streamline budgeting procedures by making certain all people with budget responsibilities understand the budget process.  This allows management to collect budget information, make allocation decisions, and communicate final targets in less time, at lower cost, and with less disruption to the company’s core activities.
  Best budgeting practice: Leading companies make sure that budget developers and their assistants are thoroughly trained on the process.  This budget training for managers, together with ongoing monitoring of information needs companywide, helps companies deliver the right information to managers.

• Budget issue: Ensure budgets accommodates changeBudgets that accommodate change help companies respond to competitive threats or opportunities more quickly and with greater precision.  Plus, knowing that budgets have some flexibility frees budget developers from the need to “pad” budgets to cover a wide variety of possibilities.  This leads to leaner, more realistic budgets.Best budgeting practice: While it is important that budgets not be revised to cover up for poor performance or poor planning, best practice companies choose to revise budgets rather than adhere to budgets that do not reflect current conditions.

Get more information from Alliancetac!

SIX SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES TO BEAT YOUR COMPETITION

When you run into price competition it may feel like there is no way out. This is not the case. These innovative strategies will rejuvenate your business and enable you to successfully pass up your competition. Get the details here!

Entrepreneur shares…

1. Find new markets. If competition is stiff, consider whether a neighboring city — or country — might offer a better opportunity to sell at a higher price.

2. Develop unique products. It’s best to offer products and services that are unique to your company. The reason is, when competitors hold sales, you won’t be similarly forced to cut prices becuase your offerings can’t be price-compared.

3. Bundle your product with services. Take a look at how Jonathan Fields has bundled his new book, Uncertainty, with his consulting. No discounts here. Bet they’re selling like hotcakes.

4. Repackage and upgrade. Fresh packaging might give you a chance to combine your products in new ways — ways the competition hasn’t thought of yet. Or update products to add new features.

5. Build your reputation. When you’re known as the best in your industry, price isn’t a problem. Clients expect to pay you a premium. Get video testimonials, or at least ones where you can use customers’ pictures next to their endorsement — they’re highly impactful in helping clients envision themselves using your product.

6. Create scarcity. If you’ve had a product or service on the market a while and sales have slumped, put out the word your offering will end soon. This works particularly well if you’re about to introduce something new. Get a sales spike before you retire an older item. Or create scarcity by only offering a limited number of a particular item, promoting that only X number will be sold.

Get more information from Entrepreneur!

Three women's rights activists share Nobel Peace Prize

By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN

(L-R) Yemen's Arab Spring activist Tawakkul Karman, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and activist Leymah Gbowee

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Tawakkul Karman is the first Arab woman to win the peace prize
• The prize is divided between three women; two in Liberia and one in Yemen
• Johnson Sirleaf says she accepts the prize on behalf of all Liberians
• Rights group Amnesty International welcomes the award

(CNN) -- Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, activist Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and rights activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen share this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday.

They were chosen "for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work," the committee said in Oslo, Norway.

"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society."

In an interview with CNN, Karman -- the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and one of the youngest recipients -- said she heard the news while demonstrating in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

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"Congratulations to all the Yemeni people. I am so happy for the award. I believe this award is for all Yemenis, for all the Yemeni people, and for all Arab women," she said.

"This is a victory for peace in the Arab world, a victory for the peaceful revolution in Yemen."

A closer look at the Nobel Peace Prize

Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's 72-year-old president and Africa's first elected female head of state, told CNN she was excited about the prize, which she said was shared by all her country's people.

"I'm accepting this on behalf of the Liberian people, so credit goes to them," she said. "For the past eight years, we have had peace and each and every one of them has contributed to this peace."

She said the peace that had ended 14 years of civil war should be attributed to the country's women.

They were "women from all walks of life who challenged the dictatorship of former President Charles Taylor and who stayed out in the sun and the rain working for peace in our country," she said.

Johnson Sirleaf, whose political resilience and tough reputation have earned her the nickname "Iron Lady," is campaigning for re-election.

The Harvard graduate's commencement address in high school in 1972 sharply criticized the government, a rare defiance in Africa, especially at the time. She has also worked at the World Bank and the United Nations.

Her historic 2006 election win was a major milestone for Africa, a continent dominated by male dictators who are referred to as strongmen. The mother of four sons published a book, "This Child Will Be Great" in 2008.

Liberian Information Minister Cletus Sieh told CNN that Johnson Sirleaf is a role model for many women in Africa.

Gbowee, a founder and executive director of Women Peace and Security Network-Africa, was also a recipient in 2009 of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

She was the focus of the documentary "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," which shows how women confronted Taylor with a demand for peace to end the bloody 14-year civil war.

She "mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia," the Nobel committee said, adding she also encouraged women's participation in elections.

"She has since worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war," it said.

Jan Egeland of Human Rights Watch told CNN the Nobel committee had come up with a great prize that merged the efforts of Liberian women in achieving "momentous change" in their country with the vital role of women in the ongoing Arab Spring movement.

Rights group Amnesty International said the award would encourage women everywhere to continue fighting for their rights.

Past Nobel Peace Prize winners

Two Nobel recipients from Liberia

In Yemen, Karman has played a leading role in the struggle for women's rights for democracy and peace, the committee said.

Karman is the president of Women Journalists Without Chains, a group campaigning for press freedom.

Abdu Ganadi, spokesman for Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh, congratulated Karman but struck a warning note.

"We are happy that she won, but in the same time she needs to live up to the award and not take youths to protests in areas where it leads to bloodshed," he told CNN. "She has to be a caller for peace, not violence."

Mohammed al-Sabri, a spokesman for Yemen's opposition dialogue committee, highlighted her role in an ongoing protest involving more than 3 million young Yemenis, many of them women.

"Because of Karman, the world will have a different impression on Yemeni women," he said. "This prize is not only for her, but for all Yemeni women."

Mohammed Albasha, a spokesman for Yemen's embassy in Washington, D.C., told CNN: "To have the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize be from Yemen is definitely an honor to all Yemeni women."

Prominent Yemeni human rights activist Khaled Al-Anesi, who is also heavily involved in anti-government demonstrations, said he was very happy Karman had won the award.

"I feel this is a reward for every Yemeni looking for peace, for freedom, for democracy," he said. "The Nobel Peace Prize will bring attention to our revolution, which doesn't have enough international attention and attention from the foreign media."

Yemeni online activist Atiaf Alwazir said it was "great news for Yemen."

"Tawakkol has become such a figure in the revolution. It's a prize for Yemen -- it's a prize for all Arab women and it's a show of international support and solidarity for the peaceful movement here," she said.

"I'm very happy she received this award, as a woman and as an activist. It shows that if you work hard enough, maybe the world will listen. I think the best thing about this is that it's for everybody.

"An award like this is really a way to restore faith in the peaceful movement and to give people moral support. After nine months, people here are tired, and this gives people hope."

A profile of Karman by Time magazine describes the mother of three as "Yemen's most active activist."

As well as leading demonstrations demanding freedom of speech, she can often be seen trying to get other protesters out of jail. "It's a place she is familiar with as well, having been there several times herself," the profile says.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it hopes that the prize will help end suppression of women in many countries and to "realize the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent."

The award, which includes a cash prize (10 million Swedish kronor, or about U.S. $1.4 million) will be shared in three equal parts among the winners, the committee said.

"This Nobel Peace Prize recognizes what human rights activists have known for decades: that the promotion of equality is essential to building just and peaceful societies worldwide," said Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty in a statement.

"The tireless work of these and countless other activists brings us closer to a world where women will see their rights protected and enjoy growing influence at all levels of government."

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Union President Jose Manuel Barroso congratulated the winners.

They issued a statement saying the prize is "recognition of the pivotal role that women play in the peaceful settlement of conflicts and democratic transformation throughout the world. This is a victory for a new democratic Africa and for a new democratic Arab world that live in peace and respect for human rights."

Last year, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the prize but could not attend the award ceremony. The political activist and longtime critic of communist rule in China is serving an 11-year prison term for what the Chinese government calls "inciting subversion of state power."

Debate: Has President Obama lived up to his Nobel Peace Prize?

U.S. President Barack Obama won for what the committee called "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" in 2009.

Swedish poet wins Nobel literature prize

Nobel prizes in literature, chemistry, physics and physiology or medicine were awarded this week.

Nobel goes to scientist who knocked down 'Berlin Wall' of chemistry

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five people chosen by Norway's parliament and is named for Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist and inventor of dynamite.

Nominations come from lawmakers around the world, university professors, previous Nobel laureates and members of the Nobel committee.

CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom, Hakim Almasmari, David McKenzie, Faith Karimi, Lateef Mungin and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.