Recharge Your Cell Phone With a Touch? New Nanotechnology Converts Body Heat Into Power

Graduate student Corey Hewitt works with a sample of thermoelectric fabric in the Nanotechnology lab. (Credit: Image courtesy of Wake Forest University)                                    Science Daily  — Never get stranded with a dead cell phone again. A promising new technology called Power Felt, a thermoelectric device that converts body heat into an electrical current, soon could create enough juice to make another call simply by touching it.

Their research appears in the current issue of Nano Letters, a leading journal in nanotechnology.Developed by researchers in the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University, Power Felt is composed of tiny carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers and made to feel like fabric. The technology uses temperature differences -- room temperature versus body temperature, for instance -- to create a charge.

"We waste a lot of energy in the form of heat. For example, recapturing a car's energy waste could help improve fuel mileage and power the radio, air conditioning or navigation system," says researcher and Wake Forest graduate student Corey Hewitt. "Generally thermoelectrics are an underdeveloped technology for harvesting energy, yet there is so much opportunity."

Potential uses for Power Felt include lining automobile seats to boost battery power and service electrical needs, insulating pipes or collecting heat under roof tiles to lower gas or electric bills, lining clothing or sports equipment to monitor performance, or wrapping IV or wound sites to better track patients' medical needs.

"Imagine it in an emergency kit, wrapped around a flashlight, powering a weather radio, charging a prepaid cell phone," says David Carroll, director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials. "Power Felt could provide relief during power outages or accidents."

Cost has prevented thermoelectrics from being used more widely in consumer products.

Standard thermoelectric devices use a much more efficient compound called bismuth telluride to turn heat into power in products including mobile refrigerators and CPU coolers, but researchers say it can cost $1,000 per kilogram. Like silicon, they liken Power Felt's affordability to demand in volume and think someday it could cost only $1 to add to a cell phone cover.

Currently, 72 stacked layers in the fabric yield about 140 nanowatts of power. The team is evaluating several ways to add more nanotube layers and make them even thinner to boost the power output.

Although there's more work to do before Power Felt is ready for market, Hewitt says, "I imagine being able to make a jacket with a completely thermoelectric inside liner that gathers warmth from body heat, while the exterior remains cold from the outside temperature. If the Power Felt is efficient enough, you could potentially power an iPod, which would be great for distance runners. It's definitely within reach."

Neuroscientists Identify How the Brain Works to Select What We (Want To) See

Science Daily  — If you are looking for a particular object -- say a yellow pencil -- on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it?

For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into visual and attention deficit disorders.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how the visual cortex and parietal cortex send direct information to each other through white matter connections to pick out the information that you want to see.

"We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is a one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain," said Adam S. Greenberg, a postdoctoral fellow in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

"With so much information in the visual world, it's dramatic to think that you have an entire system behind knowing what to pay attention to," said Marlene Behrmann, professor of psychology at CMU and an expert in using brain imaging to study the visual perception system. "The mechanisms show that you can actually drive the visual system -- you are guiding your own sensory system intelligently and smartly that helps facilitate your actions in the world."

The research team conducted two sets of experiments with five adults for the study. They first used several different functional brain scans to identify regions in the brain responsible for visual processing and attention. One task had the participants look at a dot in the centre of the screen while six stimuli danced around the dot. The second task asked the participants to respond to the stimuli one at a time. These scans determined the regions in both the visual and parietal cortices. The researchers could then look for connectivity between these regions.

The second part of the experiment collected anatomical data of the brain's white matter connectivity while the participants had their brains scanned without performing any tasks. Then, the researchers combined the results with those from the functional experiments to show how white matter fibers tracked from the regions determined previously, the visual cortex and the parietal cortex. The results demonstrated that the white matter connections are mapped systematically, meaning that direct connections exist between corresponding visual field locations in visual cortex and parietal cortex.

The researchers used a technique called "diffusion spectrum imaging," a new procedure pioneered at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh to generate the fiber tracts of the white matter connectivity. This method was combined with high-resolution tractography and provides scientists with better estimates of the hard-wired connections between brain regions and increased accuracy over conventional tractography methods, such as those typically used with diffusion tensor imaging.

"The work done in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh researchers exploits a very new, precise and cutting edge methodology," Behrmann said.

"Because we know that training can alter white matter, it might be possible, through training, that the ability to filter out irrelevant or unwanted information could be improved," Greenberg said.

Additional researchers on this study included Timothy Verstynen, a research associate in the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center; yu-chin Chiu, a post-doc in the University of California, San Diego's Department of Psychology, Steven Yantis, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the Johns Hopkins University and Walter Schneider, professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. Greenberg, Behrmann, Verstynen and Schneider are also members of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint project between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh devoted to investigating neural mechanisms and their impact on human cognitive abilities.

Stratospheric Superbugs Offer New Source of Power

Scientists have engineered a new super biofilm, a key component of which is Bacillus stratospheric -- a microbe commonly found in high concentrations in Earth's stratosphere.                                    Science Daily  — Bacteria commonly found 30 kilometres above Earth have been identified as highly efficient electricity generators.

Bacillus stratospheric -- a microbe commonly found in high concentrations in the stratosphere -- is a key component of a new 'super' biofilm engineered by a team of scientists from Newcastle University.

Isolating 75 different species of bacteria from the Wear Estuary, Country Durham, UK, the team tested the power generation of each one using a microbial fuel cell (MFC).

By selecting the best species of bacteria, a kind of microbial "pick and mix," they created an artificial biofilm, doubling the electrical output of the MFC from 105 Watts per cubic metre to 200 Watts per cubic metre.

While still relatively low, this would be enough power to run an electric light and could provide a much-needed power source in parts of the world without electricity.

Among the 'superbugs was B. stratospheric, a microbe typically found in the atmosphere but brought down to Earth due to atmospheric cycling processes and isolated by the team from the bed of the River Wear.

Publishing their findings Feb. 21 in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Environmental Science and Technology,

Grant Burgess, Professor of Marine Biotechnology at Newcastle University, said the research demonstrated the "potential power of the technique."

"What we have done is deliberately manipulate the microbial mix to engineer a biofilm that is more efficient at generating electricity," he explains.

"This is the first time individual microbes have been studied and selected in this way. Finding B. stratosphericus was quite a surprise but what it demonstrates is the potential of this technique for the future. There are billions of microbes out there with the potential to generate power."

Microbes to generate electricity are not new and have been used in treating wastewater and sewage plants.

Microbial fuel cells, which work similarly to a battery, use bacteria to convert organic compounds directly into electricity through bio-catalytic oxidation.

A biofilm -- or 'slime' -- coats the carbon electrodes of the MFC and as the bacteria feed, they produce electrons which pass into the electrodes and generate electricity.

Until now, the biofilm has been allowed to grow unchecked but this new study shows for the first time that by manipulating the biofilm, you can significantly increase the electrical output of the fuel cell.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the study identified several electricity-generating bacteria.

As well as B. stratospheric, other electricity-generating bugs in the mix were Bacillus altitudinis -- another bug from the upper atmosphere -- and a new member of the phylumBacteroidetes.

Map reveals cancer hotspots

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Image: alanphillips/iStockphoto A new technique is helping researchers to pinpoint genetic information that contributes to cancer development. A research team, led by Professor Thomas Preiss from the John Curtin School of Medical Research at The Australian National University, has used a new mapping technique to reveal tell-tale “sign posts” in DNA’s lesser-known relative, RNA – ribonucleic acid. “RNA acts as a messenger, carrying genetic information to the parts of the cell in which proteins are made. Enzymes in the cell can modify RNA, leaving ‘sign posts’, known as m5C sites,” Professor Preiss said. “The enzymes that modify RNA have proven connections to cancer and stem cell biology. Understanding the patterns of these modifications will help cancer researchers focus their attention on the contribution that RNA makes to cancer.” In the study, researchers comprehensively mapped these modifications in RNA for the first time, identifying over ten thousand new sites. They found that the sites were much more prevalent than previously thought and were systematic, rather than random, occurring near genetic landmarks. The research team comprised members from the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at The Australian National University and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney. The research is published this month in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Thursday, February 23, 2012

MEANING OF TRUE FRIEND'S.............................

The Brain....

“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.” 

                               

 “I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytically. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Sai Vachan

Neuroscientists identify how the brain works to select what we (want to) see

The three colors demonstrate one-to-one mapping from the first place visual information comes from the eyes and its path to the parietal cortex.
Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

If you are looking for a particular object — say a yellow pencil — on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it?

For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into visual and attention deficit disorders.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how the visual cortex and parietal cortex send direct information to each other through white matter connections in order to specifically pick out the information that you want to see.

"We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain," said Adam S. Greenberg, postdoctoral fellow in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

"With so much information in the visual world, it's dramatic to think that you have an entire system behind knowing what to pay attention to," said Marlene Behrmann, professor of psychology at CMU and a renowned expert in using brain imaging to study the visual perception system. "The mechanisms show that you can actually drive the visual system — you are guiding your own sensory system in an intelligent and smart fashion that helps facilitate your actions in the world."

For the study, the research team conducted two sets of experiments with five adults. They first used several different functional brain scans to identify regions in the brain responsible for visual processing and attention. One task had the participants look at a dot in the center of the screen while six stimuli danced around the dot. The second task asked the participants to respond to the stimuli one at a time. These scans determined the regions in both the visual and parietal cortices. The researchers could then look for connectivity between these regions.

The second part of the experiment collected anatomical data of the brain's white matter connectivity while the participants had their brains scanned without performing any tasks. Then, the researchers combined the results with those from the functional experiments to show how white matter fibers tracked from the regions determined previously, the visual cortex and the parietal cortex. The results demonstrated that the white matter connections are mapped systematically, meaning that direct connections exist between corresponding visual field locations in visual cortex and parietal cortex.

The researchers used a technique called "diffusion spectrum imaging," a new procedure pioneered at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh to generate the fiber tracts of the white matter connectivity. This method was combined with high-resolution tractography and provides scientists with better estimates of the hard-wired connections between brain regions and increased accuracy over conventional tractography methods, such as those typically used with diffusion tensor imaging.

"The work done in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh researchers exploits a very new, precise and cutting edge methodology," Behrmann said.

"Because we know that training can alter white matter, it might be possible, through training, that the ability to filter out irrelevant or unwanted information could be improved," Greenberg said.

Provided by Carnegie Mellon University

"Neuroscientists identify how the brain works to select what we (want to) see." February 21st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-neuroscientists-brain.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Jubail Jobs

 

 

 

I currently have a number of positions for Project Controls Managers, Commercial Managers and Lead / Senior Planning Engineers to work in either Jubail or Al-Khobar on long-term Petrochem projects. Excellent Tax-Free packages available. Please call +44 1276 478949 or emaildarrynh@andyoung.co.uk

 

http://www.careeramazon.com/career/25681/Head-Hse-Jubail-Saudi-Arabia-Saudi-Arabia

Head Of HSE In Jubail, Saudi Arabia

back to search results

Employer Job Reference:	10XT240112002
Employer:	10X Talent
Job Country:	Saudi Arabia
Job City:	Jubail, Saudi Arabia
The purpose of the role is to Establish a Contractor HSE Management System that is compliant with OHSAS and ISO monitor compliance with the HSE management system of Company. Develop all the required documentation, operational checks and reports for the HSE Management System to be compliant with OHSAS and ISO standards, including corrective and preventive measures. Monitor HSE controllers in executing continuous audits Manage the HSE controllers and coordinate their audit schedule Investigate the root cause HSE complaints put forward by staff members and report the result to the HSEQ manager. Coordinate and participate in the investigation of accidents and near misses Audit work being performed with ''Safe Work Permit” Assist with the implementation of Job Safety Analysis and inspect job site activities during particularly difficult or hazardous work situation. Assist Company management in the preparation and presentation of field HSE meetings. Review and analyze accidents and near miss incidents and making corrective action recommendations; Ensure regular emergency response exercises and drills are conducted to ensure the highest level of preparedness in any emergency. Maintains records of such drills, providing recommendations for emergency response improvements. Assist in developing and implementing field location emergency response procedures and evacuation plans. Preparing weekly and monthly HSE reports, statistics and presentations related to HSE performance.
Candidate Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree Health, Safety, Environment Management or equivalent experience and training.
Industry:	Oil, Gas, Petroleum & Energy
Job Function:	Engineering  Engineering - Mechanical  Engineering - Quality Assurance  HSE - Health Safety & Environment Manager / Director / Head
Position Type:	Full Time
Education Required:	Bachelors
Experience Required:	13 to 16 years
Career Level:	Manager/Supervisor
Gender:	Male
Travel:	Yes
Post Date:	24/01/2012

 

http://www.careeramazon.com/career/25675/Planning-Manager-Jubail-Saudi-Arabia-Saudi-Arabia

Planning Manager In Jubail, Saudi Arabia

back to search results

Employer Job Reference:	10XT200112001
Employer:	10X Talent
Job Country:	Saudi Arabia
Job City:	Jubail, Saudi Arabia
The company / Employer provides premier engineering, design, construction, and maintenance services to government and private-sector clients in a wide array of industries, including the energy, environmental, infrastructure, and emergency response markets. The Role Provide control and coordination of all planning and Scheduling activities related to Routine Maintenance for all the operational areas, including Preventive, Corrective and Predictive Maintenance. Responsibilities Lead contractor’s maintenance planning section by providing technical information and solutions. Prepare long term maintenance plan. Effective use of efficient maintenance system like CMMS. SAP preferably Monitor and collect data from systems for review of management. Provide Inputs for preparation of maintenance budget of all plants. Review actual Vs budgeted expenditure of maintenance and recommend necessary action to minimize deviations. Prepare monthly reports highlighting work plans, major activity completed and attend regular maintenance dept meetings. Monitor Maintenance planning section KPI’s against target. Review and present manpower planning. Follow up with operations, services, and company maintenance dept for planning related issue.
Candidate Requirements:
Well organized and proactive with excellent communication skills Proven leadership skills with large organizations Maturity of judgment under pressure and ability to resolve problems Strategic thinking, open to new ideas An ability to achieve business results working in a multi-cultural environment Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Maintenance planning area experience Minimum 12+year’s experience of a refinery plant with planning section
Industry:	Oil, Gas, Petroleum & Energy
Job Function:	Management  Project Management
Position Type:	Full Time
Education Required:	Bachelors
Experience Required:	13 to 16 years
Career Level:	Manager/Supervisor
Gender:	Male
Travel:	No
Post Date:	20/01/2012

 

http://www.careeramazon.com/career/25680/Site-Manager-Jubail-Saudi-Arabia-Saudi-Arabia

Site Manager In Jubail, Saudi Arabia

back to search results

Employer Job Reference:	10XT240112001
Employer:	10X Talent
Job Country:	Saudi Arabia
Job City:	Jubail, Saudi Arabia
The Purpose of the Job is to Provide day to day management, monitoring and oversight of the Contractor’s activities for the maintenance and lead the complete Contractor team for a refinery.                 Ensures observance of all safety and fire rules and regulations by contractor’s personnel working at site ensuring the correct and safe use of safety equipment. Reviewing and approval of all Contractor invoices to ensure “work” billed is in accordance with contractual terms Coordination for Training of contractor personnel to build their knowledge and understanding of the Plant.
Candidate Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or Construction Management or equivalent experience and training. Must be strong in any of Mechanical/electrical or Instrumentation area. Minimum 20+year’s experience of a refinery maintenance Contract leading Joint venture national Strong technical understanding of maintenance management of refinery Well organized and proactive with excellent communication skills Proven leadership skills with large organizations Maturity of judgment under pressure and ability to resolve problems Strategic management skills An ability to achieve business results working in a multi-cultural environment Flexibility to travel internationally and live in KSA
Industry:	Oil, Gas, Petroleum & Energy
Job Function:	Engineering  Engineering - Instrument & Control Automation  Engineering - Mechanical
Position Type:	Full Time
Education Required:	Bachelors
Experience Required:	21 to 25 years
Career Level:	Executive Dept. Head
Gender:	Male
Travel:	Yes
Post Date:	24/01/2012

 

 

Best Regards,