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| 22756 |
High Asymmetric Longitudinal Field Ion Mobility Spectrometer: Ion Mobility-Based Spectrometer for Chemical Analysis
Researchers at the University of California, Davis campus have developed a miniature device for separating or detecting many different chemical species. The device features an ion passage formed between a top and bottom containing discrete electrodes. The low power consuming DC voltage-driven, hybrid device employs custom-tuned electric fields to manipulate ions for chemical analysis. The device can be manufactured using low-cost microfabrication techniques.
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| 22634 |
A Low Cost Mobile Device to Measure Particle Size and Number Densities in a Liquid Suspension
Researchers at University of California, Davis have developed a cost effective and miniaturized device that can determine the size of particles in suspension with a precision better than 10nm.
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| 22577 |
Corneal Hydration Sensing With Thz Illumination
Proper corneal hydration levels are critical to maintaining optical vision. Currently, corneal hydration is measured using ultrasound optical pachymetry, which involves measuring the central corneal thickness and extrapolating the average water content from these measurements. However, mapping from thickness to hydration is very inaccurate and is limited by inherent constraints. Another method uses confocal Raman spectroscopy to remotely measure corneal hydration. However, the excitation illumination influence necessary to achieve accurate measurements exceeds the ANSI regulations for use in humans by orders of magnitude.
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| 22480 |
Integrated Spirometer And Nitric Oxide Level Sensor On Inhaler
The current gold standard for disease monitoring in the clinical treatment of asthma are flow rate and lung volumes readings, which are combined in spirometer. When another important biochemical indicator fluctuates significantly, this indicates inflammation of the airways. While these disease monitoring data points can currently be obtained in a clinical setting on a one-off basis, it would be very useful if they were available on an ongoing basis, and ideally also in a home setting. If spirometry and specific biochemical levels could be monitored in tandem on an ongoing basis, this would provide predictability of an asthma attack. In response to this challenge, investigators at University of California at Berkeley have developed an inhaler based asthma attack predicting spirometer-biochemical sensor. This innovation combines these two key clinical indicators on an inhaler, which is used regularly and frequently by asthma patients. The asthma attack predicting sensor has an inlet for spirometry measurements where the air flows into one chamber. Here, biochemical levels and airflow are quantified. The asthma attack predicting sensor also has a pressure sensor and signal transducer for the flow rate measurements. All information can be transmitted wirelessly to the clinician. An outlet for the inhaler medication to be released is also provided, just as in a regular inhaler. The first commercial use of the asthma attack predicting sensor will be to monitor the severity in the occurrence of an asthma attack in children ages 8-12 with severe asthma. The broader usages will be to provide information to clinicians for the personalization and predictability of an asthma attack in all asthma patients. Potentially, anyone with asthma, regardless of the severity and age of the user, would find the device beneficial in tracking medical information for personal reasons or to provide the information to their clinician.
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| 22198 |
A Highly Elastic, Nanotube-Based Poisson Capacitor
Typical percolation strain sensors are piezoresistive; that is, they report changes in the resistance of the percolation network as a function of mechanical stimuli. While use, piezoresistive designs can be difficult to tune as they inherently rely on the mechanical stability of the percolation network and are susceptible to hysteresis and variable gauge factors (the normalized change in resistance divided by the applied strain) as the network adjusts over time. To address this challenge, investigators at University of California at Berkeley have developed nanotube Poisson capacitor. This piezocapacitive design functions as an elastomeric parallel plate capacitor. This nanotube Poisson capacitor lends itself to inexpensive fabrication and offers high-strain, reliable performance that is more robust to variability in the properties of the percolation network. The nanotube Poisson capacitor sensor consists of two stretchable, percolating, nanotube electrodes separated by a dielectric silicone. When subjected to uniaxial strain, Poisson;s ratio-mediated contraction of the other axes results in a decrease in the separation distance between the electrodes and a corresponding increase in capacitance.
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| 21065 |
Vector Magnetometer Based On Optical-Absorption Detection Of Ensembles Of Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers In Diamond
In the present geopolitical situation, timely and effective identification of security threats is of crucial importance; such identification should be conducted in a variety of environments, including airport and border security checks, unexploded landmine detection, and in-situ analysis of trace-quantity samples for chemical and biological threats. Among the solid-state devices for these purpose , the most sensitive sensors are based on Superconducting Quantum-Interference Devices (SQUID). However, important shortcomings of these devices include the necessity of cryogenic cooling as well as the absence of intrinsic absolute calibration of the field. An alternative to SQUIDs are atomic magnetometers, which, in recent years, have achieved performance comparable to or, in some cases, even exceeding that of the best SQUIDs. Unfortunately, due to spin-altering collisions, the sensitivity of atomic magnetometers tends to deteriorate at spatial scales smaller than a millimeter. To address this challenge, investigators at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a method for the detection of magnetic fields using the electron spin resonances of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. This innovative magnetometer has the ability to measure all vector components of the magnetic field and can be operated over a wide range of temperatures—from 0 K to well above room temperature. The crux of the UC Berkeley invention is detection of the spin state of ensembles of NV centers using optical absorption at 1042 nm. Sensors based on this technique can achieve a sensitivity approaching 10 fT/rtHz for a 30 x 30 x 500 micron sensor with a bandwidth from DC to 1 MHz.
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| 20985 |
Ringer: A Program To Detect Molecular Motions By Automatic Electron Density Sampling
Ringer distinguishes flexible regions from rigid regions of biomolecules such as drug receptors. To assess the generality and significance of the weak secondary peaks of uniquely modeled residues, we ran Ringer on 402 high-resolution (<=1.5 Å) crystal structures from the Protein Data Bank. Omit electron-density maps were analyzed to reduce the effects of model bias. When applied after refinement is considered complete, Ringer discovers polymorphism at over 3.5 times the frequency that is currently modeled in the PDB. Multiple conformers are found for >18% of unbranched residues in a test set of 402 high-resolution structures, in addition to the 5.1% that are already modeled. More than a method for enhancing crystallographic refinement, however, Ringer is best used as a tool for systematically detecting low-occupancy structural features. The hidden conformational substates identified using Ringer provide clues to the functional roles of protein structural polymorphism and to assess the response of protein side chain distributions to perturbations including ligand binding, temperature changes and mutations. In calmodulin, for example, Ringer identifies side chains that undergo conformational population inversions and side-chain rigidification upon peptide binding, linking the structure to dynamic properties. Similarly, in human proline isomerase, Ringer was used to define the nature of a coupled conformational switch in the free-enzyme that defines motions that occur during turnover. In both cases, the alternate conformations identified by Ringer provided structural insights not available from any other experimental technique. Link to overview of Ringer software
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| 20249 |
Submillimeter-wave Signal Generation By Linear Superimposition Of Phase-shifted Fundamental Tone Signals
Because of nonlinear effects, it is virtually impossible to generate useable submillimeter waves of a frequency greater than 190GHz using CMOS oscillators. In conventional oscillator circuits, which are nonlinear systems, increases in frequency are accompanied by a corresponding loss in gain or efficiency and an increase in noise.
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