Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released by various products and during various processes. Ethanol is one such VOC that is released as an important byproduct of alcoholic fermentation. Ethanol emitted during fermentation can be estimated using the amount of liquid lost during storage. The instrumentation needed to accurately quantify ethanol emissions is specialized and costly. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed low-cost VOC sensors that are useful for the wine industry, among others.

The use of telemedicine/telehealth increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to its accelerated development, utilization and acceptability. Telehealth momentum with patients, providers, and other stakeholders will likely continue, which will further promote its safe and evidence-based use. Improved healthcare by telehealth has also extended to musculoskeletal care. In a recent study looking at implementation of telehealth physical therapy in response to COVID-19, almost 95% of participants felt satisfied with the outcome they received from the telehealth physical therapy (PT) services, and over 90% expressed willingness to attend another telehealth session. While telehealth has enhanced accessibility by virtual patient visits, certain physical rehabilitation largely depends on physical facility and tools for evaluation and therapy. For example, limb kinematics in PT with respect to the shoulder joint is difficult to evaluate remotely, because the structure of the shoulder allows for tri-planar movement that cannot be estimated by simple single plane joint models. With the emergence of gaming technologies, such as videogames and virtual reality (VR), comes new potential tools for virtual-based physical rehabilitation protocols. Some research has shown digital game environments, and associated peripherals like immersive VR (iVR) headsets, can provide a powerful medium and motivator for physical exercise. And while low-cost motion tracking systems exist to match user movement in the real world to that in the virtual environment, challenges remain in bridging traditional PT tooling and telehealth-friendly physical rehabilitation.

During initial stages of development, the human brain self assembles from a vast network of billions of neurons into a system capable of sophisticated cognitive behaviors. The human brain maintains these capabilities over a lifetime of homeostasis, and neuroscience helps us explore the brain’s capabilities. The pace of progress in neuroscience depends on experimental toolkits available to researchers. New tools are required to explore new forms of experiments and to achieve better statistical certainty.Significant challenges remain in modern neuroscience in terms of unifying processes at the macroscopic and microscopic scale. Recently, brain organoids, three-dimensional neural tissue structures generated from human stem cells, are being used to model neural development and connectivity. Organoids are more realistic than two-dimensional cultures, recapitulating the brain, which is inherently three-dimensional. While progress has been made studying large-scale brain patterns or behaviors, as well as understanding the brain at a cellular level, it’s still unclear how smaller neural interactions (e.g., on the order of 10,000 cells) create meaningful cognition. Furthermore, systems for interrogation, observation, and data acquisition for such in vitro cultures, in addition to streaming data online to link with these analysis infrastructures, remains a challenge.

During In the last few decades, the use of miniaturized electrochemical devices has grown rapidly and found diverse applications in scientific and consumer products. The process of developing specialized electrochemical devices is often time-consuming and expensive. Experimental setups involving electrochemistry often use specialized measurement equipment such as a potentiostat. A potentiostat is an analytical instrument that controls the voltage and current between two or more electrodes in a cell. The accuracy, precision, and flexibility of applying or measuring voltages and currents depends on the quality and design of the electronic hardware, which for commercially available potentiostats, often correlate with the device’s cost and architecture. Consequently, one of the challenges faced by today’s electrochemical research community is how to perform modern experimental designs with expensive, asynchronous, and inflexible potentiostats.

Detection of single ionizing particles at rates approaching the gigahertz (GHz) range per channel has potential for applications in medical imaging and treatment as well as particle and nuclear physics. Current ionizing particle detection systems detect with maximum frame rates of ~500 MHz. As accelerators (e.g. XFELs) are upgraded to deliver trains of pulses at faster rates, detection systems will need to keep pace. Methods and devices that can detect at GHz rates will be required to meet the demands of modern societal needs and equipment.

Electric vehicle (EV) energy systems (fuel cell, battery, supercapacitor) demand power conversion technologies that can vary voltage based on the load or state of charge. This means operating in a dynamic operating environment such as supplying energy during acceleration and storing it during braking. DC-DC boost converters are a widely used component in the power systems of EVs to step the voltage between input (supply) to output (load) during charge-discharge periods. Traditional voltage/current controls for DC-DC converters utilize pulse-width modulation (PWM) controls. While PWM has worked well in the past, it lacks practical stability range under uncertain operating parameters due to its reliance on linearized models of DC-DC converter dynamics.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a method of eliminating electrical current mismatches in the charge pumps of phase-locked loops (PLL) systems - thereby increasing their power efficiency and phase detection capabilities.

This invention, a simple and robust method for ammonia detection, offers high-speed in situ quantification of ammonia concentrations with high sensitivity. The ammonia detection system does not require complex instrumentation, analysis, or labeling, which would allow for widespread adoption in chemistry-based fields and surrounding disciplines.

The invention is a smart non-intrusive workflow assessment platform for monitoring and optimizing manufacturing environments. The platform monitors environmental and energy metrics, and provides learning models to classify workers’ activities and relate them to the equipment utilization and performance. Correlating both stream of data enables both workers and supervisors to improve the efficiency of the whole manufacturing process and at an affordable price.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a controller that applies environmental data to optimizing operations of livestock cooling equipment.

A sustainable alternative route to produce Methyl methacrylate (MMA) in an engineered yeast strain.

With the planned proliferation of the Internet-of-Things, billions of power limited wireless sensing devices are expected to be sold worldwide.  Within that group is a large subset of applications in which temperature sensing will be important.  Needed for this application space are ultra-small and ultra-low-power temperature sensors. 

Professor Jonathan Hopkins and colleagues have developed amechanical programmable metamaterial consisting of an array of actively, independently controlled micro-scale unit cells. This technology allows for the application of materials which have instantly changeable, programmable properties that can exceed those of conventional, existing materials.

A low-cost solution to robust electronic packaging of 3-D MEMS devices using micro-glassblown “bubble-shaped” structures.

The invention relates to a technique using a microfluidic device to perform co-encapsulation of samples in droplets and sorting of said droplets. This technique can achieve a one-one-one encapsulation efficiency of about 80% and can significantly improve the droplet sequencing and related applications in single cell genomics and proteomics. .

A pressure sensing device that provides feedback during the insertion of a ureteral access sheath to prevent unwanted damage to the wall of the ureter.

An addictive manufacturing method used to create lightweight materials with tunable physical properties.

A microfluidic device that separates single cells from whole tissue in a rapid and gentle manner using hydrodynamic fluid flow. The separated single cell suspensions can then be used in tissue engineering applications, regenerative medicine and the study of cancer.

UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical Engineering have developed a new portable device to rapidly measure yeast cell viability and concentration using a lab-on-chip design.

UCLA researchers in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry & Physics and Astronomy have developed a novel method to lithograph two polished solid surfaces by using a simple mechanical alignment jig with piezoelectric control and a method of pressing them together and solidifying a material.

UCLA researchers have developed an accurate low-profile shear sensing unit that is viable for both gas and liquid flows.

The technology is a method for fabrication of silicon microfabricated emitter tips.This process has two-step etching process which utilizes field emission electric propulsion (FEEP) and indium propellant.

This technology features new serial bus interface module for constrained sensor systems.It features better matches flashed-based storage devices read and write performance and augments existing flash-based storage with non-volatile RAM.Additionally, user can enable slave to slave transfer and read caching and buffering while flushing with faster speed and lower energy overhead.

The technology is a technique for the capture and removal of carbonates in natural water sources.It features the use of an alternating electromagnetic field (AMF) to induce the formation of calcium carbonate or other carbonate compounds in suspension in water source. Additionally, carbonate compounds are removed using filtration device.

The technology is a circuit that recovers a full-rate clock signal from a random digital data signal. Properties include: achieves frequency and phase locking in a single loop and a wide acquisition range.