Scientists Create Customizable, Fabric-Like Power Source for Wearable Electronics

With any intelligence at all we could use this to power wearable sensors to map exactly how our muscles are not behaving correctly. Then use stroke protocols to corrects those deficits.  Also should be able to sense a fall occurring and inflate protective airbags. Wishful thinking again but at least I have some ideas as compared to the fossilized brains in our fucking failures of stroke associations.

Scientists Create Customizable, Fabric-Like Power Source for Wearable Electronics

Tue, 01/30/2018 - 3:04pm

by Nanyang Technological University

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have created a customizable, fabric-like power source that can be cut, folded or stretched without losing its function. Led by Professor Chen Xiaodong, Associate Chair (Faculty) at the School of Materials Science & Engineering, the team reported in the journal Advanced Materials

 (print edition 8 January) how they have created the wearable power source, a supercapacitor, which works like a fast-charging battery and can be recharged many times. Crucially, they have made their supercapacitor customizable or "editable", meaning its structure and shape can be changed after it is manufactured, while retaining its function as a power source. Existing stretchable supercapacitors are made into predetermined designs and structures, but the new invention can be stretched multi-directionally, and is less likely to be mismatched when it is joined up to other electrical components. The new supercapacitor, when edited into a honeycomb-like structure, has the ability to store an electrical charge four times higher than most existing stretchable supercapacitors. In addition, when stretched to four times its original length, it maintains nearly 98 per cent of the initial ability to store electrical energy, even after 10,000 stretch-and-release cycles. Experiments done by Prof Chen and his team also showed that when the editable supercapacitor was paired with a sensor and placed on the human elbow, it performed better than existing stretchable supercapacitors. The editable supercapacitor was able to provide a stable stream of signals even when the arm was swinging, which are then transmitted wirelessly to external devices, such as one that captures a patient's heart rate. The authors believe that the editable supercapacitor could be easily mass-produced as it would rely on existing manufacturing technologies. Production cost will thus be low, estimated at about SGD$0.13 (USD$0.10) to produce 1 cm2 of the material. The team has filed a patent for the technology. Professor Chen said, "A reliable and editable supercapacitor is important for development of the wearable electronics industry. It also opens up all sorts of possibilities in the realm of the 'Internet-of-Things' when wearable electronics can reliably power themselves and connect and communicate with appliances in the home and other environments. "My own dream is to one day combine our flexible supercapacitors with wearable sensors for health and sports performance diagnostics. With the ability for wearable electronics to power themselves, you could imagine the day when we create a device that could be used to monitor a marathon runner during a race with great sensitivity, detecting signals from both under and over-exertion." The editable supercapacitor is made of strengthened manganese dioxide nanowire composite material. While manganese dioxide is a common material for supercapacitors, the ultralong nanowire structure, strengthened with a network of carbon nanotubes and nanocellulose fibres, allows the electrodes to withstand the associated strains during the customisation process. The NTU team also collaborated with Dr. Loh Xian Jun, Senior Scientist and Head of the Soft Materials Department at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). Dr. Loh said, "Customisable and versatile, these interconnected, fabric-like power sources are able to offer a plug-and-play functionality while maintaining good performance. Being highly stretchable, these flexible power sources are promising next-generation 'fabric' energy storage devices that could be integrated into wearable electronics."

Chocolate intake and incidence of heart failure: Findings from the cohort of Swedish men

Pretty much a totally worthless piece of research. Nothing here to give to ANY FUCKING IDEA of the amounts to take, how long or the type of chocolate.  A great stroke association president would ream out these researchers.  

Chocolate intake and incidence of heart failure: Findings from the cohort of Swedish men

American Heart Journal, 10/12/2016 Steinhaus DA, et al.

For this study, researchers assess the relationship of chocolate intake and heart failure in a large population of Swedish men. In this large prospective cohort study, there was a J–shaped relationship between chocolate consumption and HF (heart failure) incidence. Moderate chocolate consumption was connected with a lower rate of HF hospitalization or death, however, the protective affiliation was not seen among individuals consuming ≥1 servings every day. Methods and Results

• In this study researchers conducted a prospective cohort study.
• A sum of 31,917 men 45–79 years old with no history of myocardial infarction, diabetes, or HF at baseline who were participants in the population–based Cohort of Swedish Men (COSM) study.
• Chocolate intake was evaluated through a self–administrated food frequency questionnaire.
• Participants were taken after for HF hospitalization or mortality from January 1, 1998 to December 31, 2011 utilizing record linkage to the Swedish inpatient and cause–of–death registries.
• Amid 14 years of follow up, 2157 men were hospitalized (n = 1901) or died from incident HF (n = 256).
• Compared with subjects who reported no chocolate consumption, the multivariable–adjusted rate ratio of HF was 0.88 (95%CI 0.78–0.99) for those consuming 1–3 servings each month, 0.83 (95%CI 0.72–0.94) for those consuming 1–2 servings every week, 0.82 (95%CI 0.68–0.99) for those consuming 3–6 servings per week, and 1.10 (95%CI 0.84–1.45) for those consuming ≥ 1 servings every day (P for quadratic trend = 0.001).

Go to Abstract Print Article Summary Cat 2 CME Report

'You never suffer from a money problem, you always suffer from an idea problem."

My fortune from a Japanese, Chinese, Thai restaurant in NYC the other night. Well money is still ok even after losing half the assets in the divorce.  My idea problem is that I think way too large and I don't have the infrastructure or minions to accomplish those ideas.

Electricity generating nano-wizards - for ER stroke use

We could get together a few smart people and come up with solutions to removing blood clots with nano-robots or repairing broken aneurysms. Coiling and tPA are so outdated, why aren't we thinking grand ideas?  They most certainly won't come from any of our existing stroke associations.
http://www.rdmag.com/news/2015/05/electricity-generating-nano-wizards-quantum-dots-are-ideal-nanolab?
Just as alchemists always dreamed of turning common metal into gold, their 19th century physicist counterparts dreamed of efficiently turning heat into electricity, a field called thermoelectrics. Such scientists had long known that, in conducting materials, the flow of energy in the form of heat is accompanied by a flow of electrons. What they did not know at the time is that it takes nanometric-scale systems for the flow of charge and heat to reach a level of efficiency that cannot be achieved with larger scale systems. Now, in a paper published in EPJ B Barbara Szukiewicz and Karol Wysokiński from Marie Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, Poland have demonstrated the importance of thermoelectric effects, which are not easily modelled, in nanostructures.
Since the 1990s, scientists have looked into developing efficient energy generation from nanostructures such as quantum dots. Their advantage: they display a greater energy conversion efficiency leading to the emergence of nanoscale thermoelectrics. The authors evaluate the thermoelectric performance of models made of two quantum dots—which are coupled electrostatically—connected to two electrodes kept at a different temperature and a single quantum dot with two levels. First, they using the theoretical approach based on approximations to calculate the so-called thermoelectric figure of merit, expected to be high for systems with high energy conversion efficiency. Then, they calculated the charge and heat fluxes as a means to define the efficiency of the system.
They found that the outcomes of the direct calculations giving the actual—as opposed to theoretical—performance of the system were less optimistic. For most parameters with an excellent performance, calculated predictions turned out to be surprisingly poor. These findings reveal that effects that are not easily formalized using equations are important at the nanoscale. This, in turn, calls for new ways to optimize the structures before they can be used for nanoscale energy harvesting.

New Ideas Change Your Brain Cells

And what is your doctor doing to stimulate your brain with new ideas? Mine did absolutely nothing, probably hadn't one since childhood. This sounds like enriched environment stimulation to me.
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2014/02/new-ideas-change-your-brain-cells?#.UyByTxD3KDs
A new University of British Columbia study identifies an important molecular change that occurs in the brain when we learn and remember.
Published in Nature Neuroscience, the research shows that learning stimulates our brain cells in a manner that causes a small fatty acid to attach to delta-catenin, a protein in the brain. This biochemical modification is essential in producing the changes in brain cell connectivity associated with learning, the study finds.
In animal models, the scientists found almost twice the amount of modified delta-catenin in the brain after learning about new environments. While delta-catenin has previously been linked to learning, this study is the first to describe the protein’s role in the molecular mechanism behind memory formation.

More at link.