“Controlling devices in a smart home often requires users to start and use an app on their phone. This can be cumbersome (especially with increasing sizes of device ensembles) and puts demands on a user’s attention or engagement they might not be willing or able to fulfill.” – prompting a research team from the University of […]
Tag: electronic
Combining e-noses, e-tongues and e-eyes (study)
You might have come across a sensor device called an ‘Electronic Nose’ (also known as an e-nose). ‘Electronic Tongues’ (e-tongues) are also available. And of course there are various types of ‘Electronic Eyes’ (e-eyes). For a rare example of an academic paper which describes the application of all three at the same time, see: ‘Combination […]
High-tech use for garlic skin – supercapacitors (new study)
Attention electronic engineers – stuck for a suitable material for creating supercapacitor electrodes? Have you thought about carbonized garlic skin? If not, may we recommend a new research paper scheduled for publication in the journal Nanoscale – entitled ‘Synthesis of Garlic Skin-Derived 3D Hierarchical Porous Carbon for High-Performance Supercapacitors’. Researchers Qing Zhang, Kuihua Han, Shijie […]
They made an electronic leech
This paper gives details of the design, and the actual building and testing, of an electronic leech: “Diseño de una sanguijuela electrónica” [Design of an electronic leech].[Article in Spanish], Rev Invest Clin. 2014 Jul;66 Suppl 1:S94-9. Authors: Lomelí-Mejía PA, Domínguez-Rubio R, Espinosa-Gutiérrez A, Lecona-Butrón H, Rodríguez-Reyna RM. The authors, at Laboratorio de Biomecánica, Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación, explain: “This […]
Jaw power (new patent)
“As electronics devices become increasingly powerful and smaller, powering these devices has become a significant concern. It may be troublesome to find compatible power sources when a user is frequently mobile and devices often require multiple recharges per day.” There’s now a new energy-harvesting solution to the problem – the chew-powered fake-tooth piezoelectric generator. It’s […]
Superpowers for baristas
There’s reported progress in the struggle to give baristas (and their bosses, and their boss’s vendors, too) more reliable info about the identities of their coffee beans. Details are in the study “Voltammetric Electronic Tongue and Support Vector Machines for Identification of Selected Features in Mexican Coffee,” by Rocio Berenice Domínguez, Laura Moreno-Barón, Roberto Muñoz, […]
Garbling obliviousness and authenticity (cryptographically)
Lack of security in electronic communications can either be seen as a problem, or an asset, depending on your viewpoint. Either way, it’s a given that a great deal of high-end cryptographic research is currently underway. Accounts of recent progress can be found via Professor Mihir Bellare’s web page at the Department of Computer Science […]
Electronic Rock em Sock em Robots
This video documents the successful attempt to modernize, with electronics, a somewhat beloved mechanical toy: