PhoneSecure
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
I'm not generally an insecure person. I'm perfectly happy with carrying in excess of ?1000 in electronics on my person... well, maybe I should get some protection after all, and I've found it, in the form of PhoneSecure.
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Phraselator
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
One step closer to the babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
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Epson fabricates 20-layer PCB using InkJet tec
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Epson has fabricated a 200micron thick 20 layer using their own InkJet technology with a conductive ink containing silver micro-particles measuring from several nanometers to several tens of nanometers in diameter, and a newly developed insulator ink.
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PetaPixel displays, 100TB storage and more...
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Colossal Storage is developing 14M dpi or 200Tpixels per square inch of near-non-volatile display. It is based on a ferroelectric material which gives each pixel a state retension of up to 12 hours. Display resolutions of up to 4Petapixel will be possible with this technology.
Colossal Storage is also developing a holographic media which can store 10TB on a single 3?" disc. The theory behind it can go up to 1.5Exabytes (1.5x10^1
.
They are currently looking for companies who are interresting in licensing the products.
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A Little Retro-Tech: Milk Paint and Chemical Sensitivity
article written by : killdashnine released on : 24 March, 2004 | send killdashnine a private message! killdashnine's rating : ***** |
I sometimes fail to remember that technology is not just about computers and electronic gadgets ... tech is, in an anthropological sense, all the things that people come up with to make their lives better.
Not long ago, I took a weekend trip to a small river city called Hermann where I toured the Strehly House and Winery (it's namesake granted from Carl Procopius Strehly ... what a cool middle name to have!). The tour guide got to talking about how they had to use a particular kind of paint called "milk paint" on the house to preserve it's original style, and got off-topic rather quickly when I asked him to elaborate.
Milk and not Acrylic? Say ye not ... looks the same to me (the yellow on the wall is milk paint)
Milk Paint
Milk paint has been around for ages (literally). To me, however, this seemed novel ... like a "retro tech" concept just waiting for ZZZ. My tour guide indicated that they used milk paint to preserve the historical tradition of the home ... it's what the original tenants of this home would have used.
"Early American Colonists and Shakers painted their furniture and interiors with Milk Paint using a formula that dated back to Ancient Egypt. Up until the middle 1800's paint was not sold commercially. People made their own. The most common recipe contained milk protein, quicklime and earth pigments. Because of the unique durability of Milk Paint, many fine examples still exist that are hundreds of years old and whose finish is just as true as the day the paint was applied."
Attractive colors, but when the cat's licking it tomorrow, will it survive?
From Milk Paint to MCS
Well, the story really isn't over. Since I was one of only three people including the tour guide and my fiance?, we spent a lot of time getting off-subject. I was still intrigued by the idea that commercial industries took renewed interest in this product, but he also knew of a family that had two sons whom had come down with a strange illness. Their doctor diagnosed as MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome).
I balked at this a little bit. I've had allergies since being a small kid, but I'm not really allergic to anything un-natural. It's just the trees, the grass, cats and dogs living together ... staying indoors has improved my reaction to the hostile world of pollen. But in the case of this family, their two young boys continued to get sicker and sicker until, per the doctor's request, they basically isolated them from any modern chemically-based products (including lots of foods, cleaning materials, and other things we take for granted). In other words, the "radical separatist avoidance approach" to anything modern. Heck, even the Amish are less anti-social ...
MCS syndrome is characterized by the patient's belief that his or her symptoms are caused by very low-level exposure to environmental chemicals. "Common symptoms include fatigue, difficulty concentrating, depressed mood, memory loss, weakness, dizziness, headaches, heat intolerance and arthralgias."
"No evidence based on well-controlled clinical trials is available that supports a cause-and-effect relationship between exposure to very low levels of substances and the myriad symptoms reported by clinical ecologists to result from such exposure . . . . Until such accurate, reproducible, and well-controlled studies are available, the American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs believes that multiple chemical sensitivity should not be considered a recognized clinical syndrome."
- aafp.org
So then, probably bunnies on Mars are more likely ...
Hop Hop ... Screw this, where's Marvin?
Of course, the study of endocrinology leaves a lot of us thinking ... there could be some truth to this. We know detergents can create estrogen-mimicking compounds in the environment and perhaps some people are particularly sensitive to these kinds of things. This phenomenon in the world of chemistry called sensitization makes me think that what's happening is sensitivity to a certain chemical, but likely not all of them ... just look at the MSDS (Material Data Safety Sheet) for traditional paint (say a nice interior latex) ...
Propylene glycol has been known to cause lactic acidosis, which can't be good ... As opposed to the MSDS for milk paint ... we've got: Calcium Hydroxide, Quartz, Magnesium Aluminum, Silicate, Aluminum Silicate, and various Iron Oxides. Still chemistry, but a whole lot more inert!
Alas, it seems that we are evolving and those who can't survive some toxicity will have difficulty coping with an increasingly man-made world. I guess one could try out some nice modern Low VOC paints, or wear a mask!
So sexy, she just can't resist me!
Color-Changing Gels and Iridescent Inks
article written by : killdashnine released on : 25 March, 2004 | send killdashnine a private message! killdashnine's rating : ***** |
Color-Changing Gels
Well, so much for retro-tech. I personally want to paint my walls with something that morphs and changes depending on my mood or changes to match the color scheme of any guests who happen to be moping about the house. Maybe like these color change gels that I keep hearing about?
Gel color changes with swelling/contraction
-Research from Hokkaido University
"The Fuji Xerox team make tiny, contractible pigment bags from a polymer known as NIPAM. Its long, chainlike molecules can be crosslinked to form a soft gel. The gel's volume is controlled by temperature. At around 34 ?C, the polymer molecules suddenly contract, and the gel collapses to 10% or less of its original volume."
-activematerials.com
Imagine the windows in your home having a thin pigment layer that changes with different temperatures! In the case of this research, when heat increases, the particles in the gel shrink and the gel becomes clear ... as it cools, it turns dark. Maybe it's not currently best suited as "octopus paint", but it'd surely help keep temperatures down in the summer months.
... and Iridescent Inks
Similar to the color-changing gel is a new substance called "iridescent ink" or "photonic ink". Before, your digital paper (have we even really seen this yet?) could only show up in black or white. Now it can go through a whole range of colors leading us to potentially beautiful e-paper variants.
"The technology is also well suited for electronic-paper applications, as it is stable once set, requiring power only when changing color. P-ink is created by forming a matrix of cross-linked polyferrocenylsilane, a metallopolymer network with a continuously variable degree of conductivity, in the void spaces of a silica colloidal crystal film composed of unconnected silica microspheres."
electronicproducts.com
Ewww, polyferrocenylsilane ... MCS sufferers are never going to be able to touch that stuff!
I bet MCS sufferers would have a problem with this too ...
"Polyferrocenylsilanes (PFSs) are a class of organometallic polymers whose unusual physical properties arise due to the presence of iron atoms which are contained within the polymer via the presence of the ferrocene group in the backbone chain. A wide range of potential applications is envisioned, for example, in chemo-mechanical sensors, ceramic precursors, electrochromic materials, electrode mediators, and variable refractive-index materials. Another attractive application is in nanocrystal/polymer composites where the polymer with appropriate functional groups is intended to replace the surface ligands and simultaneously to deliver electronic excitations to the nanocrystals in a light emitting device."
Changes in properties of the chemistry (conductivity) allow different light frequencies to reflect off the surface ... hence color!
-Courtesy Geoffrey Ozin's Lab Website
And to think that all my studies in Inorganic Chemistry I considered boring at the time ...
Issue Image!
Ummm, which is it?