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A fleet of 100 floating robots took a trip down the Sacramento River today (Wednesday, May 9) in a field test organized by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley. The smartphone-equipped floating robots demonstrated the next generation of water monitoring technology, promising to transform the way government agencies monitor one of the state’s most precious resources.

The Floating Sensor Network project, led by associate professor Alexandre Bayen, a researcher at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), offers a network of mobile sensors that can be deployed rapidly to provide real-time, high-resolution data in hard-to-map waterways. One area that stands to benefit from this technology is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, with its complex network of channels that direct drinking water to two-thirds of California’s population and irrigation water for 3 million acres of agriculture.

Having a high volume of sensors moving through the water can shed light on processes that are influenced by how water moves, such as the spread of pollutants, the migration of salmon or how salt and fresh water mix in the Delta’s ecosystem, the researchers said. Today’s field test gave researchers a picture of how water moves through a junction in the river with a resolution never before achieved.

Andrew Tinka tosses a floating robot into the Sacramento River. (Jerome Thai photo)

“We are putting water online,” said Bayen, who holds joint appointments in UC Berkeley’s departments of electrical engineering and computer sciences and of civil and environmental engineering. “Monitoring the state’s water supply is critical for the general public, water researchers and government agencies, which now rely upon costly fixed water sensor stations that don’t always generate sufficient data for modeling and prediction. The mobile probes we are using could potentially expand coverage in the Delta — on demand — to hundreds of miles of natural and manmade channels that are currently under-monitored, and help agencies responsible for managing the state’s limited water supply.”

Such a flexible system could be critical in the event of an emergency, including a levee breach or oil spill, the researchers noted. The sensors could be thrown into action from a dock, shore, boats or even helicopters.

“If something spills in the water, if there’s a contaminant, you need to know where it is now, you need to know where it’s going, you need to know where it will be later on,” said Andrew Tinka, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering and computer sciences and the lead graduate student on the project. “The Floating Sensor Network project can help by tracking water flow at a level of detail not currently possible.”

The May 9 launch in Walnut Grove, Calif., marked a milestone in the project, which is supported by CITRIS and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). It was the first time researchers deployed their full arsenal of floats, each equipped with GPS-enabled mobile phones encased in 12-inch-long watertight capsules marked with fluorescent tape. The researchers wrote specific programs to run on the open source platforms used in the robots and on the smartphones.

The project is an evolution of earlier research led by Bayen called Mobile Century and Mobile Millennium, which uses GPS-enabled smartphones to monitor traffic flow. Instead of a map of traffic, the Floating Century mobile probes created a map of water flow.

Every few seconds, the phones in the floats transmitted location data back to servers at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), where the data was assimilated using a computer model called REALM (River, Estuary and Land Model). Information was processed to create a map that allowed researchers to track the devices on their computer monitors.

UC Berkeley researchers retrieve floating robots in a field experiment on the Sacramento River. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

“Not only is this project interesting from a data collection perspective, but it also presents a new challenge for us on the data processing side,” said Shane Canon, head of the Technology Integration Group at NERSC. “While the total amount of data is not unusual, the streaming rate is higher than we usually see, and the researchers are looking to access the data in near real-time.”

The REALM model was developed by researchers at the Berkeley Lab and the California Department of Water Resources. It was later expanded to integrate data from mobile robots by Qingfang Wu, a UC Berkeley graduate student in civil and environmental engineering.

“Part of the novelty of this project is the use of the NERSC computer cluster to run large-scale data assimilation problems,” said Wu. “The floating sensor project demands the ability to process hundreds of parallel versions of REALM and integrate the results into an estimate of the hydrodynamics of the Delta.”

Although the sensors in the test were set up to monitor the speed of water currents, the researchers said the floats could be equipped with sensors for a variety of measurements, including temperature, salinity, or a contaminant of interest.

Of the 100 floats in the fleet, 40 were autonomous devices fitted with propellers to help them move around obstacles or targeted areas.

“The major constraint on floating sensors in inland environments is their tendency to get stuck on the shores,” said Tinka. “Currently, using floating sensors requires close human supervision. We are developing autonomous, actuated sensors that can use propulsion to avoid obstacles.”

The floating robots on the left are passive, going where the currents take them. The devices on the right are autonomous and have propellers that help them maneuver away from obstacles in the water. (Jonathan Beard photo)

The Floating Sensor Network’s fleet of robots includes prototypes with advanced capabilities, including models that can dive below the surface of the water, versions equipped with salinity sensors to measure the water quality in rivers, and versions with depth sensors that can map out the shape of the channels in which they float.

“Our development efforts show the versatility of this technology and how it can adapt to the challenges faced in different applications,” said Bayen. “For example, the capability to measure depth is particularly important in situations where it is impractical or dangerous to send personnel to do the job, such as in military operations in combat zones. Floating sensor fleets also provide capabilities which can be used to improve our understanding of the shape of domestic rivers and deltas.”

The floating sensor network has been tested in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assess water discharge downstream from broken levees. The researchers are also planning a deployment to monitor the ecosystem of Lake Tahoe in the coming months.

Floats are retrieved at the end of experiments, but the researchers acknowledged the possibility that devices can get lost. The researchers said they expect the expense of individual sensors to go down with continuing advances in mobile communications so that the system can better tolerate a certain level of device dropout.

“In the future, cost and size will go down, while performance and autonomy will go up, enabling monitoring at unprecedented scales,” said Bayen. “We expect this to become an invaluable tool for the future management of a critical resource in this state and around the world.”

Source: UC Berkeley NewsCenter

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The Organic Electronics Research Group at Linköping University (LiU) in Sweden, led by Professor Magnus Berggren, attracted great attention a year ago when Lars Herlogsson showed in his doctoral thesis that it was possible to construct fully functional field-effect transistors out of plastic.

Kergoat, a post-doc in the same research group, now shows that transistors made of plastic can be controlled with great precision.

If a transistor is to be usable in a logic circuit, the threshold voltage, where the transistor switches from off to on, or zero to one, must be well defined. Kergoat has now shown that by changing the material on the gate electrode, the electrode in a transistor that governs the current through both the other electrodes, the threshold voltage can also gradually be shifted.

“Transistors built from organic electronics need to be able to be controlled with weak voltages, preferably as close to zero as possible,” Kergoat says.

By changing the electrode material, for example from gold to calcium, the threshold voltage is reduced by as much as 0.9V.

“This means that we can control exactly one of the most important properties of our transistors, which is of great significance now that we’re building circuits of various types,” Berggren says.

Research was conducted in collaboration between the Organic Electronics Group in the Linköping University Department of Science and Technology and a research group at the Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7, where Berggren was a guest professor between 2009 and 2011.

Source: Linköping Universitet, via AlphaGalileo

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The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.

Their generator is the first to produce electricity by harnessing the piezoelectric properties of a biological material. Piezoelectricity is the accumulation of a charge in a solid in response to mechanical stress.

The milestone could lead to tiny devices that harvest electrical energy from the vibrations of everyday tasks such as shutting a door or climbing stairs.

It also points to a simpler way to make microelectronic devices. That’s because the viruses arrange themselves into an orderly film that enables the generator to work. Self-assembly is a much sought after goal in the finicky world of nanotechnology.

The scientists describe their work in a May 13 advance online publication of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics,” says Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and a UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering.

He conducted the research with a team that includes Ramamoorthy Ramesh, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a professor of materials sciences, engineering, and physics at UC Berkeley; and Byung Yang Lee of Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division.

The M13 bacteriophage has a length of 880 nanometers and a diameter of 6.6 nanometers. It’s coated with approximately 2700 charged proteins that enable scientists to use the virus as a piezoelectric nanofiber.

The piezoelectric effect was discovered in 1880 and has since been found in crystals, ceramics, bone, proteins, and DNA. It’s also been put to use. Electric cigarette lighters and scanning probe microscopes couldn’t work without it, to name a few applications.

But the materials used to make piezoelectric devices are toxic and very difficult to work with, which limits the widespread use of the technology.

Lee and colleagues wondered if a virus studied in labs worldwide offered a better way. The M13 bacteriophage only attacks bacteria and is benign to people. Being a virus, it replicates itself by the millions within hours, so there’s always a steady supply. It’s easy to genetically engineer. And large numbers of the rod-shaped viruses naturally orient themselves into well-ordered films, much the way that chopsticks align themselves in a box.

These are the traits that scientists look for in a nano building block. But the Berkeley Lab researchers first had to determine if the M13 virus is piezoelectric. Lee turned to Ramesh, an expert in studying the electrical properties of thin films at the nanoscale. They applied an electrical field to a film of M13 viruses and watched what happened using a special microscope. Helical proteins that coat the viruses twisted and turned in response — a sure sign of the piezoelectric effect at work.

The bottom 3-D atomic force microscopy image shows how the viruses align themselves side-by-side in a film. The top image maps the film’s structure-dependent piezoelectric properties, with higher voltages a lighter color.

Next, the scientists increased the virus’s piezoelectric strength. They used genetic engineering to add four negatively charged amino acid residues to one end of the helical proteins that coat the virus. These residues increase the charge difference between the proteins’ positive and negative ends, which boosts the voltage of the virus.

The scientists further enhanced the system by stacking films composed of single layers of the virus on top of each other. They found that a stack about 20 layers thick exhibited the strongest piezoelectric effect.

The only thing remaining to do was a demonstration test, so the scientists fabricated a virus-based piezoelectric energy generator. They created the conditions for genetically engineered viruses to spontaneously organize into a multilayered film that measures about one square centimeter. This film was then sandwiched between two gold-plated electrodes, which were connected by wires to a liquid-crystal display.

When pressure is applied to the generator, it produces up to six nanoamperes of current and 400 millivolts of potential. That’s enough current to flash the number “1″ on the display, and about a quarter the voltage of a triple A battery.

“We’re now working on ways to improve on this proof-of-principle demonstration,” says Lee. “Because the tools of biotechnology enable large-scale production of genetically modified viruses, piezoelectric materials based on viruses could offer a simple route to novel microelectronics in the future.”

From left, Byung Yang Lee, Seung-Wuk Lee, and Ramamoorthy Ramesh developed the “viral-electric” generator. (Photos by Roy Kaltschmidt of Berkeley Lab. The video and scientific images are courtesy of Seung-Wuk Lee’s lab)

Berkeley Lab’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development fund and the National Science Foundation supported this work.

Source: DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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As medical researchers and engineers try to shrink diagnostics to fit in a person’s pocket, one question is how to easily move and mix small samples of liquid.

Drops of red and blue liquid move along the upper and lower surface of the vibrating UW platform at speeds up to 1 inch per second. This combined image shows drops as they move toward the center and merge. (Karl Bohringer, UW)

University of Washington researchers have built and patented a surface that, when shaken, moves drops along certain paths to conduct medical or environmental tests.

“This allows us to move drops as far as we want, and in any kind of layout that we want,” said Karl Böhringer, a UW professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering. The low-cost system, published in a recent issue of the journal Advanced Materials, would require very little energy and avoids possible contamination by diluting or electrifying the samples in order to move them.

The simple technology is a textured surface that tends to push drops along a given path. It’s inspired by the lotus effect – a phenomenon in which a lotus leaf’s almost fractal texture makes it appear to repel drops of water.

“The lotus leaf has a very rough surface, in which each big bump has a smaller bump on it,” Böhringer said. “We can’t make our surface exactly the same as a lotus leaf, but what we did is extract the essence of why it works.”

A drop of liquid sits on the textured silicon surface that has arced rungs to guide the drop, and a grid of pillars to keep the drop in the channel. (Karl Bohringer, UW)

The UW team used nanotechnology manufacturing techniques to build a surface with tiny posts of varying height and spacing. When a drop sits on this surface, it makes so little contact with the surface that it’s almost perfectly round. That means even a small jiggle can move it.
Researchers used an audio speaker or machine to vibrate the platform at 50 to 80 times per second. The asymmetrical surface moves individual drops along predetermined paths to mix, modify or measure their contents. Changing the vibration frequency can alter a drop’s speed, or can target a drop of a certain size or weight.

“All you need is a vibration, and making these surfaces is very easy. You can make it out of a piece of plastic,” Böhringer said. “I could imagine this as a device that costs less than a dollar – maybe much less than that – and is used with saliva or blood or water samples.”

A close-up of the UW surface showing the arc edges and adjacent pillars. (Karl Bohringer, UW)

In testing, different versions of the UW system could move the drops uphill, downhill, in circles, upside down, or join two drops and then move the combined sample.
The type of system is known as a “lab in a drop”: all the ingredients are inside the drop, and surface tension acts as the container to keep everything together.

A student tried using a smartphone’s speaker to vibrate the platform, but so far a phone does not supply enough energy to move the drops. To better accommodate low-energy audio waves, the group will use the UW’s electron beam lithography machine to build a surface with posts up to 100 times smaller.

“There’s good evidence, from what we’ve done so far, that if we make everything smaller then we will need less energy to achieve the same effect,” Böhringer said. “We envision a device that you plug into your phone, it’s powered by the battery of the phone, an app generates the right type of audio vibrations, and you run your experiment.”

Co-authors of the paper are former UW undergraduate Todd Duncombe and former UW graduate student Yegȃn Erdem, both at the University of California, Berkeley; former UW postdoctoral researcher Ashutosh Shastry, now at Corium International in Menlo Park, Calif.; and Rajashree Baskaran, a UW affiliate assistant professor of electrical engineering who works at Intel Corp.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Intel and the UW’s Technology Gap Innovation Fund.

Source: University of Washington

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Dr. Sanjoy Banerjee, Director, CUNY Energy Institute, shows the Institute’s prototype zinc anode battery system located in Steinman Hall on The City College of New York campus. (Credit: Image courtesy of City College of New York)

Zinc anode batteries offer an environmentally friendlier and less costly alternative to nickel cadmium batteries. In the longer term, they also could replace lead-acid batteries at the lower cost end of the market. However, the challenge of dendrite formation associated with zinc had to be addressed. Dendrites are crystalline structures that cause batteries to short out.

To prevent dendrite build-up, CUNY researchers developed a flow-assisted zinc anode battery with a sophisticated advanced battery management system (BMS) that controls the charge/discharge protocol. To demonstrate the new technology and its applications, which range from peak electricity demand reduction to grid-scale energy storage, they have assembled a 36 kilowatt-hour rechargeable battery system.

The system, housed in the basement of Steinman Hall on The City College of New York campus, consists of 36 individual one kWh nickel-zinc flow-assisted cells strung together and operated by the BMS. In peak electricity demand reduction, batteries charge during low usage periods, i.e. overnight, and discharge during peak-demand periods when surcharges for power usage are very high.

“This is affordable, rechargeable electricity storage made from cheap, non-toxic materials that are inherently safe,” said Dr. Sanjoy Banerjee, director of the CUNY Energy Institute and distinguished professor of engineering in CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering. “The entire Energy Institute has worked on these batteries – stacking electrodes, mounting terminals, connecting to the inverters – and they are going to be a game changer for the electric grid.”

The batteries are designed for more than 5,000 – 10,000 charge cycles and a useful life exceeding ten years. The demonstration system is being expanded currently to 100 kWh, with another 200 kWh to be installed later this year. At that point, it will be capable of meeting more than 30 percent of Steinman Hall’s peak-demand power needs, yielding savings of $6,000 or more per month.

Professor Banerjee sees initial applications for the batteries in industrial facilities and large, commercial properties. The nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries that would be initially replaced are used in applications that range from backup power for server farmers to very large starter motors. Other large-scale Ni-Cd applications include grid support, like a system in Alaska that deploys a 45 MW Ni-Cd battery array.

The CUNY Energy Institute’s zinc anode battery system can be produced for a cost in the $300 – $500 per kWh range, which for many applications has a three to five-year payback period. The cost is being rapidly reduced and is expected to reach $200 kWh with a year.

To commercialize the batteries, researchers plan to have a company operational by fall 2012 with the goal of breaking even within two years, Professor Banerjee said. The company will probably set up its pilot manufacturing facility in close proximity to City College, he added.

Credit: CUNY Energy Institute

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