Gizmorama - August 20, 2014

Good Morning,

Hey, get ready to make your tattoos work for you. At the American Chemical Society's annual conference, an interesting development was unveiled. It was a removable tattoo that doubles as a miniature battery -- turning human sweat into storable electricity. I guess more power to you.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Temporary battery tattoo turns human sweat into electricity --*
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) - Scientists continue to unveil impressive innovations at the American Chemical Society's annual conference, currently being held in San Francisco. The latest is a removable tattoo that doubles as a miniature battery -- turning human sweat into storable electricity.

The device is meant to be worn during a trip to the gym. It can monitor a person's progress during exercise routines while simultaneously powering a small electronic device, like an iPod.

The mini tattoo tracks athletic performance by measuring levels of lactate in sweat secreted by the exerciser.

"Lactate is a very important indicator of how you are doing during exercise," explained researcher Wenzhao Jia, in an ACS press release. Jia is one of the engineers from UC San Diego who helped developed the biobattery.

Lactate is a byproduct of a process called glycolysis; the body instigates glycolysis to shore up extra energy when it is overexerted. As a general rule, higher levels of lactate are produced and excreted when the body undergoes more intense levels of exercise. Doctors and physical therapists often measure lactate as a way to test physical fitness. A fit person will likely not produce as high levels of lactate as a less-in-shape person performing the same exercise. Physicians sometimes look for abnormally high lactate levels as a way to identify heart or lung disease.

Currently, lactate testing is done via blood samples. But by installing a lactate sensor in a temporary tattoo, researchers found a way to track performance in a much less evasive way. They also found a way to produce electricity. As the sensor processes the lactate in the sweat, it strips the lactate of electrons.

Engineers designed the sensor so it could pass the stripped electrons from an anode to a cathode, just like a battery.

UC nanoengineering professor Dr. Joseph Wang said the device is "the first example of a biofuel cell that harvests energy from body fluid."

"The current produced is not that high," Jia admitted, "but we are working on enhancing it so that eventually we could power some small electronic devices."

Ultimately engineers could have a device that is powered by -- more or less -- the same thing it measures.

The biobattery presentation by UC San Diego engineers is one of 2,000 projects, studies, products and theories being shared at the ACS conference.


*-- Dust captured by NASA probe likely from beyond our solar system --*
BERKELEY, Calif. (UPI) - As it's name suggests, NASA's Stardust probe had one primary mission when it was launched in 1999 -- capture space dust, both from a comet's coma and free-floating particles from the surrounding cosmos. It accomplished that task and safely parachuted back to Earth in 2006.

Now, after several years of lab work with the particles, scientists say Stardust likely captured interstellar particles -- dust from outside our solar system.

The probe caught the dust using its tennis racket-like arm, which it held out as it drifted through space. The racket's string-like grid of aluminum cells was filled with particle-catching aerogel, a silica-based foam as light as air. The gel was ideal for capturing space dust without damaging the delicate particles. The only problem: NASA engineers designed and launched the probe without a plan to get the dust particles out.

Ultimately, engineers decided the best strategy was to not try to remove them at all. Instead, they scanned the gel with an automated microscope and then had hundreds of volunteer citizen scientists help them analyze the data to find the different particles' imprints.

Andrew Westphal, who lead the research at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, said he and his colleagues -- including several hundred online volunteers -- located 31 different footprints or tracks of tiny cosmic dust particles. "All of the indications point to an interstellar origin,"
Westphal claimed.

"We've thought hard about alternative explanations for where these grains came from," he told National Geographic, but says somewhere out in between distant stars is the best explanation.

Westphal's work is detailed in the latest edition of the journal Science. The 714 amateur scientists that helped Westphal and his Berkeley colleagues locate the dust are listed as co-authors.

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