Pill camera

A pill camera is a piece of equipment used for a procedure known as capsule endoscopy. It was developed in the late 20th century and was approved for use by the FDA in 2001.

The camera is about 1 inch long and one-half inch in diameter, with rounded edges making it shaped like a drug capsule (although slightly larger). It is comprised of a camera, flash, plastic capsule, and transmitter (at present, usually Bluetooth (TM)). It is small enough to be swallowed.

The pill camera is most often used when a disease of the small intestine is suspected. The upper digestive tract can usually be examined with an endoscope, and for problems with the large intestine, a colonoscopy is preferred. However, neither of those two procedures allow examination of the small intestine. In addition, the pill camera is minimally invasive. However, unlike endoscopy and colonoscopy, a pill camera cannot be used to treat a pathology. Pill camera use Capsule endoscopy. Capsule endoscopy is a way to record images of the digestive tract for use in medicine. The capsule is the size and shape of a pill and contains a tiny camera. After a patient swallows the capsule, it takes pictures of the inside of the gastrointestinal tract. The primary use of capsule endoscopy is to examine areas of the small intestine that cannot be seen by other types of endoscopy such as colonoscopy.


Uses

Capsule endoscopy is used to examine parts of the gastrointestinal tract that cannot be seen with other types of endoscopy. Upper endoscopy, also called EGD, uses a camera attached to a long flexible tube to view the esophagus, the stomach and the beginning of the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum. A colonoscopy, inserted through the rectum, can view the colon and the distal portion of the small intestine, the terminal ileum. These two types of endoscopy cannot visualize the majority of the middle portion of the gastrointestinal tract, the small intestine. Capsule endoscopy is useful when the disease is suspected in the small intestine, and can sometimes diagnose sources of occult bleeding or causes of abdominal pain such as Crohn's disease, or peptic ulcers. Capsule endoscopy can be used to diagnose problems in the small intestine, but unlike EGD or colonoscopy, it cannot treat pathology that may be discovered. Capsule endoscopy transfers the captured images wirelessly to an external receiver worn by the patient using one of the appropriate frequency bands. The collected images are then transferred to a computer for diagnosis, review, and display. A transmitted radio-frequency signal can be used to accurately estimate the location of the capsule and to track it in real time inside the body and gastrointestinal tract.

Linear Actuator

A linear actuator is an actuator that creates motion in a straight line, in contrast to the circular motion of a conventional electric motor. Linear actuators are used in machine tools and industrial machinery, in computer peripherals such as disk drives and printers, in valves and dampers, and in many other places where linear motion is required. Hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders inherently produce linear motion. Many other mechanisms are used to generate linear motion from a rotating motor.


Principles

In the majority of linear actuator designs, the basic principle of operation is that of an inclined plane. The threads of a lead screw act as a continuous ramp that allows a small rotational force to be used over a long distance to accomplish movement of a large load over a short distance.


Variations

Many variations on the basic design have been created. Most focus on providing general improvements such as higher mechanical efficiency, speed, or load capacity. There is also a large engineering movement towards actuator miniaturization.

Most electro-mechanical designs incorporate a lead screw and lead nut. Some use a ball screw and ball nut. In either case, the screw may be connected to a motor or manual control knob either directly or through a series of gears. Gears are typically used to allow a smaller (and weaker) motor spinning at a higher rpm to be geared down to provide the torque necessary to spin the screw under a heavier load than the motor would otherwise be capable of driving directions. Effectively this sacrifices actuator speed in favor of increased actuator thrust. In some applications, the use of worm gear is common as this allows a smaller built-in dimension still allowing great travel length.


Advantages

1. Cheap. Repeatable. No power source required. Self-contained. Identical behavior extending or retracting.

2. Cheap. Repeatable. An operation can be automated. Self-contained. Identical behavior extending or retracting. DC or stepping motors. Position feedback possible.

3. Simple design. Minimum of moving parts. High speeds possible. Self-contained. Identical behavior extending or retracting.

4. Very small motions possible.

5. Very high forces possible

6. Strong, light, simple, fast.

7. Very compact. The range of motion greater than the length of the actuator.


Disadvantages

1. Manual operation only. No automation.

2. Many moving parts prone to wear.

3. Low to medium force.

4. Consumes barely any power. Short travel unless amplified mechanically. High speeds speed. High voltages required, typically 24V or more. Expensive, and fragile. Good in compression only, not in tension. Typically used for Fuel Injectors

Paper battery

A paper battery is an ultra-thin electric battery engineered to use a spacer formed largely of cellulose (the major constituent of paper). It incorporates nanoscale structures to act as high surface-area electrodes to improve the conduction of electricity.

In addition to being ultra-thin, paper batteries are flexible and environmentally-friendly, allowing integration into a wide range of products. Their functioning is similar to conventional chemical batteries with the important difference that they are non-corrosive and do not require a bulky housing.

A paper battery is flexible, ultra-thin energy storage and production device formed by combining carbon nanotube s with a conventional sheet of cellulose-based paper. A paper battery acts as both a high-energy battery and supercapacitor, combining two components that are separate in traditional electronics. This combination allows the battery to provide both long-term, steady power production and bursts of energy. Non-toxic, flexible paper batteries have the potential to power the next generation of electronics, medical devices, and hybrid vehicles, allowing for radical new designs and medical technologies.

Paper batteries may be folded, cut or otherwise shaped for different applications without any loss of integrity or efficiency. Cutting one in half halves its energy production. Stacking them multiplies power output. Early prototypes of the device are able to produce 2.5-volt s of electricity from a sample the size of a postage stamp.


Development

The creation of this nanocomposite paper drew from a diverse pool of disciplines, requiring expertise in materials science, energy storage, and chemistry. In August 2007, a research team (led by Drs. Robert Linhardt; Pulickel Ajayan; and Omkaram Nalamasu) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute developed the paper battery. Victor Pushparaj, along with Shaijumon M. Manikoth, Ashavani Kumar, and Saravanababu Murugesan, were co-authors and lead researchers of the project. Other co-authors include Lijie Ci and Robert Vajtai.

This cellulose based spacer is compatible with many possible electrolytes. Researchers used ionic liquid, essentially a liquid salt, as the battery electrolyte, as well as naturally occurring electrolytes such as human sweat, blood, and urine. Use of an ionic liquid, containing no water, would mean that there would nothing in the batteries to freeze or evaporate, potentially allowing operation in extreme temperatures.


Durability

Paper batteries are alleged to look, feel and weigh the same as ordinary paper because its components are molecularly attached to each other: the carbon nanotubes print is embedded in the paper, and the electrolyte is soaked into the paper.


Uses

The paper-like quality of the battery combined with the structure of the nanotubes embedded within gives them their light weight and low cost, making them ideal for portable electronics, aircraft, automobiles, and toys (such as model aircraft), while their ability to use electrolytes in the blood make them potentially useful for medical devices such as pacemakers, medical diagnostic equipment, and drug delivery transdermal patches. A German healthcare company called KSW Microtech is already using the battery to power monitoring of the temperature of blood supplies.

The medical uses are particularly attractive because the batteries do not contain any toxic materials and can be biodegradable, unlike most chemical cells.

Paper battery technology can also be used in supercapacitors.

Smart antenna

Smart antennas (also known as adaptive array antennas, multiple antennas and, recently, MIMO) are antenna arrays with smart signal processing algorithms used to identify spatial signal signature such as the direction of arrival (DOA) of the signal, and use it to calculate beamforming vectors, to track and locate the antenna beam on the mobile/target. Smart antennas should not be confused with reconfigurable antennas, which have similar capabilities but are single element antennas and not an antenna arrays.

Smart antenna techniques are used notably in acoustic signal processing, track and scan radar, radio astronomy and radio telescopes, and mostly in cellular systems like W-CDMA and UMTS.

Smart antennas have two main functions: DOA estimation and Beamforming.

A smart antenna is a digital wireless communications antenna system that takes advantage of diversity effect at the source (transmitter), the destination (receiver), or both.

In conventional wireless communications, a single antenna is used at the source, and another single antenna is used at the destination. This is called SISO (single input, single output). Such systems are vulnerable to problems caused by multipath effects. When an electromagnetic field (EM field) is met with obstructions such as hills, canyons, buildings, and utility wires, the wavefronts are scattered, and thus they take many paths to reach the destination. The late arrival of scattered portions of the signal causes problems such as fading, cut-out (cliff effect), and intermittent reception (picket fencing). In a digital communications system like the Internet, it can cause a reduction in data speed and an increase in the number of errors. The use of smart antennas can reduce or eliminate the trouble caused by multipath wave propagation.

Smart antennas fall into three major categories: SIMO (single input, multiple outputs), MISO (multiple input, single output), and MIMO (multiple input, multiple output). In SIMO technology, one antenna is used at the source, and two or more antennas are used at the destination. In MISO technology, two or more antennas are used at the source, and one antenna is used at the destination. In MIMO technology, multiple antennas are employed at both the source and the destination. MIMO has attracted the most attention recently because it can not only eliminate the adverse effects of multipath propagation but in some cases can turn it into an advantage.


Types of smart antennas

Two of the main types of smart antennas include switched beam smart antennas and adaptive array smart antennas. Switched beam systems have several available fixed beam patterns. A decision is made as to which beam to access, at any given point in time, based upon the requirements of the system. Adaptive arrays allow the antenna to steer the beam to any direction of interest while simultaneously nulling interfering signals. Beam direction can be estimated using the so-called direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation methods. In 2008, the United States NTIA began a major effort to assist consumers in the purchase of digital television converter boxes. Through this effort, many people have been exposed to the concept of smart antennas for the first time. In the context of consumer electronics, a smart antenna is one that conforms to the EIA/CEA-909 Standard Interface.

Spintronics

Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics, also known as spin-electronics or Flextronics, is an emerging technology exploiting both the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices. Spintronics differs from the older magnetoelectronics, in that the spins are not only manipulated by magnetic fields, but also by electrical fields.

In order to develop spintronics technology, it is first necessary to fully explore potential materials and their properties; by obtaining a thorough understanding of spintronic phenomena we can effective utilize them to create spin-engineered materials and working devices. Spintronics is an emerging field of nanoscale electronics involving the detection and manipulation of electron spin.

Today microelectronic devices are based on controlling the charge of electrons, either by storing it or sending it flowing as current. However, electrical current is actually composed of two types of electrons, spin-up and spin-down electrons, which form two largely independent spin currents. In the past 15 years, there has been a revolution in our understanding of generating, manipulating and detecting spin-polarized electrical current which makes possible entirely new classes of spin-based sensor, memory and logic devices. This new field of science and technology is now commonly referred to as spintronics.


History

Spintronics emerged from discoveries in the 1980s concerning spin-dependent electron transport phenomena in solid-state devices. This includes the observation of spin-polarized electron injection from a ferromagnetic metal to a normal metal by Johnson and Silsbee (1985) and the discovery of giant magnetoresistance independently by Albert Fert et al. The origins of spintronics can be traced back even further to the ferromagnet/superconductor tunneling experiments pioneered by Meservey and Tedrow, and initial experiments on magnetic tunnel junctions by Julliere in the 1970s. The use of semiconductors for spintronics can be traced back at least as far as the theoretical proposal of a spin field-effect-transistor by Datta and Das in 1990.

A particularly important class of spintronic materials are nano-engineered magnetic heterostructures (or multilayers) whose critical element is a sandwich of two ultra-thin magnetic layers separated by atomically thin non-magnetic conducting or insulating layers, forming what are called spin-valve or magnetic tunnel junction devices. Such sandwiches can exhibit giant changes in conductance when the magnetic orientation of the magnetic layers is changed. Spin-valve sensors were pioneered by Stuart Parkin at the Almaden Research Center in 1989-1991 and today are a key component of all magnetic hard-disk drives, which enabled their nearly 1,000-fold increase in capacity over the past 8 years. This means that today all information in the world can be stored in digital form and accessed remotely, effectively from any part of the world: the consequences have been enormous and one can truly make the case that spintronics has made possible today digital world.

At Almaden, we study a wide range of spintronic materials and devices both to discover new physical phenomena and for applications in novel sensor, memory and logic technologies.

Computer aided design

Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer systems to assist in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design.  CAD software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing.  CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations.

Computer-aided the design is used in many fields. Its use in designing electronic systems is known as electronic design automation or EDA. In mechanical design, it is known as mechanical design automation (MDA) or computer-aided drafting (CAD), which includes the process of creating a technical drawing with the use of computer software.

CAD software for mechanical design uses either vector-based graphics to depict the objects of traditional drafting, or may also produce raster graphics showing the overall appearance of designed objects. However, it involves more than just shapes. As in the manual drafting of technical and engineering drawings, the output of CAD must convey information, such as materials, processes, dimensions, and tolerances, according to application-specific conventions.

CAD may be used to design curves and figures in two-dimensional (2D) space; or curves, surfaces, and solids in three-dimensional (3D) space.

CAD is an important industrial art extensively used in many applications, including automotive, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries, industrial and architectural design, prosthetics, and many more. CAD is also widely used to produce computer animation for special effects in movies, advertising, and technical manuals, often called DCC digital content creation. The modern ubiquity and power of computers mean that even perfume bottles and shampoo dispensers are designed using techniques unheard of by engineers of the 1960s. Because of its enormous economic importance, CAD has been a major driving force for research in computational geometry, computer graphics (both hardware and software), and discrete differential geometry.

The design of geometric models for object shapes, in particular, is occasionally called computer-aided geometric design (CAGD).


Uses

Computer-aided design is one of the many tools used by engineers and designers and is used in many ways depending on the profession of the user and the type of software in question.

CAD is one part of the whole Digital Product Development (DPD) activity within the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) processes, and as such is used together with other tools, which are either integrated modules or stand-alone products, such as:

1. Computer-aided engineering (CAE) and Finite element analysis (FEA)

2. Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) including instructions to Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines

3. Photorealistic rendering

4. Document management and revision control using Product Data Management (PDM).


Technology

Originally software for Computer-Aided Design systems was developed with computer languages such as Fortran, ALGOL but with the advancement of object-oriented programming methods, this has radically changed. Typical modern parametric feature based modeler and freeform surface systems are built around a number of key C modules with their own APIs. A CAD system can be seen as built up from the interaction of a graphical user interface (GUI) with NURBS geometry and/or boundary representation (B-rep) data via a geometric modeling kernel. A geometry constraint engine may also be employed to manage the associative relationships between geometry, such as wireframe geometry in a sketch or components in an assembly.

Holography

Holography is a technique which enables three-dimensional images (holograms) to be made. It involves the use of a laser, interference, diffraction, light intensity recording and suitable illumination of the recording. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object were still present, thus making the image appear three - dimensional. The holographic recording itself is not an image; it consists of an apparently random structure of either varying intensity, density or profile.


Overview and history

The Hungarian-British physicist Dennis Gabor (in Hungarian: Gabor Denes), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971 for his invention and development of the holographic method. His work, done in the late 1940s, built on pioneering work in the field of X-ray microscopy by other scientists including Mieczyslaw Wolfke in 1920 and WL Bragg in 1939. The discovery was an unexpected result of research into improving electron microscopes at the British Thomson-Houston (BTH) Company in Rugby, England, and the company filed a patent in December 1947 (patent GB685286). The technique was originally invented is still used in electron microscopy, where it is known as electron holography, but optical holography did not really advance until the development of the laser in 1960. The word holography comes from the graph, writing or drawing.

The development of the laser enabled the first practical optical holograms that recorded 3D objects to be made in 1962 by Yuri Denisyuk in the Soviet Union and by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, USA. Early holograms used silver halide photographic emulsions as the recording medium. They were not very efficient as the produced grating absorbed much of the incident light. Various methods of converting the variation in transmission to a variation in refractive index (known as bleaching) were developed which enabled much more efficient holograms to be produced.

Several types of holograms can be made. Transmission holograms, such as those produced by Leith and Upatnieks, are viewed by shining laser light through them and looking at the reconstructed image from the side of the hologram opposite the source. A later refinement, the rainbow transmission hologram, allows more convenient illumination by white light rather than by lasers.  Rainbow holograms are commonly used for security and authentication, for example, on credit cards and product packaging.

Another kind of common hologram, the reflection or Denisyuk hologram, can also be viewed using a white-light illumination source on the same side of the hologram as the viewer and is the type of hologram normally seen in holographic displays. They are also capable of multicolor - image reproduction.


How holography work?

Holography is a technique that enables a light field, which is generally the product of a light source scattered off objects, to be recorded and later reconstructed when the original light field is no longer present, due to the absence of the original objects. Holography can be thought of as somewhat similar to sound recording, whereby a sound field created by vibrating matter like musical instruments or vocal cords, is encoded in such a way that it can be reproduced later, without the presence of the original vibrating matter.