These days, when I hear about carbon nanotubes, I think about the space elevator people are trying to build. Could clothing benefit from such a strong material? Now a company, Nanocomp Technologies, has made a sheet of carbon nanotubes. It also conducts electricity so it could protect electronic devices from electromagnetic interference. Here are some excerpts from the article in Nature magazine.
Get Wickd is quite similar though less sexy than the flirting service Urbanseeder. Get Wickd is a tech-fashion brand that sells basic clothes with codes that can link your mobile phone to any page on the web, from a Myspace profile to a Youtube movie. This technique makes it possible to wear your virtual identity, where ever you go.
How it works:
1. You buy a piece of GetWickd clothing;
2. Download and install the special software on your mobile;
3. If you see somebody else, or somebody else sees you with a piece of barcode-clothing, you take a picture with your mobile phone;
4. You phone displays the personal page of the owner of the barcode.
In the late ’90’s, a fashionbrand called Skim.com was selling streetwear with a personal number which featured as a login code for a personal website of the owner. If you saw somebody walking around with these clothes you could write down the number and then look the owner up on his personal Skim.com page.
More in Next Nature.
A burqa may not be the flirtiest garment ever invented for women. The highly modest head-to-toe robe even shrouds the eyes, so for centuries it’s been difficult for women wearing them to send suggestive signals to men.
But now a German designer has debuted a digitally-enabled burqa that can broadcast a photo of the wearer to nearby mobile phones. Markus Kison calls it the “CharmingBurka,” and says it isn’t forbidden by Islamic law.
A model demonstrated a prototype of Kison’s garment at the Seamless 2008 design and fashion show in Boston, a high-tech fashion event run with support from the Masschusetts Institute of Technology.
Kison says the burqa has a “digital layer” that incorporates a Bluetooth antenna, which lets women “decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually.” Nearby mobile phones that also use Bluetooth will light up with any small file a woman chooses to broadcast as her identity — a photo, a cartoon, a text file or even a sound clip.
Kison’s broadcast technology started as a marketing tool; the so-called “Bluebot” system is meant to send digital advertisements to passing phones. But Kison’s new design turns a burqa into a walking MySpace page.
A broadcasting burqa may not be explicitly forbidden by Islamic law — since most interpreters of Shariah have never imagined such a thing — but certain Islamic governments have tried to clamp down on electronic flirting. By 2002 it was so common for teenagers in Saudi Arabia to send each other pictures of themselves by phone that an import ban was imposed on camera phones. But demand was so high that the law was lifted two years later.
ISWC 2008, the twelfth annual IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, is the premier forum for wearable computing. It will bring together researchers, product vendors, fashion designers, textile manufacturers, users, and related professionals to share information and advances in wearable computing. We invite you to attend ISWC 2008 and submit to one or more of the following categories: papers, posters, demonstrations, exhibits, tutorials/workshops and panel discussions. This year we are also placing special emphasis on cell phones as they have become the most successful wearable computer to date; and we solicit papers on:
* Mobile applications designed for cell phones
* Cell phones as personal computers
* Extending cell phone hardware e.g. sensing, novel IO, modules
* Studies based on cell phone deployments (especially large scale)
* Cell phones that combine short and long range radios
* Composable computer systems based on cell phones
Additional core topics for ISWC submissions include, but are not limited to:
Applications:
* wearable systems in consumer, industrial, medical, wellness, educational, and military domains.
* wearable computing in fashion and smart clothing, for people with disabilities, and for elder enablement.
* use of wearable computers as components of larger systems, such as augmented reality systems, training systems and systems designed to support collaborative work.
* formal evaluation of performance of wearable computer technologies, and comparisons with existing technologies.
Hardware:
* wearable system design, input devices, wearable displays, actuators, electronic textiles, and batteries.
* interactive and industrial design.
* wearable sensors, and networks for sensing context-awareness or cognitive state.
* techniques for power management and heat dissipation, and manufacturing issues.
Software:
* architectures, including systems that allow wearable computers to exploit surrounding infrastructure.
* operating systems issues related to wearable computing, including issues such as scheduling, security, and power management.
* networks, including wireless networks, on-body networks, and support for interaction with other wearables, ubiquitous-computing systems or the Internet.
Human Factors:
* interfaces, including hands-free approaches, speech-based interaction, sensory augmentation, haptics, and human-centered robotics.
* user modeling, user evaluation, and interfaces for combining wearable and ubiquitous computing.
* social implications, health, and privacy issues.
* wearable communities and wearable technology for social-network computation, visualization and augmentation.
Submission:
Papers and posters must be submitted electronically through the submission website. Initial submissions are due on April 21st. Papers and posters will be fully reviewed. Authors of accepted submissions will have the opportunity to update their submissions based on the reviews before the final electronic copy is due.
ISWC 2008 requires electronic submission. Reviewers will be instructed to maintain the confidentiality of all materials for submitted papers throughout the entire reviewing process. Submissions should contain no information that will be proprietary or confidential at the time of publication.
The imagination is the only limit for a new material that can mend itself when ripped. In hospitals it could add durability to artificial bones and around the house it heralds the prospect of unbreakable glass and unchippable paint. But for half the population there is no disputing its most tantalising promise: the era of the self-repairing laddered stocking may be upon us.
“I think it will have all sorts of uses,” said Professor Ludwik Leibler, one of the researchers behind the invention. “It’s just a matter of using your imagination. We have only just begun to think of what can be done with it.
“Stockings are a very good idea. It could be used in glass vases so they don’t break when your children knock them over - it could make the glass bouncy.”
Professor Leibler and his colleagues at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution in Paris are convinced that it has potential for use in a wide range of applications. They are most hopeful of adapting the technology in medicine, where self-healing properties would be invaluable for artificial bone and cartilage.
The technology could also be applied to paint and other coatings, saving householders and car owners the expense of repairing chips and nicks. Its use in pipes would make plumbing repairs easier, perhaps sealing leaks before they became serious. The substance, which has taken five years to develop, is ready for commercial use, Professor Leibler says. This is expected to be in plastics.
The material mimics the elastic qualities of rubber but with the advantage of having “sticky ends” when a break occurs. The substance has small molecules arranged in a network that stretch but will return to its original shape. Once the broken ends are pushed together they start healing because the molecular make-up is such that the surfaces have lifelike attributes and seek to form bridges.
The research team reported their invention of the “supramolecular rubber” in the journal Nature. “These materials can be easily processed, reused and recycled. Their unique self-repairing properties, the simplicity of their synthesis, their availability from renewable resources and the low cost of raw ingredients bode well for future applications.”
They added that the material behaved like a rubber but “exhibits unique self-healing properties: when a sample is broken or cut into pieces and the pieces are brought into contact together for some time at room temperature (20C, 68F) they self-heal without the need to heat or press strongly. The process of breaking and healing can be repeated many times.”
The maximum time the ends can be left before it becomes impossible for them to repair themselves reduces as temperatures rise. At 23C they can be left for more than a week but at 40C the time falls to 48 hours. The longer the surfaces are left to fuse, the stronger the repair, but even after 15 minutes of bonding the material could still be stretched to three times its normal length before snapping.
In a comment on our disposable culture, fashion designer Helen Storey is using know-how from materials science to make a show of frocks that dissolve slowly in water. Her six dissolving dresses, made from biodegradable polymer threads, are being publicly drowned in LCF Fashion Space Gallery in London. Storey has long harboured concerns about our attitudes to waste and recycling, and during her career has woven plastic refuse bags and reused rags to make boas and evening gowns. To realize her idea of evanescent products, such as packaging that disappears as its contents expire, Storey contacted chemist Tony Ryan, of the University of Sheffield, UK, after hearing him on the radio. Their Wonderland collaboration has produced new textiles and several patented products, including a water-purification device, a biodegradable bottle and orthopaedic shoes.
Via new-nomad.
Social Fabrics: Wearable + Media + Interconnectivity is a time based exhibition designed as a modified runway show of art as wearable media and technology. Social Fabrics demonstrates convergences between individual expression and statement making, on the one hand, and the phenomenology of “network society” on the other. Technological garments or accessories with social capabilities are presented alongside works that, while perhaps not employing technology outright, comment or critique the implications of our digital media-infused and fashion driven lifestyles. Submissions are objects, (garments, handbags), systems (hardware, software), and, in a few cases, mini performances that interact in various ways with the event context. Artists included come from all over the United States and several countries abroad.
Artists:
Teresa Almeida; Margarita Benitez; Joey Berzowska and Di Mainstone; Kathy Bruce, James Cook, and Alastair Noble; Rachelle Beaudoin and Jeanne Jo; Geraldine Juárez; Matt Kenyon; Younghui Kim; Sarah Kettley and Frank Greig (Speckled Computing Consortium); Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson; Heidi Kumao; Ebru Kurbak, Ricardo Nascimento, Fabiana Shizue; Anke Loh; Cat Mazza; Ryan McCabe; Kristen Nyce; Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen; Hoyun Son; Suzi Webster and Jordan Benwick; Chris Wille
WHEN: February 22, 2008 - 5:30 PM
WHERE: Adam’s Mark Hotel, 400 North Olive Street, Dallas, TX Remington Room (4th Floor)
ACCESS: Free and open to the public (Note: the CAA Annual Meeting Closed Sessions are NOT free, but admission to Social Fabrics is a free Special Event of the conference)
A publication entitled Social Fabrics and including a catalog of works in the show is available at and after the event as a special print issue of the online journal Intelligent Agent.
The T-shirt that sweats, by Mariana Rivera. Sweat, a natural phenomenon present in most forms of life, is usually regarded as unpleasant and something to hide in most western countries and in America especially. There is one exception: futbol (soccer, football) T-shirts. Considered as a fetish object, a sweated T-shirt worn by one’s favorite player is considered of great value.
T-Shirt That Sweats proposes to provide the football supporter –who couldn’t attend the match but follows it from afar, on his or her tv– with a more intimate contact with the action that takes place on the field. The project could thus enrich and expand the communicative power of the tv set through a t-shirt that sweats according to the sound levels of the TV screen during the game.
Working prototype: a microphone captures the sound signals coming from the tv set. The sounds are then filtered using a microcontroller. When the sound goes beyond a certain level, a water pump hidden inside the garment wets the t-shirt. Programmed using Arduino.
Modern Mechanix 9-1935: More punch than can be found in a box-glove is contained in a new electric glove invented by Cirilo Diaz of Cuba for use by police while handling rough characters or in quelling riots. Persons contacted by an officer wearing the glove receive a 1,500-volt shock, sufficient to remove all traces of fight. A half-pound battery worn on the belt supplies the power, all wiring being concealed beneath the coat.
Police officials in New York where the device was first demonstrated, were favorably impressed by its effectiveness.
Via modern mechanix.
Georgia Tech researchers have taken an important step toward creating fabrics that could generate power from the wearer’s walking, breathing, and heartbeats. The researchers, led by materials-science professor Zhong Lin Wang, have made a flexible fiber coated with zinc oxide nanowires that can convert mechanical energy into electricity. The fibers, the researchers say, should be able to harvest any kind of vibration or motion for electric current.
The zinc oxide nanowires grow vertically from the surface of the polymer fiber. When one fiber brushes against another, the nanowires flex and generate electric current. The researchers described a proof-of-concept yarn in a paper published this week in the journal Nature. They show that the output current increases by entwining multiple fibers to make the yarn.
By the researchers’ calculations, a square meter of fabric made from the fibers could put out as much as 80 milliwatts–enough to power portable electronics. The development could make shirts and shoes that power iPods and medical implants, curtains that generate power when they flap in the wind, and tents that power portable electronics devices.
In 2007, Wang and his colleague the 2007 TR 35 winner Xudong Wang (no relation) built a zinc oxide nanowire array that generated direct current when exposed to ultrasonic vibrations. The piezoelectric nanowires stood on an electrically conducting substrate that acted as an electrode. The other electrode was a platinum-coated silicon plate with parallel peaks and trenches carved on its surface. (See “Nanogenerator Fueled by Vibrations.”) When the ultrasonic waves pushed the electrodes together, the nanowires bent and produced current.
In the new work, the researchers have substituted the rigid, zigzag electrode with a flexible one. They convert some of the bendable fibers into electrodes by applying a thin layer of gold to them. These gold-plated fibers act as flexible electrodes.
The researchers entangle a gold-coated fiber with an uncoated fiber. When the fibers are pulled back and forth with respect to each other, the individual gold-plated nanowires push and bend the uncoated nanowires, generating current.
The flexibility of the fibers brings the idea of wearable, foldable energy sources closer to fruition, says Charles Lieber, a chemistry professor at Harvard University. The flexibility is also crucial for harvesting energy from extremely small ambient motion, says Thomas Thundat, who studies nanoscale biological sensors at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Entwining the flexible fibers, he explains, leads to very close contact between the gold-coated and the uncoated nanowires. As a result, small motions, such as a light wind or walking movements, make the coated and uncoated nanowires brush against each other and generate current.
“The idea is ingenious,” says Min-Feng Yu, a mechanical-science and engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “It’s like you have millions of nanogenerators outputting electricity simultaneously, each at maximum performance.”.
The generator’s ability to capture small movements makes it especially useful for powering biological sensors, Thundat says. Microscale sensors can be implanted in the body to measure such things as cancer biomarkers and glucose. But chemical batteries are bulky compared with the tiny sensors, and they have a limited lifetime. “Implanted sensors based on [the fiber nanogenerator] concept could use blood pressure or muscle movement for operation,” Thundat says.
The Georgia Tech advance would not be possible without the simple but highly innovative process the researchers have used to make the fibers, Lieber points out. Zhong Lin Wang and his colleagues first cover a polymer fiber with a 100-nanometer-thick zinc oxide layer. They immerse the fiber in a reactant solution at 80 °C, which results in nanowires growing vertically from the surface. Then the researchers use a final trick to keep the nanowires firmly attached to the fibers while keeping the fibers flexible. They dip the fibers in tetraethoxysilane, a liquid used in weatherproofing and protective coatings. The tetraethoxysilane forms two coatings: one between the fiber and the zinc oxide layer, and another on top of the zinc oxide layer.
This tetraethoxysilane coating makes the fiber robust. The zinc oxide layer did not crack or peel off even when the fiber was twisted. The nanowires also stayed put after the researchers continuously brushed two fibers against each other for 30 minutes. The fibers will have to last even longer and have higher output power in order to be used practically, Wang says.
Power-generating shirts might still be out of reach for most. At this point, the fabric might be affordable for the military for use in tents and shoes, says Wang, but “it is probably too expensive for you and me to buy.”
Via nanoarchitecture.
