Pop-Up Power Socket

The genius in Lebedevs design is that it looks like any other single-plug socket until you pop out the central cube, whereupon it sprouts four more sockets for an electrical five-way. Minimal until you need it to be more - a very clean and thoughtful design.

http://www.wired.com/
filed under: building & construction, electronics

Property spectrum: Flexibility
Increasing flexibility is one of the most applied properties. Many products evolve from rigid to completely flexible. The pop-out system converts a single plug into a multiple power splitter.

Second skin

Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered -- fibers that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they've done their job

Not as simple as it sounds. While the concept is simple, the technology is not. Skin, Prof. Zilberman explains, serves a number of vastly different purposes. "Wound dressings must maintain a certain level of moisture while acting as a shield," she says. "Like skin, they must also enable fluids from the wound to leave the infected tissue at a certain rate. It can't be too fast or too slow. If too fast, the wound will dry out and it won't heal properly. If too slow, there's a real risk of increased contamination."

Prof. Zilberman's new wound dressing, which does not yet have a formal name, is designed to mimic skin and the way it protects the body. It combines positive mechanical and physical properties with what medical researchers call "a desired release profile of antibiotics."

http://www.physorg.com/
filed under: materials, pharmaceutical

Property spectrum: Webs & fibres
Solid components are replaced with webbed and fibrous materials for improved strength/weight ratios, flexibility, and durability. These fibres can contain drugs that will help speed up the healing process.

Lotus leaves shake off water

Many plants are extremely water-repellent owing to their rough textures, which can trap air to provide a waterproof cushioning. In some cases, plant leaves are so repellent that no droplets can stick at all; instead, they simply bounce and roll off. A lotus leaf is an example of a natural material that possesses this "superhydrophobicity" and a pair of physicists in the US are proposing that natural vibrations lie at the heart of the phenomenon.

Chen and Jonathan Boreyko claim that they have found a physical explanation for this natural advantage. Apparently inspired his childhood experiences, Chen recalled lotus leaves flapping vigorously in the wind and realized that this is due to their unusually large leaf being supported by a long thin stem. He had the idea that the lotus leaf may use this vibration to shake off water condensate that may have otherwise penetrated their rough surfaces.

http://physicsworld.com/
filed under: measuring/testing, nanotechnology

Property spectrum: Pulsation
Rhythmic action evolves so that continuous action of a system or subsystem evolves towards periodic action. The pulsation of the leaf is what causes the self-cleaning ability.

 Magic mouse

Magic Mouse - with its low-profile design and seamless top shell - is so sleek and dramatically different, it brings a whole new feel to the way you get around on your Mac. You can't help but marvel at its smooth, buttonless appearance. Then you touch it and instantly appreciate how good it feels in your hand. But it's when you start using Magic Mouse that everything comes together.

The Multi-Touch area covers the top surface of Magic Mouse, and the mouse itself is the button. Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won't confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you're just resting your hand on it.

http://www.ece.nus.edu.sg/
filed under: computers & accessories, electronics, technologies

Property spectrum: Information
Systems and subsystems tend to evolve from requiring external input to becoming self-controlling through the use of feedback mechanisms. This mouse recognizes different finger movements to perform specific actions.

An inventor has come up with a new green fuel - logs made from leaves. With one million tonnes of leaves falling from British trees every year, Peter Morrison decided to harness the waste and turn it into energy. By collecting and compacting the dead matter, his company has turned them into environmentally-friendly "logs" to burn in open fires and wood stoves.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
filed under: environment

Property spectrum: Components
Increasing the number of dissimilar elements in a system can bring additional functionality, improved operability, and convenience. Fallen leavs can be collected and compressed to form fire logs.

ChemBot

This month we selected the submission of Ellen Domb, from TRIZ PGR Group.

The ChemBot, which looks more like the Blob than most people’s preconceived ideas of what a robot should be, moves around by changing its shape in a process its creators call, “jamming skin enabled locomotion.”

Jamming is a physical process whereby a material is made to transition from a liquid-like to a solid-like state by increasing its density. The ChemBot achieves this process thanks to its hyper-elastic skin composed of multiple cellular compartments. These compartments are filled with air and loosely-packed particles. When the air is removed, the decrease in pressure constricts the skin and the particles shift slightly to fill the void left by the air, resulting in the solidification of the compartment.

Beneath the ChemBot's jammable skin is an incompressible fluid and an actuator that can vary its volume. Unjamming various compartments of the ChemBot’s skin and inflating the interior actuator causes the Chembot's skin to stretch, changing the shape of the robot. It is this method of controlled inflation that allows the ChemBot to roll around.

http://www.gizmag.com/
filed under: childcare, leisure, sports

Property spectrum: Activity
Materials increasingly evolve from passive to fully adaptive materials. E.g. shape memory alloys and thermo chromic materials. The multiple cellular compartment material can change its shape by altering its density.