Sweat powered smartwatches
Engineers at the University of Glasgow have developed a new type of flexible supercapacitor, which stores energy, replacing the electrolytes found in conventional batteries with sweat.
It can be fully charged with as little as 20 microlitres of fluid and is robust enough to survive 4,000 cycles of the types of flexes and bends it might encounter in use.
The device works by coating polyester cellulose cloth in a thin layer of a polymer, which acts as the supercapacitor’s electrode.
As the cloth absorbs its wearer’s sweat, the positive and negative ions in the sweat interact with the polymer’s surface, creating an electrochemical reaction which generates energy.
“Conventional batteries are cheaper and more plentiful than ever before but they are often built using unsustainable materials which are harmful to the environment,” says Professor Ravinder Dahiya, head of the Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (Best) group, based at the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering.
“That makes them challenging to dispose of safely and potentially harmful in wearable devices, where a broken battery could spill toxic fluids on to skin.
“What we’ve been able to do for the first time is show that human sweat provides a real opportunity to do away with those toxic materials entirely, with excellent charging and discharging performance.
Self-healing ‘living concrete’
Scientists have developed what they call living concrete by using sand, gel and bacteria.
Researchers said this building material has structural load-bearing function, is capable of self-healing and is more environmentally friendly than concrete – which is the second most-consumed material on Earth after water.
The team from the University of Colorado Boulder believe their work paves the way for future building structures that could “heal their own cracks, suck up dangerous toxins from the air or even glow on command”.
Living robots
Tiny hybrid robots made using stem cells from frog embryos could one day be used to swim around human bodies to specific areas requiring medicine, or to gather microplastic in the oceans.
“These are novel living machines,” said Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont, who co-developed the millimetre-wide bots, known as xenobots.
“They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artefact: a living, programmable organism.
Tactile virtual reality
Researchers from Northwestern University have developed a prototype device which aims to put touch within VR’s reach, using a flexible material fitted with tiny vibrating components that can be attached to skin.
The system, known as epidermal VR, could be useful in other cases as well, from a child touching a display relaying the gesture to a family member located elsewhere, to helping people with amputations renew their sense of touch.
In gaming, it could alert players when a strike occurs on the corresponding body part of the game character.
The team’s design features 32 vibrating actuators on a thin 15cm by 15cm silicone polymer which sticks on to the skin without tape or straps and is free of large batteries and wires.
It uses near-field communication (NFC) technology – which is used in many smartphones for mobile payment today – to transfer the data.
“The result is a thin, lightweight system that can be worn and used without constraint indefinitely,” says Professor John A Rogers, who worked on the project.
Scientists hope that the technology could eventually find its way into clothing, allowing people with prosthetics to wear VR shirts that communicate touch through their fingertips.
Internet for everyone
e can’t seem to live without the internet (how else would you read sciencefocus.com?), but still only around half the world’s population is connected. There are many reasons for this, including economic and social reasons, but for some the internet just isn’t accessible because they have no connection.
Google is slowly trying to solve the problem using helium balloons to beam the internet to inaccessible areas, while Facebook has abandoned plans to do the same using drones, which means companies like Hiber are stealing a march. They have taken a different approach by launching their own network of shoebox-sized microsatellites into low Earth orbit, which wake up a modem plugged into your computer or device when it flies over and delivers your data.
Their satellites orbit the Earth 16 times a day and are already being used by organisations like The British Antarctic Survey to provide internet access to very extreme of our planet.
760mph trains
Hate commuting? Imagine, instead, your train carriage hurtling down a tunnel at the same speed as a commercial jet airliner. That’s the dream of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
His Hyperloop system would see ‘train’ passengers travel at up to 760mph through a vacuum tube, propelled by compressed air and induction motors. A site has been chosen with the goal of starting test runs in two years. Once built, the loop will ferry passengers between San Francisco and LA in 35 minutes, compared to 7.5 hours by train

A NESPAK-led Joint Venture (JV) has won Command Area Development Component of ADB-funded Jalalpur Irrigation Project (CAD-JIP) through competitive bidding, this was stated by Dr. Tahir Masood, Managing Director NESPAK here on Wednesday. The duration of the project is about four years. The project is expected to increase crop production and reduce land degradation by minimizing the marginal quality groundwater use. Jalalpur Irrigation Project envisages the construction of a new irrigation system and appurtenant structures to irrigate about 174,000 acres of land in Pind Dadan Khan and Khushab area. The proposed main canal will off-take from the right bank of Rasul Barrage and is about 116 km long with design discharge of 1,350 cusecs. The distribution system of 210 km length comprises 23 distributary canals and 07 minor canals. The project will benefit over 225,000 rural people in 80 villages.
NESPAK scope of services under the current assignment includes construction and lining (up to 50% length) of 485 watercourses, LASER land leveling of 30,000 acres, installation of High-Efficiency Irrigation System on 2,000 acres and construction of 20 water storage ponds with solar-powered pumping stations for irrigating un-commanded areas in addition to awareness creation, capacity development, extension and demonstration activities.

According to a biomedical point of view, biocompatibility is the capacity of a material to perform with a suitable host reaction in a particular application.
It is portrayed to be non-poisonous, no instigated unfavorable responses, for example, constant fiery reaction with unordinary tissue arrangement, and intended to work appropriately for a sensible lifetime. It is a prerequisite of biomaterials in which the surface altered material will make no mischief the host, and the material itself won’t hurt by the host. Modification of surface should be possible through different techniques, which can be ordered through three primary gatherings: (physical adsorption, Langmuir Blodgett film), compound (oxidation by solid acids, ozone treatment, chemisorption, and fire treatment) and radiation (shine release, crown release, photograph enactment (UV), laser, particle pillar, plasma submersion particle implantation, electron shaft lithography, and γ-illumination). It includes the essentials of physicochemical collaborations between the biomaterial and the physiological condition at the atomic, cell, and tissue levels (decrease bacterial grip, advance cell bond). Right now, there are different techniques for portrayal and surface alteration of biomaterials and valuable uses of central ideas in a few biomedical arrangements. Proteins are comprised of various groupings of amino acids, proteins can have different capacities as its auxiliary shape driven by various sub-atomic bonds can change. Amino acids display various qualities, for example, being polar, non-polar, decidedly, or adversely charged which is dictated by having distinctive side chains. In this manner, the connection of particles with various proteins, for instance, those containing Arginine-Glycine-Aspartate (RGD) arrangements are relied upon to adjust the outside of tissue platforms and result in progress of cell attachment when set into its physiological condition.
A portion of the modification of surface procedures recorded above is especially utilized for specific capacities or sorts of materials. One of the benefits of plasma drenching particle implantation is its capacity to treat most materials. Particle implantation is a successful surface treatment method that is utilized to upgrade the surface properties of biomaterials. The novel preferred position of plasma change is that the surface properties and biocompatibility can be improved specifically while the ideal mass qualities of the materials, for example, quality stay unaltered. Plasma procedures are particularly valuable since they can store ultra meager (a couple of nm), disciple, conformal coatings. Sparkle release plasma is made by filling a vacuum with a low-pressure gas (ex. argon, smelling salts, or oxygen). The gas is then energized utilizing microwaves or current which ionizes it. The ionized gas is then tossed onto a surface at a high speed where the vitality delivered truly and artificially changes the surface. Biointegration is a definitive objective in for instance orthopedic inserts that bones build up a precisely strong interface with complete combination between the fake embedded material and bone tissues under great biocompatibility conditions. Adjusting the outside of a material can improve its biocompatibility, and should be possible without changing its mass properties. The properties of the highest sub-atomic layers are basic in biomaterials. The immune system will respond contrastingly if an embed is covered in extra-cell lattice proteins. The proteins encompassing the embed serve to “cover-up” the embed from the intrinsic invulnerable framework. Be that as it may, if the embed is covered in allergenic proteins, the patient’s versatile invulnerable reaction might be started. Physical immobilization is essentially covering material with a biomimetic material without changing the structure of either. Different biomimetic materials with cell glue proteins, (for example, collagen or laminin) have been utilized in vitro to coordinate new tissue development and cell development. Moreover, albeit a portion of the biomaterials has great biocompatibility, it might have poor mechanical or physical properties, for example, wear obstruction, hostile to erosion, or wettability or lubricity. In these cases, surface alteration is used to store a layer of covering or blending in with the substrate to shape a composite layer.

The federal government has inflicted a cut at the budget allocated for the Senate—an action taken for the first time in Pakistan’s history.
The Senate which has reacted to the slash says it is against the constitution which protects the original budget of the house.
The house has rejected the decision of the government to cut its annual budget by around Rs 170 million while terming it an unconstitutional move and urged the immediate restoration of “original” allocation.
After three opposition lawmakers raised this issue, the house through a voice vote approved a recommendation as part of the set of recommendations of the Senate’s finance committee, on the Finance Bill 2020, asking the government to restore the “original” budget allocation.
Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance Senator Farooq H Naek separately moved the recommendation.
Senator Barrister Ali Saif was the first one who raised the issue and said that parliament had financial autonomy under the constitution and the government had no powers to slash its budget. He pointed out that the Ministry of Finance has proposed a cut of Rs 170 million in the annual budget of the Senate. PML-N Senator Javed Abbasi termed the move unconstitutional and said that under the constitution, it was the executive that had been placed under the parliament to keep a check on its expenditures.
He said that it was an attempt against the supremacy of the parliament. He referred to the Articles 87 and 88 of the constitution said that the constitution empowered both the houses of the parliament to make their own budgets and for this purpose, the high-powered finance committee existed.
“This is for the first time in the history of Pakistan that the budget of parliament has been cut only to have control over it.” Chairman finance committee Senator Naek referred to Article 88 of the constitution which reads: “The expenditure of the National Assembly and the Senate within authorized appropriations shall be controlled by the National Assembly or, as the case may be, the Senate acting on the advice of its Finance Committee.”
He said the finance committee thus becomes a constitutional committee and the executive can in no way override its decisions. He added the decision to slash the budget of the Senate was in total violation of the constitution.
Senator Naek later presented before the house the report of the standing committee on the proposals for making recommendations on the Finance Bill, 2020, containing the Annual Budget Statement, which was unanimously adopted by the house. The National Assembly now will consider these recommendations.
The recommendations include a 10 percent increase in the salaries and pensions of government employees, a double increase in health and education budgets, allocation of funds for the construction of small dams, and to abolish withholding tax on withdrawal of money from banks besides others