Scientists design fabrics that can store charge

Agencies
November 11, 2018

Washington, Nov 11: Scientists have developed a method that can allow fabrics to store charge, paving the way for self-powered smart garments that can monitor health in real time.

A major factor holding back the development of wearable biosensors for health monitoring is the lack of a lightweight, long-lasting power supply.

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US have developed a method for making a charge-storing system that is easily integrated into clothing for "embroidering a charge-storing pattern onto any garment."

"Batteries or other kinds of charge storage are still the limiting components for most portable, wearable, ingestible or flexible technologies. The devices tend to be some combination of too large, too heavy and not flexible," said Trisha L Andrew, who led the study published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

The method uses a micro-supercapacitor and combines vapour-coated conductive threads with a polymer film, plus a special sewing technique to create a flexible mesh of aligned electrodes on a textile backing.

The resulting solid-state device has a high ability to store charge for its size, and other characteristics that allow it to power wearable biosensors.

While researchers have remarkably miniaturised many different electronic circuit components, until now the same could not be said for charge-storing devices.

"We show that we can literally embroider a charge-storing pattern onto any garment using the vapour-coated threads that our lab makes. This opens the door for simply sewing circuits on self-powered smart garments," said Andrew.

Researchers point out that supercapacitors are ideal candidates for wearable charge storage circuits because they have inherently higher power densities compared to batteries.

However, "incorporating electrochemically active materials with high electrical conductivities and rapid ion transport into textiles is challenging," they said.

Researchers showed that their vapour coating process creates porous conducting polymer films on densely-twisted yarns, which can be easily swelled with electrolyte ions and maintain high charge storage capacity per unit length as compared to prior work with dyed or extruded fibres.

Andrew noted that textile scientists have tended not to use vapour deposition because of technical difficulties and high costs, but more recently, research has shown that the technology can be scaled up and remain cost-effective.

Researchers are working on incorporating the new embroidered charge-storage arrays with e-textile sensors and low-power microprocessors to build smart garments that can monitor a person's gait and joint movements throughout a normal day.

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Agencies
February 29,2020

Ahmedabad, Feb 29: The presence of two feral pigeons onboard a GoAir flight at the airport in Ahmedabad in Gujarat created a flutter among the amused passengers, even though the avian surprise did not lead to any untoward incident or delay in the flight.

The incident took place on Friday when the passengers were boarding the Ahmedabad-Jaipur flight.

"Two pigeons had found their way inside the flight G8 702 while the passengers were boarding," an airline statement said on Saturday.

"The crew immediately shooed away the birds. The flight took off at its scheduled time at 5 p.m.," it added.

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Agencies
May 19,2020

Cybersecurity researchers on Monday warned of a Trojan malware campaign which is targeting India's co-operative banks using COVID-19 as a bait.

Seqrite, the enterprise arm of IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies, detected the new wave of Adwind Java Remote Access Trojan (RAT) campaign.

Researchers at Seqrite warned that if attackers are successful, they can take over the victim's device to steal sensitive data like SWIFT logins and customer details and move laterally to launch large scale cyberattacks and financial frauds.

According to the researchers, the Java RAT campaign starts with a spear-phishing email which claims to have originated from either the Reserve Bank of India or a nationalised bank.

The content of the email refers to COVID-19 guidelines or a financial transaction, with detailed information in an attachment, which is a zip file containing a JAR based malware.

Upon further investigation, researchers at Seqrite found that the JAR based malware is a Remote Access Trojan that can run on any machine which has Java runtime enabled and hence it can impact a variety of endpoints, irrespective of their base operating system.

Once the RAT is installed, the attacker can take over the victim's device, send commands from a remote machine, and spread laterally in the network.

In addition, this malware can also log keystrokes, capture screenshots, download additional payloads, and extract sensitive user information, Seqrite said, adding that such attack campaigns can effectively jeopardise the privacy and security of sensitive data at the co-operative banks and result in large scale attacks and financial frauds.

To prevent such attacks, users need to exercise ample caution and avoid opening attachments and clicking on web links in unsolicited emails.

Banks should also keep their operating systems updated and have a full-fledged security solution installed on all the devices, Seqrite advised.

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Agencies
May 15,2020

Kolkata, May 15: Veteran Bengali author Debesh Roy, who was conferred the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel 'Teesta Parer Brittanto', died at a private hospital in Kolkata on Thursday, his family members said.

Roy was 84 and he is survived by his son. His wife had died earlier.

He was admitted to the hospital near his residence at Baguihati, in the eastern fringes of the city, on Wednesday after having symptoms like sodium potasium imbalance, sugar problem and breathing problem, his family members said.

He suffered a massive cardiac arrest and died at 10.50 PM.

A regular contributor to a number of Bengali dailies, he was a staunch critic of the attacks on liberals by in the country in recent times and attended protest meetings despite his failing health.

He was born in Pabna in present-day Bangladesh on December 17, 1936. He had five decades of career as a writer.

Besides Teesta Parer Britanta', he will be remembered for books like Borisaler Jogen Mondal , Manush Khun Kore Keno and Samay Asamayer Brittanto . His first book was Jajati.

His last rites will be performed tomorrow.

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