Posts Tagged Rochester New York

Spider Silk Could Weave Biodegradable Computer Chips | Wired Science | Wired.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Computing on October 15, 2012


Spider Silk Could Weave Biodegradable Computer Chips

By Adam Mann

 

A silk fiber integrated into a photonic chip, connecting three disks that can hold light. Light is injected into one of the disks and propagates along the silk to the other two. (Image courtesy of Nolwenn Huby)

Spiders and some insects use silk to build strong webs and spin cocoons, and now scientists have figured out how to use the material for something even more amazing: electronic computer chips.

Many people have heard that spider silk is a sort of supermaterial: stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar, and yet incredibly malleable and flexible. But the silk has other properties that make it ideal for use in electronic devices. Light can travel through a silk strand as easily as it does through a fiber optic cable.

“When we first tested spider silk, we didn’t know what to expect,” said physicist Nolwenn Huby of the Institut de Physique de Rennes in France. “We thought, ‘Why not try this as an optical fiber to propagate light?’”

Huby and her team were able to transmit laser light down a short strand of the silk on an integrated circuit chip. The silk worked much like glass fiber optic cables, meaning it could carry information for electronic devices, though it had about four orders of magnitude more loss than the glass. Huby said that with a coating and further development, the silk could one day have better transmission capabilities. She will present her results at this year’s Frontiers in Optics conference, Oct. 14 to 18 in Rochester, New York.

The achievement could open the door to medical applications, such as silk fibers carrying light to places in the body for internal imaging. Because spider silk is incredibly thin — roughly five microns in diameter or 10 times thinner than a human hair – surgeons could perform diagnostic exams using very small openings in the body.

“These materials are harmless, so you can implant them,” said biomedical engineer Fiorenzo Omenettoof Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts, who has been working in this field for years and will also be giving a talk on opportunities for silk in high-tech products at Frontiers in Optics. “The body has no reaction to them.”

Omenetto envisions future applications where, after a medical procedure, doctors and surgeons place a silk bandage in a patient embedded with electronic functions to monitor for possible infections. The patient can be closed up and then never have to worry about having the monitoring device taken out again because the body will simply absorb the material. Already his team has developed a small implantable radio frequency heater that could sterilize an area against bacteria.

For his applications Omenetto uses silkworm silk – the kind you find in fancy clothing, ties, and underwear. It shares many of the same properties as spider silk but can be manufactured on an industrial scale. Silkworms can be grown close together and produce copious silk fibers while spiders need lots of space, are often cannibalistic of their neighbors, and produce fewer quantities of silk.

Omenetto simply takes the silk from textiles and boils it in water to extract the silky proteins. His team is able to use this mixture to produce a sort of plastic that is 100 percent natural. Because it is fully biodegradable, electronic silk technology could potentially become widespread. By doping materials with silk, Omenetto’s team has created a device that can shoot a blue laser beam. The gadget’s components are fully compostable and also use less power than equivalent acrylic laser shooters.

With a great deal of further development, e-waste could be a thing of the past. Whenever a new snazzy cellphone comes out, you could simply compost your old model instead of leaving it to languish in a dump, slowly leaching toxic chemicals. But such electronics are still decades away, said Omenetto. Compostable circuits are one thing but engineers would still need to figure out how to make biodegradable batteries, interfaces, and everything else in modern-day electronics, he added.

“We have to be very realistic about these things,” he said.

Images: 1) Nolwenn Huby 2) A golden orb web spider, whose silk can be used for electronic components. Michel Pézolet 3) Scanning electron microscope view of a silk fiber. Nolwenn Huby

 Spider Silk Could Weave Biodegradable Computer Chips | Wired Science | Wired.com.

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Financial Advice for Bullied Bus Monitor Karen Klein | Fox Business

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Banking, Finance, Opinion, Taxes on June 26, 2012


Financial Advice for Bullied Bus Monitor Karen Klein

by Kate Rogers

Published June 22, 2012

FOXBusiness

 

Bus monitor Karen Klein may have been defenseless as four seventh graders hurled brutal insults at her earlier this week. However, the public is now rallying behind her to the tune of more than $500,000, after a viral video of the grandmother of eight being bullied hit the Web.

FOXNews.com reported more than $500,000 has been donated to Klein via Indiegogo.com, after Max Sidorov, 25, from Toronto set up a fund in her name. Sidorov said he was “sickened” by the harassment Klein received at the hands of these children on her Greece Central School District bus route in Rochester, N.Y., where she is a 20-year veteran.

So how should Klein handle her newfound cash flow?

Frank Armstrong, president and founder of Miami-based Investor Solutions, said the funds Klein is receiving via the drive are similar to winning the lottery.

“This is a variation on any sudden inflow of money that you hadn’t anticipated,” Armstrong said. “If you don’t have a strategy in place, things can get twisted very quickly.”

He called upon a phrase he learned from his time in the Air force—“Stop. Think. Collect your wits.” Armstrong said he would advise Klein to stash the donations in a money market fund for at least one month in order to think about how she wants to deploy them. Keeping the money in an annuity fund may stop Klein from burning through the donations, so psychologically it has its advantages; however Armstrong said he would rather see her generate a strategy to keep the income flowing for the rest of her life.

“I’d like her to go to a Vanguard and find a portfolio with a split between global equities and short-term bonds, so one portion of the portfolio would go up and down, but she would have a big slug of money to draw on to provide her with known amounts of income for years to come,” he said. “But an annuity, in order to save taxes for a person who may not be in a tax bracket at all, isn’t necessarily the best choice.”

As far as the tax implications for Klein, Armstrong said the donation would never be taxable to the recipient. No matter how large the fund became as a result of multiple gifts, gift taxes are paid by donors, if at all.

“Of course, income on the fund would be taxed to the beneficiary, as we presume it’s going to be distributed,” he said. “We also suspect that her tax bracket may be zero or low,  so for her that probably isn’t an issue.”

Kent Reed, president of the Atlanta office of Murphy Business & Financial Corp., said another investment Klein may consider is an absentee-owner business. For example, if she purchased a successful business in her area, she would not have to actually work it, but would have a return on her investment each year and have an asset to sell later.

“At the end of whatever she is done doing, she will have something to sell and get her money back,” he said.

If nothing else, Reed said to find a good accountant and financial advisor to help guide her decisions. Like Armstrong, he said an annuity may not be the best option for Klein, because it will not grow.

“She can more than live on $40,000 a year for 10 years, but after it’s gone what can she do?” he said.

Armstrong may also have outstanding debts like student loans for herself or her children, or credit card debt. If that is the case, Armstrong said paying them off in full is the way to go.

“There is not an investment strategy I would think of that could generate more for her than that credit card debt could cost,” he said. “I’d say pay it off and don’t spend a penny.”

 Financial Advice for Bullied Bus Monitor Karen Klein | Fox Business.

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