Tech
Smile of science WRITTEN BY SANDOR HABETS
Communicating with plants Plants emit electrical signals to sense and respond to their environment. These signals, however, tend to be very weak and not observable for humans. Scientists have developed a device to communicate with plants comprising an electrode and a type of hydrogel. The device can detect these weak signals. The electrode was attached to the surface of a Venus flytrap in lab tests. Using a smartphone, electric pulses were transmitted to the device telling the plant to close its leaves on demand. The flytrap’s leaves were then used in combination with a robotic arm to pick up a thin hair. The 3-millimetre device is completely harmless to the plant and does not affect its ability to perform photosynthesis. By monitoring the electrical signals that plants emit, the device has the potential to be used for plant health monitoring. By looking at abnormal signals, farmers could find out if a disease is afflicting their crops even before the symptoms show up. This means that this technology can be used for enhancing food security around the world.
Smarter exercising While the gyms have been closed for quite a while during the pandemic, a lot of students have been struggling with the ‘studentenkilos’ that come along. This makes it all the more important to exercise efficiently when the gyms reopen again. Exercising for weight loss could be enhanced with a new, lowcost device that measures how the human body metabolises fat. As breath holds the key to monitoring fat burning, this device uses an ultraviolet lamp to determine the acetone gas concentration which is produced in your blood as a reaction to the burning of fat. The UV-light is absorbed by the acetone gas, because of its extremely short wavelength. Exhaled air is trapped in a hollow optical fibre (small volume gas cell) that has been exposed to vacuum ultraviolet light. To ascertain the acetone gas concentration, the degree to which the light is weakened due to acetone absorption is measured. The device is much more compact than the large mass spectrometer that was required to monitor fat metabolisation until now. Besides, we can use it to develop exercise methods for efficient fat burning, so we can all say goodbye to the ‘coronakilos’!
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