| A Test Bed for Smart Buildings and Google's Video Play |
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Schneider's goals for its headquarters were straightforward. The average electricity consumption of an office building in Paris is 400 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year. The European Union has directed that all buildings reduce consumption to 50 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year by 2030. Le Hive was meant to demonstrate that the path toward that goal can be quick and relatively painless. The company has reduced its headquarters' energy consumption from more than 300 kilowatt-hours per square meter to 65.The Schneider system, dubbed EcoStruxure, started by collecting and analyzing data on the building's energy consumption patterns. Then a series of software and hardware components were installed, all of which can be controlled from a single interface such as a laptop or smart phone. [Read the full article] Eye of the beholder: Inside this experimental camera, a stretchable sensor array sits below a liquid lens. Water is pumped into both components to change the magnification of the image captured by the camera.Credit: John RogersThe burgeoning field of stretchable electronics promises to change the way we think about gadgets. Silicon chips, once confined to flat, rigid shapes, will break out of the planar mold. One experimental example is a camera, modeled after an eyeball, that features a curved array of light sensors.Now a new design gives this curved camera a boost: the shape of the lens and of its sensor can be changed in synchrony, providing a 3.5x zoom. This provides a key piece of missing functionality for the original camera concept, says John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Rogers led the development of the device. [Read the full article] Detecting Alzheimer(TM)s: At left, a brain scan reveals the presence of a molecule designed to bind to amyloid plaques, a sign of Alzheimer(TM)s, (red and yellow indicate high concentrations) in a living patient. At right, amyloid found in an autopsy, the current gold standard for detection, is marked in dark purple.Credit: JAMAA new molecular dye might eventually help diagnose Alzheimer's disease much earlier, which could prove vital to developing effective treatments and preventative measures. The molecule binds to amyloid plaques, the neurological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, and can be detected in the living human brain with PET imaging. Previously, the only definitive way to detect amyloid in the brain, and hence diagnose the disease, was via an autopsy."Now we can see this Alzheimer's lesion in living people, and that's a big step," says John Morris, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University. [Read the full article] 
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