Innovation

For most of us typing is second nature, we don’t have to think about where to place our hands, or when and where to move our fingers along the keyboard. A team at Waterloo School of Computer Science is looking to improve upon this process with a program called Typealike. The prototype program utilizes a webcam that monitors the user’s hands as they type and adjusts elements on-screen accordingly. This allows users to set up unique gestures to perform tasks that aren’t strictly available on the keyboard itself, similar to the gestures built in on most laptop trackpads. The goal is to make things as easy and streamlined for users as possible, to improve efficiency and reduce strain.

The program has a built in learning AI that learns gestures and improves its ability to recognize them as it continues to monitor a user’s inputs. It can track explicit motions to control things like zoom or volume, but it also has the ability to monitor subtle things like a user’s fatigue to adjust screen brightness or their keyboard’s backlighting. The researchers believe that the best way to improve the program is have users interact with it and expand the database of information the AI has to learn from. The team also hopes that it can be used for medical assistance as well as for everyday use as development continues.

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Amorphous boron is a nonmetallic element that is often used in rockets as a fuel source and for certain pyrotechnic flares that produce a green tinted flame. It is rarely found in pure form with compounds such as boric acid, sodium borate aka. borax, and boric oxide. Common uses for boron over the years have been things like tile glazes, several brands of eyedrops and antiseptics, and washing powders and detergents. Boron also has the highest melting point of any metalloid, at a toasty 3771°F (2077°C). Interestingly, Turkey and the United States contain the largest deposits of borax and the compound is considered a nutrition element for plants. 

Recently scientists were able to synthesize 2D boron monosulfide (BS) nanosheets which led to interesting discoveries about the electrical properties of these single-atom layers of material. The researchers fabricated boron sulfide in a 1:1 ratio with a crystalline structure and stripped off layers that maintained the arrangement. The resulting nanosheets had a large bandgap energy, the material’s ability to conduct current, much greater than that of the base material. They also observed that as more layers were stacked together, the overall bandgap of the material decreased, until it ultimately reached that of the bulk material after approximately five sheets. Scientists believe that these properties could lend well to creating highly conductive, and tunable electrical components. 

Other 2D boron compounds do not exhibit the same responses, making 2D BS unique, and applications for such materials had previously only been speculative. The differing bandgap structures also respond to different electromagnetic wavelengths. The bulk material required lower energy levels (in the visible light range), the nanosheets only activated under wavelengths in the ultraviolet range. This secondary phenomenon implies that the nanosheets can possibly be used in photocatalytic devices, and the number of sheets would allow for fine control of the electrical properties. 

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Recently a new thermal energy source has been under research in hopes of creating a new battery able to operate under extreme temperature conditions. Scientists have been experimenting with metal hydrides, a high-energy material, to form the basis of the battery. Metal hydrides are a material class that contain metal that are able to be bonded with hydrogen. They are classified by their chemical bond i.e., ionic, metallic or covalent. The energy is then combined with pressurized water, and the energy storage cycle was able to be reversed at certain conditions. The battery itself uses a heat transfer liquid system and disperses the energy accordingly.  

This new system demonstrates storage reversibility at a range of temperatures, proving that the thermal battery theoretically can last in varying environmental conditions. The prototype contains 900 g of materials, and the flow rate can be adjusted according to the temperature. Once the study is complete it is hoped that this new thermal battery can be a lasting future energy source for yet to be determined applications.

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