Skin

It’s truly touching news... no sooner do we hear about the pressure-sensitive artificial skin created at UC Berkeley, than fellow Californians at Stanford University announce that they have also created such a material. While Berkeley’s skin relies on carbon nanotubes to detect pressure, however, Stanford’s skin utilizes a thin rubber sheet made up of tiny pyramids. It is reportedly so sensitive that it can “feel” the weight of a butterfly.  Read More

Using a process described as “a lint roller in reverse,” engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, have created a pressure-sensitive electronic artificial skin from semiconductor nanowires. This “e-skin,” as it’s called, could one day be used to allow robots to perform tasks that require both grip and a delicate touch, or to provide a sense of touch in patients’ prosthetic limbs.  Read More

Ever since the 1920s, getting a tan has been highly fashionable in many Western cultures. Despite the growing mountain of evidence regarding the dangers, many (mainly young) people continue to use solariums as a way to attain what is often seen as a “healthy tan.” However, the evidence just keeps piling up with two new studies out of Australia, home of the “bronzed Aussie,” showing that using a solarium significantly raises ones chances of being diagnosed with skin cancer and that the risks increase as the age of solarium use decreases.  Read More

Five years ago, Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger envisioned a technology that “could influence notions of community, identity, and connectivity with minimal impact on the physical environment.” Using an online design portal, users would select and try out a customized electronic processing device that they would then print onto their own skin. The DNA Tattoo, or Dattoo, could include printable input/output tools such as a camera, microphone, or laser-loudspeaker - it would be up to the user, as would the Dattoo’s aesthetics. Most intriguingly, it would capture its wearer’s DNA, to ensure an intimate user/machine relationship.  Read More

Scientists at Spain’s University of Granada have created artificial skin with the resistance, firmness and elasticity of real skin. It is the first time artificial skin has been created from fibrin-agarose biomaterial. Fibrin is a protein involved in the clotting of the blood, while agarose is a sugar obtained from seaweed, commonly used to create gels in laboratories. The new material could be used in the treatment of skin problems, and could also replace test animals in dermatological labs.  Read More

Always thought your skin was more than just a device to keep your insides tucked in neatly and out of harms’ way? Well, you were right. Chris Harrison has developed Skinput, a way in which your skin can become a touch screen device or your fingers buttons on a MP3 controller. Harrison says that as electronics get smaller and smaller they have become more adaptable to being worn on our bodies, but a couple of drawbacks are that the monitor and keypad/keyboard have to be big enough for us to operate the equipment. This can defeat the purpose of small devices but with the clever acoustics and impact sensing software, Harrison and his team can give your skin the same functionality as a keypad. Add a pico projector attached to an arm band, and your wrist becomes a touch screen.  Read More

There’s no doubt fashion is fleeting. What might be the height of fashion today is almost certainly the fashion faux pas of tomorrow. Thankfully, clothes and hairstyles are easy to change and we’re not getting around in leg warmers and new romantic bouffants anymore – well most of us aren’t. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to change the look of a building. What was the pinnacle of architectural design in the '60s is often the eyesore of the skyline today. The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) proposes a simple, cost effective, easily constructed skin that promises to transform dated structures into sustainable and stunning buildings.  Read More

Low temperature plasma is currently used for the sterilization of surgical instruments. This is because plasma works at the atomic level and is able to reach all surfaces, even the interior of hollow needle ends. Its ability to disinfect is due to the generation of biologically active bactericidal agents, such as free radicals and UV light, which can be delivered to specific locations. Research into how and why these biologically active agents are generated has led to the construction of two prototype devices: one for the efficient disinfection of healthy skin in hospitals and public spaces where bacteria can pose a lethal threat; and another to treat infested chronic wounds.  Read More

October 9, 2006 Though synthetic images and contrived looks help to shape our ideas of what’s attractive and what’s passe, we suspect the suntanned look triggers recognition of a healthy, robust outdoorsy person and no matter what shape the Ozone Layer is in, the bronzed look is still likely to be fashionable for a long time yet. Which makes the following great news for the sun worshippers of the world. Findings from a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital in Boston have rewritten science's understanding of the process of skin tanning – an insight that has enabled them to develop a promising way of protecting fair-skinned people from skin cancer caused by exposure to sunlight.  Read More