Slashdot Mirror
First Membrane Controlled By Light Developed
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "A new membrane developed at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics blocks gas from flowing through it when one color of light is shined on its surface, and permits gas to flow through when another color of light is used. It is the first time that scientists have developed a membrane that can be controlled in this way by light."
When they can make "go" the proper green color. And red for "stop." And yellow should make the gas really go fast.
This is actually a pretty interesting breakthrough. I'd like to see some of the information about the crystals themselves, but it seems pretty straightforward.
That's nothing.
I know of a membrane that, when certain patterns of light are shined upon it, fluid flows through a connected valve.
It's got a horrible refractory period, though.
That is either incoherent trolling, or an enlightened attempt at humorously illuminating a certain feminine regularity.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I don't know why, but the first thing that came to my mind is that perhaps this could be used in an artificial heart. No moving parts (the valves anyway) and precise low power way to block and allow blood flow. Hmm...
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
This is AMAZING.
This could simplify so much hardware that it would probably fill 10 average screens worth of a comment on Slashdot listing them all.
Sorting machines, a huge one, just got a whole lot simpler.
I hope this comes to market as soon as humanly possible.
This is, IMHO, important to understanding, and perhaps tailoring, smart membranes that mimic the actual membranes found in cells.
As an analogy, in a leaf the transpiration of carbon dioxide and water is controlled by small pores, called stoma. These stoma are less abundant in succulents, like cacti, or aloe vera, then in rain forest vegetation.
The organelles of a cell, like the mitochondria, have similar properties.
This is another piece of the puzzle for nanotechnology, and may find use in batteries and electrochemical fuel cells. Time will tell.
This is progress?
I passed gas
That's insane in the membrane!
Word, yo!
For a few years now, we've been able to control the porosity of membranes in vivo, not just in a laboratory dish, by exposing them to light. The work started at Caltech, where, a little over ten years ago, someone demonstrated the first cellular membrane channel that could be turned on and off by light -- it was a potassium channel (that is, a pore specially designed so that it only passed potassium ions) if I recall correctly. More recently, and more famously, a fellow at the MIT Media Lab was able to engineer rhodopsin (one of the pigments of the photo-sensitive cells in the retina) into similar ion channels resulting in much more efficiently controlled ion-specific porosity.
Again, this is work that has been done in whole living animals, not inanimate substance, a far more impressive feat. I've seen presentations where a mouse's behavior was controlled through turning on or off light going into an optical fiber implanted in its brain. The light controled the porosity of the cell membranes of neurons in a particular part of the brain: turn the light on, channels / pores are opened exiting the cells; turn the light off, channels are closed, quieting the cells down. (For those familiar with this work, I admit that this is a gross simplification for the purposes of the present argument.)
While the work at U. Rochester sounds interesting, the researchers there are certainly not the first to control membrane porosity through light. That, and the past tense of "to shine" is "shone".
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
My first thought is that it would be useful to automatically control aspiration/respiration of something during daylight hours, with the sun providing ultraviolet light. Just can't think of an immediate application.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Condoms. Something to do with condoms.
I don't know what, exactly ... responding to bioluminescent fungi?
-kgj
Something interesting about these optically-actuated gateways is that they are (more or less) locked to open or closed by each of the different frequency "keys" shifting their state, not requiring continuous illumination:
When the gas that the membrane controls can be made to emit one or another of the frequencies when its physical or chemical properties change, this material will become a "gas transistor", which will allow gas to control its own distribution determined by what physical/chemical state it's in.
--
make install -not war
Maxwell's demon could not be reached for comment.
I think he meant a guy, with the patterns of light coming from his monitor displaying porn.
"when certain patterns of light are shone upon it" surely? http://www.verb2verbe.com/conjugation/english-verb/shine.aspx
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This is one of the first solid steps to making an artificial lung, since the lung is a gas exchange mediator. This has a ton of medical and air environment conditioning applications ie power cheap space ship air environment controller. Now smokers have hopes to legalize public smoking, with a new hope at improved lungs!