It’s no secret that sweat is pretty gross. It’s also immensely important. That’s because it helps the body to regulate its temperature by keeping us cool in hot environments or when we’re carrying out strenuous activities. While evolution has given us this method of cooling off, high-tech devices lag behind. Instead of being able to regulate their temperature this way, computers typically rely on fans, which kick into high gear whenever we try and carry out some computing-intensive task.
Researchers from China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University think we should make high-tech devices more like mammals. With that in mind, they have developed a special sorbent coating for electronics that releases water vapor to dissipate heat from running devices. A sorbent substance is one that collects molecules from another substance through absorption. The result is an innovative new thermal management system researchers think could help keep electronic devices even cooler than current approaches.
“The coating can capture moisture from the atmosphere during the off-peak period of electronics,” Chenxi Wang, a Ph.D. candidate who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “In the following temperature-rising period, the water inside sorbents is desorbed and a large amount of heat is extracted simultaneously. The key improvement of this method is that the sorbent coating can absorb several times the heat when compared with [phase change materials] of the same mass. It means effective thermal management for a longer time can be realized.”
A computer that sweats sounds kind of crazy. But Wang said it could turn out to be incredibly useful. Active cooling methods such as fan-assisted forced convection consume energy. The bulky nature of fans also limits their application, which is why you’ll find a fan in your laptop but not your smartwatch.
Devices like phones make smart use of features like heat sink composed of copper. Because copper is a good conductor, it takes heat away from the phone’s components, while the shape of the thin copper metal sheet means it cools quickly thanks to its large surface area. Other attempts to keep phones cool involve phase change materials, such as waxes and fatty acids. These absorb heat produced by devices when they melt. But the total amount of energy exchanged during the solid-liquid transition is relatively low. A special sweatable coating may therefore represent a promising alternative.
“In our [recent work], we demonstrated this technology on a micro computing device,” Wang said. “We are now carrying out more tests to extend this technology to more electronic devices, such as phones, fast-charging batteries, and [photovoltaic] modules. We are cooperating with companies to evaluate its potential in practical commercial applications.”
A paper describing the project was published in the journal Cell Press.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.