l abscopes

Touchy feely
E
very day we use our sense of touch to guide our way through life
without giving it a second thought. Engineers have long sought
to replicate the complex sense of touch in electronic components
to give robots and, eventually, prosthetic limbs the same ability to
interact with the surrounding world. A group of electrical engineers
at UC Berkeley have made a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of
producing a sensor similar to human skin in its ability to detect pressure.
Professor Ali Javey and his team fabricated a seven square centimeter
sensor array using inorganic semiconductors called nanowires mounted
onto flexible, pressure-sensitive rubber. Previous electronic skins used
flexible organic components that were 50 times smaller in area and
required a large battery to provide the voltage needed to operate them.
Javey’s group instead opted to use nanowires that require smaller volt-
ages. “Previous research using nanowires was limited to using single
nanowire transistors on a very small scale,” says Dr. Kuniharu Takei, a
postdoctoral scholar in Javey’s group and lead author of the paper. The
sensor makes use of an innovative contact printing technique pioneered
by the team to mount hundreds of nanowires onto the sensor. The
electronic skin is durable, making it ideal for future applications, which
Javey explains can range, “from robotics, to giving gas pipelines
the ability to self diagnose the formation of cracks, and
one day even interfac- ing with prosthetic limbs.”
-Mohan Ganesh

The sight of sound

A
lthough scientists often want to look at very tiny things, it is theo-
retically impossible to see something smaller than the wavelength
of the radiation used to image it. In order to observe even smaller
objects, one could either use a shorter wavelength, for instance a beam
of X-rays instead of light, or play a number of tricks to get around
this limit. The same principles that restrict the ability to resolve
details in optical imaging also hold true for methods that use
soundwaves like ultrasound. Jie Zhu, a postdoctoral fellow in
Professor Xiang Zhang’s lab at UC Berkeley, and colleagues
recently engineered a device capable of imaging objects Clockwise from top-left: Ali Javey and Kuniharu Takei; NextDrop Team;

smaller than the wavelength of sound used to create the

acoustic image. The device has very small, square holes
drilled through a block that act as perfect lenses for
transmitting sound waves. When waves with the
proper wavelength hit an object on one side of
Clelia Baccari; Jie Zhu and Johan Christensen

the block, information contained in standing

waves that only exist very close to the object
is faithfully transferred through the device. A
microphone placed close to the output of the “holey”
material can detect features up to 50 times smaller than
the wavelength emitted by the source, seven times better
than the best resolution previously available. This technology
could spawn the next generation of probes for medical sonography
and the non-destructive evaluation of materials.
-Monica Smith
 Wireless water
I
n many developing countries like India, running water is scarce
and only intermittently available. To tackle this challenge, UC
Berkeley graduate students Thejo Kote, Emily Kumpel, and Ari
Olmos, launched a social enterprise called NextDrop in the fall of
2009, with advice from Assistant Professor Tapan Parikh of the School
of Information. NextDrop aims to address the problem of unreliable
piped water in India by exploiting the ubiquity of cell phones in
the country. “Mobile phones are everywhere,” explains Kumpel.
“They’re a very easy way to get information to people.” Local families
participate by sending a text message to NextDrop as soon as water
becomes available. As an incentive, the first set of callers receives
a micropayment. NextDrop then verifies the accuracy of the water
delivery update and immediately sends a text to all its subscribers
in the same neighborhood. Since its modest beginnings as a class
project, NextDrop has gone on to win UC Berkeley’s 2010 Big Ideas
competition and grants from the Gates Foundation and the Clinton
Global Initiative. In July 2010 they began their first pilot program in
the southern Indian town of Hubli, with 200 families as well as the
local water utility board participating. In the future, NextDrop hopes
to use delivery data accumulated over time to predict when water
will arrive in a particular locality, thereby empowering consumers
to actively participate in improving a vital utility.
-Sharmistha Majumdar

Winey pests
W
hen you think of the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, you probably imagine rolling hills adorned with row upon row of succulent grapes
vine-ripening in the sun. However, beneath this idyllic exterior the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa is wreaking havoc on California’s
wine grapes. By cutting off water transport through the plants, Xylella causes leaves to wither and fall off, ultimately killing entire
vines. In an effort to better understand the mechanism of this disease, Associate Specialist Clelia Baccari and Professor Steven Lindow of
the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology are studying the movement of the bacteria through the tissues of resistant and susceptible
grape varieties. They use a strain that expresses green fluorescent protein, making the bacterial cells easy to visualize under a microscope.
The plant’s ray cells appear red, and between them are xylem vessels—water-transporting vascular tissue. The bright yellow-green areas on
the walls of the xylem are full of bacteria. Dr. Baccari found that susceptible varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon on the left, had about
five times as many infected xylem vessels as the Tampa grape, on the right, which is relatively resistant to the disease. Current hypotheses
as to why some grape varieties are more resistant include differences in sap composition and the production of tyloses—outgrowths of cells
surrounding xylem vessels, which may block bacterial movement through the plant.
-Molly Sharlach

Cabernet Sauvignon (10x) Tampa (10x)

Spring 2011 Berkeley Science Review 5