Eideard

Mouse embryos – on the right cultured in Scale reagent

Scientists are constantly looking for new and better ways of seeing through biological tissue, in order to see cells within it that have been marked with dyes, proteins or other substances. While recent research has involved using marking materials such as carbon nanotubes and firefly protein, scientists from Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute have taken a different approach – they’ve developed a chemical reagent that causes the tissue surrounding the marked cells to become transparent.

Known as Scale, the reagent was created by a team led by Dr. Atsushi Miyawaki. Already, they have used it to turn mouse brain tissue clear, in order to optically image the fluorescently-labeled cerebral cortex, hippocampus and white matter…

Not only did Scale turn the unmarked tissue transparent, but it also did not decrease the intensity of the fluorescent proteins that the RIKEN team used to mark cells.

While the experiments performed so far have mainly involved brain tissue samples, Miyawaki believes that it should work equally well on other organs, and ultimately in living subjects. “We are currently investigating another, milder candidate reagent which would allow us to study live tissue in the same way, at somewhat lower levels of transparency” he said. “This would open the door to experiments that have simply never been possible before.”

Yes – we are closing in on a remake of the Invisible Man.

When it comes to display technologies nothing says “cool” like a transparent display. While we’ve seen a number of prototypes, such as TDK’s flexible OLED display, pop up at trade shows in the last couple of years, Samsung has announced it has already started mass production of a 22-inch transparent LCD panel.

Because they rely on ambient light instead of the usual back lighting, the transparent panels consume 90 percent less electricity than conventional LCD panels. But despite the fact the new panels are starting to roll off the Samsung production lines, it will probably still be a while before transparent panels make it onto our desktops…

No doubt reflecting the expected high price of the transparent panels – and possibly while the boffins at Samsung rack their brains for possible everyday home and office applications – Samsung is touting the possibilities for the panels for use in advertising in shop windows and outdoor billboards. It also says corporations and schools could put the panels to use as an interactive communication device…

Just the kind of tech that I believe will be easy to commercialize. Americans aren’t especially familiar with the ubiquitous LCD screen/panels facing every form of transportation around the world – from foot traffic to underground waiting platforms – but, it seems an obvious step to replace fully transparent glass with nothing more than a single painted or glowing sign with something that offers the capacity for motion and slide shows.

The technology behind giant video billboards can now be made into flexible and even transparent displays. These could be used to create brakelights that fit the curves of a car or medical diagnostics that envelop a patient like a blanket.

It has been made possible by a new technique, outlined in Science, for manufacturing so-called inorganic LEDs.

The new method allows these tiny light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to be attached to materials such as glass or rubber…

The approach is able to make thin inorganic LEDs in high quantities in such a way that they can be cut up by bathing them in a strong acid. The separated elements can then be picked up with a “stamp”, with holes cut precisely to size for the elements, and then placed on a wide array of surfaces, from glass to plastic to rubber.

The devices can be placed sparsely enough that a bright layer of them is practically transparent.

“Because you can get away with very low coverage by area, it opens up the possibility of making something that’s see-through,” Professor John Rogers explained…

“Displays remain the ultimate goal – we don’t need a new law of physics to enable it, it’s just more of an engineering question,” he said.

It is a trip! No question about it.

Should be able to make some beautiful displays – and consume less electricity in the process.