Computer mouse center wheels are ideal for volume control. Yet, you cannot adjust the default volume control bar in Windows 11 by rotating the middle mouse wheel. Instead, you need to double-click the speaker’s system tray icon and drag the volume control bar slider left/right.

So you will need a third-party program to enable the central mouse wheel volume control feature in Windows 11. Volumouse and Tb-vol-scroll are freely available programs that enable such functionality. Here’s how to change the volume in Windows 11 by rolling your mouse wheel with these apps.

How to change the volume with Volumouse

Volumouse is a NirSoft program that allows you to set custom mouse wheel rules to adjust volume on all Windows platforms. You can define up to 12 custom rulers to adjust 10 different components with the mouse wheel. Here are the steps to change the volume with the middle wheel of your mouse by installing Volumouse.

1. Open Softpedia’s Volumemouse page.
2. Click on Download now and Softpedia Mirror options (US).
3. press the File Explorer (folder library icon) taskbar button.
4. Navigate to the folder containing your downloaded Volumouse file.
5. Double click on the volume_setup.exe fitter.
6. Then click Next twice in the Volumouse configuration window.
7. Select Install to add the software.
8. To run Volumouse, click Begin and the All Apps button of this menu. Then click on the NirSoft Volumouse folder and then right-click on the program to select After > Execute as administrator.

9. Volumemouse has a default Other ruler key to change the volume with the middle mouse wheel. hold it Other then roll your mouse’s middle wheel up and down to increase and decrease the volume on the green sound indicator below.

You can set up a different rule to change the volume with your mouse wheel. To do this, click on one of the Use the dial when drop-down menus. Then select one of the many rules available from this drop-down menu. You can choose rules to enable middle mouse wheel volume control with various key combinations, hold mouse buttons, or hover the cursor over certain areas.

You can also select a different component for a mouse wheel rule change on its adjacent side. Making up scrolling menu. Default reading must be selected here so that you can adjust the volume with the middle mouse button. However, you can adjust the mouse wheel to change window transparency, screen brightness level, or recording volume by selecting other options from this drop-down menu.

Volumouse has additional advanced rules options, with which you can customize the volume control bar. Click it After button for a wheel mouse ruler to display these settings. You can change the default display color of the volume indicator on the screen by clicking on the Picking out button for the Color option. Select a different color for it on the palette.

You can also choose another vertical or horizontal volume indicator in the Advanced Ruler Options window. Click it Type drop-down menu, then select Vertical tracking bar Where Horizontal tracking bar. press the OKAY > Apply to save the settings and restart the Volumouse software. Then you will see a smaller volume indicator when scrolling the mouse wheel, like the one pictured below.

Tb-vol-scroll allows you to increase or decrease the volume by rolling the mouse wheel with the cursor on the scroll bar. This program is not as customizable as Volumouse, but some users might prefer its volume control bar. It also adds an icon to the system tray that displays a percentage for the set volume level. You can change the volume by rotating the mouse wheel with Tb-vol-scroll like this:

1. View the tb-vol-scroll page on Softpedia.
2. Click on Download now and select the United States location option.
3. Then open Explorer (see how to open File Explorer for more info) and the folder containing the tb-vol-scroll.exe case.
4. Double click tb-vol-scroll.exe to run the program (no installation required).
5. Now move your cursor over the Windows 11 taskbar.
6. Roll the mouse wheel up to increase the volume and down to decrease it. You’ll see the volume control bar below when you do.

You can also change the volume with another slider command Tb-vol-scroll. To do this, right-click on the system tray of the program and select Volume slider control; hover your cursor over the slider control shown directly below. Then, roll the middle mouse button to move that volume bar’s slider left or right.

The Tb-vol-scroll system tray icon offers a new way to mute the volume with your mouse’s middle scroll wheel. Middle-click the Tb-vol-scroll icon in the system tray with the scroll wheel button to mute the volume. Then you will see an M on the icon. It’s a nice feature that you don’t get in Volumouse.

To change some settings, right-click on the Tb-vol-scroll system tray icon and select Choice. Click on Configuration in the submenu to display a two-tab window. The Behaviour The tab includes settings to adjust normal scroll step and fine scroll threshold percentages. You can also change the speed at which the volume control closes with the Auto-hide status bar option.

The Appearance The tab includes options to customize the volume status bar and the Tb-vol-scroll system tray icon. You can increase or decrease the volume control by entering smaller or larger values ​​in the boxes Filling the status bar option. Click it Select button for the Status bar font setting to choose a different font and text size. You can add transparency to the volume control by dragging the Status Bar Opacity slider to the left.

You will see additional color options for the volume status bar and system tray icon when you scroll down the Appearance tongue. If you prefer a color for the bar instead of a gradient, click the Status bar color options Solid button. Then choose a color from the palette, click OKAYand press the Apply button. You can change the bar text and tray icon colors of Tb-vol-scroll with the other options pretty much the same.

The Tb-vol-scroll configuration window does not include a setting to add this program to Windows startup. To do this, you will need to move the b-vol-scroll.exe to the startup folder. See our guide to using the Startup Folder in Windows for more details.

Change your PC volume with the roll of a mouse wheel

You can now change the volume in Windows 11 with the roll of a mouse wheel instead of flapping with a scroll bar for the speakers. Rolling the mouse wheel is a more convenient way to adjust the volume level. Volumouse and Tb-vol-scroll are decent programs with plenty of customization options to enable this kind of sound control functionality in Windows 11.

The main problem here is to make contacts between the metal and the nanoscale semiconductor reliably. This is much more difficult with a high proportion of germanium than with silicon. The team from TU Wien, however, together with research teams from Linz and Thun (Switzerland), have now shown that this problem can be solved – with very high quality crystalline aluminum contacts and a sophisticated system of silicon-germanium layers. This allows different interesting contact properties, especially for optoelectronic and quantum components.

The oxygen problem

“Every semiconductor layer is automatically contaminated in conventional processes; this simply cannot be avoided at the atomic level,” says Masiar Sistani of the Institute for Semiconductor Electronics at TU Wien. These are above all oxygen atoms which accumulate very quickly on the surface of the materials: an oxide layer is formed.

With silicon, however, this is not a problem: silicon always forms exactly the same type of oxide. “With germanium, on the other hand, things are much more complicated”, explains Masiar Sistani. “In this case, there is a whole range of different oxides that can form. But this means that different nanoelectronic devices can have very different surface compositions and therefore different electronic properties.”

If you now want to connect a metal contact to these components, you have a problem: even if you strive to produce all these components in exactly the same way, there are still inevitably massive differences — and this makes the material complex to handle for use in the semiconductor industry.

“Reproducibility is a big problem,” says Professor Walter Weber, director of the Institute for Semiconductor Electronics, TU Wien. “If you’re using germanium-rich silicon-germanium, you can’t be sure that the electronic component, after putting contacts into it, will really have the characteristics you need.” Therefore, this material is only used to a limited extent in the production of chips.

It’s a shame, because silicon-germanium would have decisive advantages: “The concentration of charge carriers is higher, especially the positive charge carriers, the so-called ‘holes’, can move much more efficiently in this material than in silicon. The material would therefore allow much higher clock frequencies with increased power efficiency than our current silicon chips,” says Lukas Wind, PhD student in Walter Weber’s research group.

The “perfect” interface

Now, however, the research team has been able to show how the problem can be solved: they have found a method to create perfect interfaces between aluminum contacts and silicon-germanium components on an atomic scale. First, a layer system is made with a thin layer of silicon and the material from which electronic components are to be made, silicon-germanium.

By heating the structure in a controlled manner, a contact can now be created between the aluminum and the silicon: Around 500 degrees Celsius, a characteristic diffusion occurs, the atoms can leave their place and start to migrate. The silicon and germanium atoms come into contact with the aluminum relatively quickly, and the aluminum fills the vacated space.

“The diffusion dynamics in the layer system used thus creates an interface between aluminum and silicon-germanium with an extremely thin layer of silicon between the two”, explains Masiar Sistani. Thanks to this manufacturing process, the oxygen atoms never have the possibility of reaching this atomically sharp and very pure interface.

“Our experiments show that these touchpoints can be produced reliably and easily reproducibly,” says Walter Weber. “The technology systems you need to do this are already in use in the chip industry today, so it’s not just a lab experiment, but a process that could be used relatively quickly. in the chip industry.

The decisive advantage of the presented manufacturing method is that high quality contacts can be produced regardless of the silicon-germanium composition. “We are convinced that the abrupt, robust and reliable metal-semiconductor contacts presented are very interesting for a variety of new nanoelectronic, optoelectronic and quantum devices”, says Walter Weber.

The insulating properties of cellulose and other materials of plant origin are well known. Nanoscale cellulose fiber, a new material, has the opposite effect, exhibiting high thermal conductivity.

This makes it useful in areas where synthetic polymer materials were previously dominant. Because materials made from cellulose are better for the environment than polymers, research in this area could lead to greener technologies that require good thermal conductivity.

Cellulose is a structural component of plant cell walls that allows large trees to sustain themselves. However, the secret to its material strength lies in its overlapping nanoscopic fibers.

100 times better heat conduction

In recent years, cellulose nanofiber (CNF) materials have been used in many commercial products because they are strong and long-lasting. This makes it an excellent substitute for polymer-based materials like plastics, which can be harmful to the environment.

Cellulose nanofiber is used, for example, in low-calorie substitutes for carbohydrate additives, loudspeaker membranes, battery separators, aerogels for wound dressings and computer components.

But now that researchers under Professor Junichiro Shiomi of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering have examined the previously unstudied thermal properties of CNF, their findings suggest that these materials could be even more useful.

“If you see plant-derived materials such as cellulose or woody biomass used in applications, it is usually mechanical or thermal insulation properties that are used. However, when we explored the thermal properties of a wire made from CNF, we found that they exhibited a different type of thermal behavior, heat conduction, and this is very significant, about 100 times greater than that typical woody biomass or cellulosic paper”,

Shiomi said.

Hydrodynamic flow focus

Due to its construction, wire made from CNF has excellent thermal conductivity. Cellulose fibers found in nature are incredibly disorganized, but CNF is made by combining cellulose fibers and aligning them in the same direction using a technique known as the flux focusing method.

Heat can move along this tightly bound and arranged bundle of rod-like fibers, whereas in a more disorganized structure, heat would dissipate faster.

The main problem was how to accurately measure the thermal conductivity of these small pieces of matter. The scientists used a method called T-type thermal conductivity measurement to do this.

“This allowed us to measure the thermal conductivity of rod-shaped CNF wire samples that are only a few micrometers (one micrometer equals one thousandth of a millimeter) in diameter. But the next step for us is to perform accurate thermal testing on two-dimensional textile-like samples,”

Shiomi said.

Shiomi and her team hope that their research and future work on using cellulose nanofibers as a heat-conducting material will give engineers an alternative to some environmentally harmful polymers.

Since CNFs and other plant-based materials are biodegradable, they could significantly reduce the negative effects of e-waste in places where heat transfer is important, such as in some electronic or computer components.

Reference:

Guantong Wang, Masaki Kudo et al. High thermal conductivity cellulose filaments enhanced by hydrodynamic focusing. Nano Lett. 2022, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02057

Metamaterials are described as synthetically created composite materials whose structured microstructures, rather than the chemical constituents of the materials, determine their properties. In other words, they are engineered materials with properties not found in nature. Researchers at Nanjing University have capitalized on these properties by designing a automatic drawing machine which uses pens and pencils to transfer metamaterials onto paper.

A new paper from this team describes their new technique, which uses a ballpoint pen with conductive ink to draw conductors and mechanical pencils to draw resistors and resistive films. These have been incorporated into a computer controlled drawing machine which makes the deposition process more automatic with increased precision. “Although paper-based metamaterials have already been manufactured using inkjet printing technology, our drawing technique is cheaper, simpler and more flexible,” says Junming Zhao, head of the research team. “Our method could be useful for fabricating reconfigurable metallic antennas and lenses as well as metamaterial devices that absorb incident electromagnetic energy from cell phones or other sources.”

The machine is equipped with three stepper motors, two of which are used to move the pen or pencil in a horizontal plane, and the third is used to raise or lower the writing instrument in a vertical plane. A computer regulates the characteristics of the drafting machine, including travel speed, much like a CNC machine. Using these conductive ink pens and graphite pencils, the researchers created three paper-based materials, including a polarization converter, an absorber, and a conformal coding metasurface, using their unique drawing technique.

They demonstrated that the polarization converter could rotate the polarization linearly by 90° between 3.1 and 6.6 GHz with a conversion efficiency of over 90%. The absorber weighed only 58.3 g and had a 90% absorption capacity between 2.1 GHz and 10.5 GHz, while the metasurface was developed for radar cross-section reduction, a technique for conceal the radar signal in ships and aircraft used by the military.

International Business Machines Corp. vs. Zillow Group, Inc. et al.Appeal No. 2021-2350 (Fed. Cir. 2022)

In this week’s case, the Federal Circuit affirmed a judgment under Rule 12(c) on pleadings that IBM’s U.S. Patents Nos. 9,158,789 (the ‘789 patent) and 7,187 389 (the ‘389 patent) are drawn to an ineligible subject matter patent case under 35 U.S.C § 101. from IBM was accompanied by an expert statement explaining why the patents claimed eligible subject matter. The same panel of judges – Justices Reyna, Hughes and Stoll – also considered Section 101 patentability issues last week in Weisner v. Google LLCour article is available here.

In this case, the claimed patents covered methods and systems for displaying and interacting with data on computerized maps. Specifically, the ‘789 patent claimed methods and systems for updating and synchronizing information displayed on a map and an associated list of displayed items, based on a user’s drawing of a shape on the map to select some items and deselect others. The ‘389 patent claimed methods and systems for displaying “layered” data on a map, with the order of the layers determined by attributes of non-spatial elements, such as color and shape. The district court found that the claims of both patents were directed to abstract ideas regarding the organization and display of information on maps; that their methods could be performed using transparency overlays and other materials with conventional paper cards; and that the claims contained no inventive concept beyond “applying it to a computer”. The Federal Circuit agreed.

The Court found that the ‘789 patent claimed only the “abstract steps” of “presenting a map, asking a user to select a portion of that map, and then synchronizing the map and its corresponding list to display a larger set of data. limited to user. The Court noted that it had repeatedly held that the claims “are directed to the collection of information, understanding the meaning of that collected information, and reporting the results, all over a generic computer network operating from the normal and expected manner” (In re Killian, 45 F.4th 1373, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2022)) are directed to abstract ideas. The Court also agreed with the District Court that the claims of the ‘789 patent were “result-oriented, describing the required functions (presenting, receiving, selecting, timing), without explaining how to accomplish any of the tasks”, which supported further the conclusion that they were directed to an abstract idea. At the second stage of the admissibility test set out in Alice Corp. against CLS Bank Int’l, 573 US 208 (2014), the Court rejected IBM’s argument that the district court was bound to accept as true IBM’s factual allegations that the claims disclosed an inventive concept, noting that it was not bound to accept conclusive allegations. Instead, the Court found that the “timing” and “user-determined form” limitations cited by IBM merely described the abstract method, which was insufficient to turn it into patentable subject matter.

Similarly, the Federal Circuit found that the claims of the ‘389 patent “simply arrange and organize sets of visual information into layers and then present said layers on a generic display device. Although the claimed methods may expedite this process organization using a computer, they do not make any improvement in any computer technology.The Court compared the claimed methods to conventional organizational methods that might be employed “when looking at a particularly cluttered paper map”.The Court rejected IBM’s argument that the claims were analogous to those found patent allowable in Core Wireless Licensing SARL v LG Electronics, Inc.880 F.3d 1356 (Fed. Cir. 2018), which concerned an improved display interface for working with information displayed on small screens of mobile devices, distinguishing wireless core on the basis that the claims of the ‘389 patent were drafted more broadly and were not limited to any particular type of display or device. The Court went on to conclude that the enumeration in the claims of generic computer components to perform the abstract steps (e.g., “the logic for selecting one or more objects to be displayed in a plurality of layers”) was not ” simply not sufficient” to disclose an inventive concept under Alice second step.

Accordingly, the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s ruling that the patents were directed to ineligible subject matter. Judge Stoll dissented in part, agreeing with the majority on the ‘789 patent and several of the claims of the ‘389 patent, but arguing that additional limitations in dependent claims 9 and 13 of the ‘389 patent , as well as the factual allegations of IBM’s complaint and expert statement, ruled out dismissal at the pleadings stage.

The review can be found here.

By Jason A. Wrubleski

ALSO THIS WEEK

Nature Simulation Systems Inc. v. Autodesk, Inc.Appeal No. 2020-2257 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 27, 2022; reissued Oct. 17, 2022)

This week, a Federal Circuit panel reissued its January 27, 2022 opinion in Nature Simulation Systems Inc. v. Autodesk, Inc. regarding the standard of indefiniteness of the claims, following a request for a rehearing filed by the respondent Autodesk. Our report of the January 27 opinion is available here. In the January 27 notice, although patent indefiniteness is a matter of law and considered de novo, the Federal Circuit appeared to give substantial deference to the actions of the patent examiner during the prosecution. The January 27 opinion relied in part on the clarity the majority had found in the specification and prosecution history, and in part on the Patent Examiner’s analysis, stating that “[a]claims by PTO Examiners are entitled to appropriate deference”, and deeming it relevant that the claims in question “have been considered by the Examiner” to be final. The October 17 amended opinion further reversed the district court’s invalidity decision, but removed any deference to the patent examiner and instead emphasized that the required accuracy was found in the specification and history of lawsuits. The January 27 opinion contained a lengthy dissent by Justice Dyk. The amended opinion did not convince Judge Dyk, who still found nothing in the brief or the prosecution history to clarify the meaning of the wording of the claim at issue.

The full text of the republished opinion is available here.

By Tyler Hall

This article is part of Watching Washington, a regular dispatch from CBC News correspondents on US politics and developments affecting Canadians.

What’s new

Canada’s Minister of Industry was in Washington advocating for projects north of the border to access US federal funding for critical minerals.

François-Philippe Champagne’s trip took place after the passage from the United States several invoices offering large sums of money for green energy and other high-tech projects.

They include hundreds of millions for President Joe Biden to direct certain projects under the US Defense Production Act.

Like a legal member of the American industrial base, and houses several critical minerals that power electric batteries, Canada hopes some cross-border projects may qualify.

“Yes, there are sums in these acts that Canadian companies can exploit,” Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, told reporters Friday at the Canadian Embassy in Washington.

“That’s what we’re going to be working on with Canadian industry. Being on board with these very important initiatives.”

He was speaking at the end of a trip where he met his US counterpart, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, NASA chief Bill Nelson and spoke to a business audience.

What is the context

The context is the rivalry with China and Russia. Washington is increasingly pissed off about being dependent on its biggest geopolitical enemy, China, for the minerals that fuel the economy: phones, computers, clean tech and electric vehicles.

China dominates the market and once cut off access to Japan to these vital industrial inputs. Just as Russia has now cut Europe off from domestic heating gas exports.

The United States is now trying to decouple its high-tech economy from that of China and jlimited exports of advanced computer chips to this country; the United States has define general strategies to break its dependence on Chinese products.

Champagne said countries that share similar values ​​should rely more on each other and less on rivals, including China.

“What we want is definitely decoupling: definitely from China, and I would say other regimes around the world that don’t share the same values,” he told a panel organized by the Canadian American Business Council.

“People want to trade with people who really share the same values.”

WATCH | The future of Canada’s supply chains:

Canadian Deputy Minister Chrystia Freeland gave a speech in Washington this month on a similar theme, advocating for so-called “friend-shoring”: she said democracies should have closer economic and military ties and rely more on each other for trade.

Champagne called this a unique opportunity to rewrite supply chains, as the world turns to electric vehicles and trade with trusted allies.

He cited examples of how Canada fits in.

For example, he said he envisions a future where New York State and Quebec form a semiconductor corridor, similar to the self-production corridor of Windsor and Detroit: as the Detroit Big Three move parts between their factories on either side, he said, an IBM could move computer components to factories back and forth.

He also highlighted Canadian spending on an essential mineral plant in Quebec: Champagne said the titanium produced there will benefit the US military.

During his trip, Champagne also received blowback for two bills currently in parliament, his government bills C-18 and C-11.

They would need big internet platforms to compensate Canadian news organizations for the content they manage and give the CRTC new power over online content.

Director of a major American business lobby group, Abel Torres at the United States Chamber of Commerce, told Champagne that the bills discriminate against American websites; violate commercial covenants; contradict the principles of an open Internet; and give companies little guidance on how Canadian regulators intend to use their new powers.

“We believe these measures are a step in the wrong direction,” he told Champagne during the business panel on Friday.

WATCH | What is the US Inflation Reduction Act?

And after

Canada has increasingly secured a place in new supply chains for zero-emission vehicles: companies have announced new plants and the just-passed US omnibus bill defines cars in Canada as eligible for a domestic electric vehicle tax credit.

But the fine print of this so-called Inflation Reduction Act has yet to be released. Also missing: details on which projects will access funds under the Defense Production Act.

Automakers have complained that so few models will qualify for the electric vehicle tax credit to the point of rendering it meaningless: the companies say there just aren’t enough minerals and batteries produced in friendly countries to qualify for the credits as designed.

We should have more clarity in the coming months on how tax credits work.

The United States is still drafting rules on how to implement the law and the US government announcement this month that people will have until November 4 to submit public comments as part of this process.

Two regime leaders have been arrested in Europe and are awaiting extradition proceedings

The US Department of Justice has charged five Russian nationals with evading US sanctions over Russian weapons and Venezuelan oil, then laundering the proceeds through banks in the US and UAE .

Russian citizens Yury Orekhov, Artem Uss, Svetlana Kuzurgasheva, Timofey Telegin and Sergey Tulyakov are accused of buying American-made components for Russian missiles and aircraft. In addition, they are said to have operated a second business activity in the Venezuelan oil trade with buyers in Russia and China, including a certain Russian aluminum company sanctioned in April 2018 and China’s largest oil company (CNPC). Both Orekhov and Uss have been arrested in Europe and are awaiting extradition to the United States.

Orekov and Uss are co-owners of Nord-Deutsche Industrieanlagenbau GmbH (NDA GmbH), an industrial equipment and raw materials trading company with offices in Hamburg. Kuzurgasheva worked for Orekhov on an alleged plan to find and buy ‘sensitive military and dual-use technologies from US manufacturers’, including advanced computer components for missiles, fighters, satellites and other equipment high-end military. Some of these components were routed to sanctioned Russian defense contractors vetted by co-defendants Timofey Telegin and Sergey Tulyakov. The Justice Department is confident that the components ended up in military equipment, as some of them were found inside Russian weapon systems on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The specific goods sought would have included integrated circuits and radiation-hardenable memory modules; tactical air navigation interrogators and multi-mode receivers used for the Russian SU-30SM2 fighter aircraft; and other highly specialized aerospace electronic components.

To gain access to these components, Olekhov and other NDA employees reportedly told US manufacturers that the supplies would be used by civilian rocket company Roscosmos and other Russian space program companies. This simple lie was effective enough to be “a common method of sanctions-busting used by Russian actors,” according to prosecutors. In other deals, the components were allegedly smuggled through a Malaysian front company, using documents provided by an unnamed Malaysian defense official.

The NDA also reportedly operated an oil smuggling scheme. Two Venezuelan nationals, Juan Fernando Serrano Ponce and Juan Carlos Soto, have been accused of helping Orekhov arrange deals between sanctioned Venezuelan oil company PDVSA and foreign buyers, using NDA as a front company.

Orekhov allegedly told Ponce directly that he was acting on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch who owns a Russian aluminum company, saying: “He [the oligarch] also subject to penalties. This is why we [are] acting from this company [NDA GmbH]. As a facade.

As is common in the oil trade to break sanctions, the alleged scheme involved large-scale tampering. Mentions of Venezuela were reportedly erased from all written records, and tankers involved in the deliveries were told to turn off their AIS at key times. During a 2019 expedition, Orekhov reportedly told his partners that:

“[He] is waiting for the transfer slip so he can show the shipping company he needs to turn off the GPS – remember they can’t at the moment due to insurance issues – but they will once that they will see the confirmation of the transfer. [He] will discuss with the sender about the traceability of [the] travel and watch @ the best possible way not to show Amuay [town in Venezuela] as her previous port of call.”

To make payments, NDA reportedly used bulk couriers, cryptocurrency, and daily wire transfers processed by US financial institutions. To make the transfers, Orekhov and his colleagues allegedly forged papers and selected banks that would not scrutinize their activity. “It’s the shittiest bank in the Emirates…they pay for everything,” Orekhov reportedly told Soto during a transaction.

“Front company networks, cryptocurrency and an international network of fraudsters failed to protect Orekhov and his cronies from arrest by US law enforcement. Eradicating the circumvention of export controls on military technology is one of the task force’s highest priorities, and today’s arrests reflect the power of those controls,” said group director Andrew Adams. American working KleptoCapture.

Launched into a crowded field, Satechi’s new Thunderbolt 4 Dock not only provides legacy ports, but also more Thunderbolt.

What’s in the box?

Compatible devices

On the desk

Display support

Price and value

Advantages of the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station

Disadvantages of Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Or buy

October 14, 2022Reviewed by Alex Smith

Researchers have created an automatic drawing machine that transfers metamaterials onto paper using pens and pencils. The fabrication of three metamaterials that can be used to control the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum served as an example of the new methodology.

Researchers have developed a new method for drawing metamaterials on paper. They used it to make three different types of metamaterials capable of manipulating the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Image Credit: Junming Zhao, Nanjing University

Metamaterials are synthetic composite materials whose structured microstructures, rather than the chemical constituents of the materials, determine their properties.

Structures can be used to modify electromagnetic waves in ways not conceivable with ordinary materials due to their precise shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement.

Metamaterials, especially those used as absorbers, typically need to be thin, light, wide, and strong, but creating thin and light devices using traditional substrates is not easy. Using paper as a substrate can help meet these requirements while lending itself to surface-conforming or mechanically reconfigurable metasurfaces.

Junming Zhao, Research Team Leader, Nanjing University

The researchers explain their innovative method, which uses mechanical pencils to make resistors and resistive coatings and a ballpoint pen with conductive ink to create conductors, in the journal Express Optical Materials. They mechanized and improved this procedure by incorporating it into a computer-controlled drawing machine.

Zhao added, “Although paper-based metamaterials have already been made using inkjet printing technology, our drawing technique is less expensive, simpler and more flexible. Our method could be useful for fabricating reconfigurable metallic antennas and lenses as well as metamaterial devices that absorb incident electromagnetic energy from cell phones or other sources.”

Automated drawing

The innovative drawing device uses mechanical pencils with changing graphite contents or pens containing conductive ink.

Three stepper motors are used; two are used to move the pen or pencil in a horizontal plane, and the third is used to raise or lower the writing instrument in a vertical plane. A computer regulates the characteristics of the drawing machine, including the speed of movement.

“Some of the paper we tried was not very compatible with pencils or pens with conductive ink, resulting in poor conductivity of the designs drawn. After some testing, we found that the best performance came from using 0.22mm thick paper, which is easy to obtain and very compatible with pencils and conductive ink.“, added Zhao.

The patterns the researchers drew on paper with the conductive ink pen had a good conductivity of 3×10⁶ Siemens per meter. To understand how drawing times, drawing pressures, and pencils with different amounts of graphite affect electrical resistance, the researchers also looked at these variables.

As a result, they could determine the prerequisites for creating patterns with particular strength.

Creation of paper metamaterials

The researchers created three distinct paper-based metamaterials: a polarization converter, an absorber, and a conformal coding metasurface using their unique drawing technique. They demonstrated that the polarization converter could rotate the polarization linearly by 90° between 3.1 and 6.6 GHz with a conversion efficiency of over 90%.

An absorber was created that weighed only 58.3 g and had 90% absorption capacity between 2.1 GHz and 10.5 GHz.

A conformal coding metasurface was also developed for radar cross-section reduction, a technique for concealing the radar signal in ships and aircraft used by the military.

This metasurface contained two structural units 180° apart in reflection phase, allowing them to serve as the ‘0’ and ‘1’ elements for 1-bit encoding. When twisted around a curved surface, the metasurface reduced the radar cross section by 10 dB for the frequency range 8.94–11.59 GHz.

We hope that in the future, we can use design technology to design and manufacture meta-devices that could be worn or applied to the skin to achieve electromagnetic shielding and other functions. We also plan to design mechanically reconfigurable metamaterials that take advantage of the fact that paper can be bent and bent.

Junming Zhao, Research Team Leader, Nanjing University

Journal reference:

Zhu, K. et al. (2022) Direct drawing of metamaterials on paper using an automatic drawing machine. Express Optical Materials. doi:10.1364/OME.472866.

Source: https://www.optica.org/en-us/home/