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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
One of the most exquisite1 heat sensors3 in the world—it’s not in some government lab. It's in the head of a snake. The pit viper4, to be specific.
"They're incredibly sensitive. They beat any of the synthetic5 counterparts, even the most expensive semiconducting systems used in infrared7 or thermal8 cameras today." Chiara Daraio, a materials scientist at Caltech. "They can effectively resolve a few millikelvin of temperature changes at a distance of up to a meter."
Now Daraio and her colleagues have designed a heat-sensing material that competes with the sensitivity of the snake. Using pectin. Same stuff you used to thicken jam. “Pectin, a double-stranded molecule9 ubiquitously present in the outer cell wall of plant cells, acts effectively as a tiny molecular10 temperature sensor2." When temperatures go up, she says, the double-stranded molecule unzips, "like the zipper11 of a jacket."
So they did what you usually do with pectin—they made jelly, using pectin, water and calcium12 ions. They dried that out, and got a thin, transparent13 film. Then, they had to test it. Which they realized they could do using a microwave and her son’s teddy bear. "Which can be heated up to a temperature of 37 degrees, roughly the temperature of a mouse or a running prey14 for a snake."
And the pectin film was exquisitely15 sensitive to the warmed-up teddy bear—on par6 with the snake. The film could detect temperature changes as small as 10-thousandths of a degree celsius16. The study is in the journal Science Robotics. [Raffaele Di Giacomo et al., Biomimetic temperature-sensing layer for artificial skins]
Daraio says the skin could give robots superior sensing abilities. "Allowing for example robots to determine whether they're moving around inanimate objects, other robots, or even humans or animals, which are evidently warmer bodies." Or, she says, it could be used in sensitive skin on prosthetic limbs for humans. If we can figure out how to connect this artificial skin up to something far more complicated. The brain.
—Christopher Intagliata
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1
exquisite
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adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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2
sensor
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n.传感器,探测设备,感觉器(官) | |
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3
sensors
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n.传感器,灵敏元件( sensor的名词复数 ) | |
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4
viper
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n.毒蛇;危险的人 | |
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5
synthetic
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adj.合成的,人工的;综合的;n.人工制品 | |
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6
par
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n.标准,票面价值,平均数量;adj.票面的,平常的,标准的 | |
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7
infrared
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adj./n.红外线(的) | |
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8
thermal
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adj.热的,由热造成的;保暖的 | |
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9
molecule
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n.分子,克分子 | |
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10
molecular
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adj.分子的;克分子的 | |
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11
zipper
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n.拉链;v.拉上拉链 | |
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12
calcium
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n.钙(化学符号Ca) | |
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13
transparent
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adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
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14
prey
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n.被掠食者,牺牲者,掠食;v.捕食,掠夺,折磨 | |
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15
exquisitely
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adv.精致地;强烈地;剧烈地;异常地 | |
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16
Celsius
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adj.摄氏温度计的,摄氏的 | |
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