News: The Cloth That Listens to you

Now, a cloth that listens to you MIT Scientists Fabric That Can Hear As Well As Emit Sound  New York: Thsi could give a whole new meaning to the pharase power dressing. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a cloth that can hear and emit noise.           The team, led by MIT professor Yoel Fink, has reached "a new milestone on the path to functional fibers: fibers that can detect and produce sound", MIT said in a statement, The development, described in the August issue of Nature Materials, transforms the usual passive nture of textiles into a virtually all singing, all-dancing version.           According to MIT, "applications could include clothes that are themselves sensitive microphones, for capturing speech or monitoring bodily functions, and tiny filaments that could measure blood flow in capilaries or pressure in the brain."          The less-than-one-micrometer-wide fibers could be inserted into organs or the cardiovascular system to monitor for biomarkers or blood flow, whild their ultrasound-like ability to preform acoustic sensing and carry infrared light essentially maked them tiny ultrasound imagers.         The decade old research project aims to "develop fibers with ever more sophisticated properties, to enable fabrics that can interact with their environment" MIT said.         The new space-age cloth, it said, can not only listen, but make sound, "You can actually hear them, these fibers," Noemie Chocat, part of the lab team, said.          "If you connected them to a power supply and applied a sinusoidal current, then it would vibrate. And if you make it vibrate at audible requencies and put it cloe toyour ear, you could actually hear different notes or sounds coming out of it," Chocat added.          When stretched, these strands could be used to make clothes that act as a microphone or generate electricity. The new fibers are based on a similar plastic to that used in microphones. However, the MIT researchers manipulated the fluorine content to ensure its molecules stayed lopside. That imbalance maked the plastic piezoelectric, meaning it changes shape when an electric field is applied.          "In addition to wearable microphones and biological sensors, applications of the fibers could include loose nets that monitor the flow of water in the ocean and large-area sonar imaging systems with muc higher resolutions,"MIT said. The fibers aren't easy to make. They're produced from much larger cylinders that are "drawan" through a small aperture at higher temperatures. MIT experts manged the task using a number of techniques, including the use of an electically conducting graphite-based plastic and a strong electric field to align necessary molecules.