Thursday, June 6, 2013

Insurance commissioner Kreidler touts upcoming changes to health ...

Rolf Boone/The Business Blog ? Published June 05, 2013 Modified June 05, 2013

The Olympian

State Office of Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler delivered a mythbusting speech about the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, telling a lunchtime audience that changes set to take place in health care in 2014 are much better than what the current health care system has to offer.

Kreidler?s audience on Wednesday were about 30 members of Tumwater Rotary, a gathering of business owners and guests who also had questions about the new health care plan, sometimes referred to as ?Obamacare.?

Kreidler wasted no time and addressed the myths from the start:

-Does the Affordable Care Act represent a federal government takeover of health care?

It does not, Kreidler said, because the Affordable Care Act is built on the existing private health insurance system. He also said that 78 percent of Americans aren?t going to see much of any change in their health care because they are already covered by Medicare or Medicaid, or are covered by their employer, either a large, self-insured or government employer.

-Are health care premium rates going to increase 70 percent in the individual health care market?

Based on health care insurance rate filings with the state, that is not the case, Kreidler said. He said rates are about the same, or lower, with enhanced benefit coverage.

?We?re not seeing the kind of rate shock that was talked about,? he said.

-If the status quo is working, why mess with health care?

It is not working, he said, particularly if you buy health insurance yourself or are a small employer, two groups beset with higher premiums and cuts to coverage.

?Double-digit increases have been the norm,? he said.

He also said that $1 billion a year is spent on uncompensated care in the state, either charity care or bad debt, and that about 1.1 million residents in the state don?t have health insurance. In Thurston County, $34 million a year is spent on uncompensated care and about 31,000 residents don?t have health insurance, he said.

?The system wasn?t sustainable,? Kreidler said.

In response to one audience member question, Kreidler said that those who can?t afford health insurance, even with financial assistance, are not required to have it and would be exempt from the penalty.

However, financial assistance will be available, for example, to a family of four earning up to $94,000 a year.

The penalty for those who don?t get health insurance starts at $95 per year, per individual in the first year, he said.

The Internal Revenue Service will handle that penalty, Kreidler said, either by deducting the amount from an income tax return or adding it to what is owed.

He thinks the penalty is too low and that some will pay that rather than insurance, but the penalty goes up over time, Kreidler said.

He acknowledged that the system isn?t perfect, but he said the Affordable Care Act is here to stay and likely will be changed over time, similar to changes that have been made to Social Security and Medicare over the years, he said.

?Americans deserve better and clearly better is what we?re going to be getting with the Affordable Care Act,? Kreidler said.

For more on the changes to health care, go to: http://www.insurance.wa.gov/current-issues-reform/health-care-reform/

Source: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/06/05/2573486/insurance-commissioner-kreidler.html

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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Fire kills 119 at poultry plant in northeast China

Medical staff wait near a poultry processing plant that was engulfed by a fire in northeast China's Jilin province's Mishazi township on Monday, June 3, 2013. The massive fire broke out at the poultry plant early Monday, trapping workers inside a cluttered slaughterhouse and killing over a hundred people, reports and officials said. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

Medical staff wait near a poultry processing plant that was engulfed by a fire in northeast China's Jilin province's Mishazi township on Monday, June 3, 2013. The massive fire broke out at the poultry plant early Monday, trapping workers inside a cluttered slaughterhouse and killing over a hundred people, reports and officials said. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, smoke rises from a poultry farm at the Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Company in Mishazi township of Dehui City, northeast China's Jilin Province Monday, June 3, 2013. At least 43 people were killed on Monday morning in the poultry processing plant fire. Reports say 43 people have died in the fire which broke out Monday morning. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Wang Haofei) NO SALES

Residents look on as rescue efforts continue near a poultry processing plant that was engulfed by a fire in northeast China's Jilin province's Mishazi township on Monday, June 3, 2013. The massive fire broke out at the poultry plant early Monday, trapping workers inside a cluttered slaughterhouse and killing over a hundred people, reports and officials said. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

A water canon hoses down the roof of a poultry processing plant after a major fire which appeared to have been sparked by three early-morning explosions in northeast China's Jilin province's Mishazi township on Monday, June 3, 2013. The massive fire broke out at the poultry plant early Monday, trapping workers inside a cluttered slaughterhouse and killing over a hundred people, reports and officials said. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

Firefighters and medical staff prepare to remove body bags that appears to contain the bodies of those killed by a fire at a poultry processing plant in northeast China's Jilin province's Mishazi township on Monday, June 3, 2013. The massive fire broke out at the poultry plant early Monday, trapping workers inside a cluttered slaughterhouse and killing over a hundred people, reports and officials said. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

(AP) ? A fire at a poultry plant in northeastern China trapped workers inside a cluttered slaughterhouse, killing at least 119 in one of China's worst industrial disasters in years despite recent work safety improvements.

Several dozen other people were hurt in Monday's blaze in Jilin province's Mishazi township, which appeared to have been sparked by three early morning explosions, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The provincial fire department attributed the blasts to an ammonia leak. The chemical is kept pressurized as part of the cooling system in meat processing plants.

The fire was one of China's worst recent industrial disasters, with the death toll the highest since a September 2008 mining cave-in that claimed 281 lives.

It was the third major industrial blaze to be reported in China in the past four days. The two earlier fires were an oil tank explosion in Liaoning province that caused another oil tank to catch fire, killing two, and a blaze in a large granary in Heilongjiang province that wiped out 1,000 tons of grain.

Monday's accident highlighted the high human costs of China's lax industrial safety standards, which continue to plague workplaces despite improvements in the country's work safety record in recent years.

Many of China's factories have sprung up in recent decades to drive the country's rapid economic growth, but accidents and chemical spills are common, often blamed on lax enforcement of safety rules and poor worker training.

The government has tightened checks on factories and mines to improve compliance with safety requirements, and deaths from workplace accidents fell nearly 5 percent last year from the previous year, according to Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety.

Even in China's notoriously deadly coal mines, the death toll last year fell by more than 30 percent because of stricter management.

Monday's accident could also focus renewed scrutiny on China's biggest pork producer, Shuanghui International ? unrelated to the poultry plant ? as it aims to buy U.S. food giant Smithfield in what would be China's biggest takeover of an American company.

Jason Yan, technical director in Beijing of the U.S. Grains Council, said safety considerations usually take a backseat in China to features designed to maximize production and energy efficiency.

"I'm sure they consider some aspects of safety design. However, I think safety, to me, is not the first priority in their design plan," Yan said.

State media quoted survivors as saying it was difficult for workers to escape because only one door to the plant was open while other exits were locked and the fire spread quickly.

State broadcaster CCTV quoted unidentified workers as saying the fire broke out during a change of shifts when about 350 workers were at the plant, owned by Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co.

It wasn't clear how many workers had been accounted for and a provincial government media official, who refused to give his name, said he expected the death toll to rise further as more bodies were recovered from the charred building.

Some employees raised the alarm shortly after the shift began at 6 a.m., and then the lights went out, causing panic as workers rushed to find an exit, employee Wang Fengya told Xinhua.

"When I finally ran out and looked back at the plant, I saw high flames," Wang, 44, was quoted as saying. Xinhua said she and three other workers were sent to a hospital in the nearby provincial capital of Changchun.

Another worker quoted by Xinhua, 39-year-old Guo Yan, said the emergency exit at her workstation could not be opened and she was knocked to the ground in the crush of workers seeking to escape through a side door.

"I could only crawl desperately forward," Guo was quoted as saying. "I worked alongside an old lady and a young girl, but I don't know if they survived or not."

The newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily, known for its aggressive reporting, said the accident occurred in a factory building where chickens were being dismembered. The newspaper reported on its microblog that the fire spread rapidly, with industrial boilers exploding, and only a side door to the building was open with the rest of the exits locked.

It quoted an unidentified worker as saying the fire engulfed the building in three minutes, leaving too little time for many to flee.

The disaster killed 119 people, and 54 people were being treated in hospitals, the provincial government said on its microblog. Calls to fire and rescue services rang unanswered and hospital administrators said they had no information about the injured.

State media quoted hospital staffers as saying that most of the injured survivors were being treated for inhalation of toxic gases such as ammonia while others had burns of varying degrees.

By about noon, the fire had been mostly extinguished by about 500 firefighters, and bodies were being recovered from the charred buildings. CCTV footage showed dark smoke billowing up from the prefabricated cement structures topped with corrugated iron roofs.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top leaders ordered that no effort be spared to rescue and treat survivors as well as to investigate the cause of the incident.

It wasn't immediately clear if the workers were local residents or migrants from other areas.

The poultry plant is one of several in the area where chickens are slaughtered and then quickly cut up into pieces and shipped to market. The entire process takes place in near-freezing conditions and such plants are usually built with large amounts of flammable foam insulation to maintain a constant temperature.

Jilin Baoyuanfeng produces 67,000 tons of processed chicken per year and employs about 1,200 people. The plant is located outside the city of Dehui, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of China's capital, Beijing.

Established in 2009, the company serves markets in 20 cities nationwide and has won numerous awards for its contribution to the local economy, according to introductions posted online.

The area where the fire occurred is an agribusiness center, especially for poultry. Nearby is one of the biggest producers of broiler chickens in China, Jilin Deda Co., which is partly owned by Thailand-based conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group.

Monday's fire hit a company that is much smaller than Jilin Deda. Though it's unlikely to have an impact on China's chicken supply, the accident came as chicken producers were seeing sales recover after an outbreak of a deadly new strain of bird flu, H7N9, briefly scared the public in April and early May.

___

Associated Press writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-06-03-China-Deadly%20Fire/id-db49c798af2b4ceaa558d123f6304aa6

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IRS commissioner: 'Primary mission' is regaining public trust

Newly appointed Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Daniel Werfel said the agency has lost the public?s trust because of a ?fundamental failure? by IRS management that included allowing the political targeting of conservative groups.

In his first appearance before a Congressional committee Monday, Mr. Werfel said his "primary mission is to restore? trust in the tax collection agency. Werfel, who has been in office 12 days, said he had ordered a review of a ?broad spectrum of IRS operations? and had installed new leadership ?at several critical levels? of the IRS. He pledged to ?permanently fix? the problems he found and to be ?open and transparent with the American people.?

The meeting of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee was the fourth hearing since the IRS Inspector General released a report in May. The document revealed that during the 2010 and 2012 elections groups with conservative sounding names that applied for tax exempt status were singled out for extended questioning by an IRS office in Cincinnati. At Monday?s hearing, Werfel called the conduct ?inappropriate and unacceptable.?

RECOMMENDED: What does the federal government do with your money? Take our taxes quiz.

The hearing began with members of Congress from both parties railing against IRS misconduct. Rep. Hal Rogers (R) of Kentucky, chairman of the full appropriations committee, said the IRS ?has committed grave violations of the public trust? and that ?we will not tolerate another political enemies list.?

Ander Crenshaw (R) of Florida, the subcommittee chair, criticized what he called ?newly discovered incredible waste? in IRS spending on employee conferences and videos. The Inspector General?s office is scheduled to release a report on the conferences on Tuesday that the Associated Press says will show the IRS spent $50 million to hold 220 employee conferences between 2010 and 2012.

Among the embarrassing evidence: a video showing IRS employees dancing to the rhythm and blues song ?Cupid Shuffle? at a 2010 conference. Rep. Rita Lowey (D) of New York, the ranking Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee, said reports of the spending on employee conferences left her ?simply wondering what the IRS was thinking.?

The IRS scandals come at an especially sensitive time for the agency since it will play a key role in implementing the Affordable Care Act, President Obama?s signature legislative achievement. The Obama administration is seeking a 9 percent increase in IRS funding for the federal budget year that starts in October. Representative Crenshaw said Congress would have to ?think very carefully about how much money to provide the IRS.?

At Monday?s hearing, Commissioner Werfel said ?the solution here is not more money.? He said ?the right starting point is? finding the ?optimal footprint? for agency operations and only then turning to the question of agency funding.

The political impact of the controversy has been on display. On CNN?s ?State of the Union? Sunday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California said interviews with workers in the Cincinnati IRS office show the targeting of conservative groups was "a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters ? and we're getting to proving it."

Representative Lowey asked IRS Inspector General J. Russell George whether there was evidence that the targeting of conservative groups was ordered by the White House. ?Within the White House, no,? Mr. George replied.

Congressional scrutiny of the agency will continue. The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday featuring representatives from conservative groups that were targeted by the IRS. As ABC News? ?The Note? reports, some of those groups filed a joint lawsuit against the agency last week.

Later in the week, the Inspector General will appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to discuss his audit of IRS spending on employee gatherings.

Material from the Associated Press was used in compiling this report.

RECOMMENDED: What does the federal government do with your money? Take our taxes quiz.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/irs-commissioner-primary-mission-regaining-public-trust-000306682.html

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Disabled Express Themselves with Filmmaking (Voice Of America)

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Monday, June 3, 2013

Video: Santelli: In Congress We Trust?

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/52083592/

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Google Chrome 27


It still holds that excellent performance and unique features like Chrome Instant, built-in Flash and PDF display, leading Web standards support, and a minimalist application window keep Chrome at the top of the browser competition?Firefox (Free, 4 stars), Internet Explorer 9 (Free, 4 stars), Opera (Free, 4 stars), and Maxthon. All those still strive to equal Chrome's Spartan user interface, speedy operation, and leading emerging standards support.

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Despite this and its unequalled ability to display download links on the world's most visited websites, Chrome's popularity has tailed off from its high point of over 19 percent usage share last May to just over 16 percent last month, according to the latest numbers from NetMarketShare. In the same time, longtime leader Internet Explorer regained nearly 2 percent market share, edging back up to 56 percent, while Firefox gained a half percent, to just over 20 percent. So the honeymoon with Chrome may be ending, perhaps due to privacy concerns or the other browsers catching up in speed and simplicity. But is it time to abandon this excellent web browser?

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With updates coming at a clip of about every two months, Chrome itself it constantly striving to speed up even more and to add more whiz-bang internet technology support. We skipped reviewing version 26, so this time I'll take a look at what's new in both that and the latest version, Chrome 27.

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The first add in Version 26 was spell-checking for web forms. You can either turn this on in Advanced settings or right click while entering form text to get suggestions from Google search. As with nearly every new feature in every Google product, the feature is a double-edged sword, in that it sends yet more of your browsing data to Google servers, something not all web users are comfortable with. One more minor feature came to Windows users in that release?the ability to create shortcuts to multiple users' Chrome accounts?also stored on Google servers.

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In the latest version, Chrome 27, which of course includes the new version 26 features, too, we see a claim of faster page load times, the implementation of an API for saving files to Google Drive, and a DNS improvement for Mac and Linux. Both updates come with numerous security tightenings, so all users are advised to update to the latest version?a simple matter of restarting the browser.

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[OLD]

Earlier Improvements
In Chrome 24, Chrome's developers tweaked JavaScript performance and bookmark searching, and added support for MathML and a few other minor HTML5 items. In Chrome 25, we got a new Speech API for voice recognition and speech-to-text, but no sites actually use this yet. We also get some protection from unwanted extension installation?something I'm running into lately with friends who were using Chrome.

Back in Chrome 23, Google finally joined all the other major Web browsers by including support for the Do Not Track privacy system first introduced by Mozilla and encouraged by the FTC. Unfortunately, most users will probably never see Chrome's Do Not Track option, since it's buried in advanced settings. The new version also adds GPU-accelerated video decoding and easier site privacy settings from the address bar. With its continual improvements and feature adds, Chrome remains the Web browser of choice, thanks to blazing speed, and ground-breaking features and leading technology support.?

Emulating a trend started by IE9, Chrome's speed is now boosted by hardware acceleration, the use of your PC's graphics processor to speed up operations. To this Chrome's adds support for 3D WebGL graphics that even works on older computers, such as those running Windows XP?something IE9 can't boast.

But speed involves more than pure performance results on tests. Speed also comes with new standards support, in Chrome's case, for Google's SPDY initiative, which rewrites the basic transport protocol of the Web?HTTP. SPDY eliminates redundant interactions and compresses some sent data to speed up browsing. Only sites that support the standard, like some of Google's own, will benefit from the speedup, however.

Another speeder-upper comes in the form of Chrome's many "instant" features. First, there was Google Instant, by which Web search results start appearing as soon as you start typing in the Google search box. Then came Instant Pages, in which Chrome tries to guess which link you're likely to click on next, and preload that page in the background. Another "instant" feature, pre-loads the first-proposed autocomplete site in the background when you start typing in the browser's address bar, so that it springs into view instantly when you click on the auto suggestion's entry.

Speech
For a more Siri-like experience in the browser, the Speech API supported in Chrome starting with version 25 adds to the browsers previously existing support for HTML Speech Input standard introduced in version 11. Unlike HTML5 Speech Input, the new API enables scripted speech output and user input for forms, dictation, and device control. According to the W3C the standard is "not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track."

The community group behind the API is headed up by Google employees, and it's not supported by any other released browser at present, and the only implementation of it relies on Google's servers. The spec allows for other translation mechanisms, but this raises the question of each browswer implementing it differently. Since both Macs and PCs have had built-in speech recognition for years, it would make sense to just use the local capability.

Google has posted a test page that shows off the new API, with no more than a microphone icon and a text box. As with pages using WebRTC access to webcam and microphone, the browser first displays a bar at the top that lets you Allow or Deny access to the mic. Once you allow it, pressing the mic and talking lets you produce text in a surprising choice of languages?even Latin! The text appears after you release the mic button, and in my quick tests the transcribed speech was surprisingly accurate.

Yes, it's a cool feature, but I worry that its real purpose is to get your words stored on Google's servers rather than just to help you interact with your computer. Then again, you?ve got to pay for all this great technology somehow.

Swift Setup
Even the setup process shows Chrome's commitment to speed: Just click the Install button on the Chrome Web page, and you'll have the browser up and running in less than a minute, with no wizard to go through and no system restart. The browser's available for Mac OS X and Linux, as well as Windows. It also updates itself automatically in the background, but extensions are no longer silently updated. This protects users from unwanted extensions installing themselves, but it also means updates you want will be less hands-free.

When you first run Chrome, you see a generous dialog box giving you the option to use Bing, Google, or Yahoo as your search engine at installation, but the first view of the browser window asks you to sign into a Google account. This doesn?t change the behavior of the browser, but it does show Google?s increasingly solipsistic view of the Web, and raises more concerns about browser tracking. On the plus side, it does give you the benefit of being able to sync your different browser settings and bookmarks on different computers (more on this later).

Built-in Flash and PDF Support
Chrome is the only browser to come with Adobe Flash built in, rather than requiring a separate (and annoying) installation. And not having to perform the frequent required updates of the Flash plugin separately is another boon?it updates automatically with the browser. With version 10, many of the security issues with Flash (famously bemoaned by Apple's Steve Jobs) went away, thanks to running the plugin in an isolated sandbox so that it doesn't have access to critical system areas.

Chrome boasts a PDF reader as well, so you don't have to worry about installing any Adobe plugins for viewing specialized Web content. When you load a PDF, an intuitive toolbar shows when your mouse cursor is in the southeast vicinity of the browser window. From this, you can have the document fill the width of the window, show a full page, or zoom in and out. By default, you can select text for cutting and pasting, but I couldn't copy and paste images. You can print the PDF as you would any Web page.

Chrome's PDF viewer not only does what its name implies, but also serves as a print preview feature. Unlike IE's print preview, Chrome's shows up in a tab rather than its own window. But you have to go through it to print: In IE, I can just click the printer icon to send a page to the printer if I don't want to fuss with settings. I could choose between color and B&W, portrait and landscape, and choose the target printer, or print to PDF.

An Advanced button got me into the printer's own settings dialog, but this dismissed the print preview, making me have to choose Print from the menu again. But Chrome didn't let me choose a zoom percentage for the printout as Firefox and IE did, nor did it let me turn page headers on and off or choose margin sizes in a Page Setup dialog as those two did. So Chrome's print preview is a decent start, but it's still a bit behind the competition.

Interface
Minimalism has been a hallmark of Chrome since its first beta release. Tabs are above everything, and the only row below them holds the combined search/address bar, or "Omnibox." Here you can type any part of an address or page title, and the most likely site candidates will be presented in a dropdown. Optionally you can display bookmark links in a row below this. And the control buttons on the top-right of the browser window have been reduced to the absolute minimum?just one.

Google has removed the Page icon and placed some of its functions under the wrench button. Some of the Page options have been combined into buttons on one line in the menu, such as Cut, Copy, and Paste. I like what Google's done with the Zoom choice on the menu, adding plus and minus buttons that save you from having to fly out another submenu.

Another theme in the Chrome interface is that everything looks like a Web page, displaying in the main browser window, rather than in separate dialog boxes. This includes the interfaces for History, Extensions, Bookmarks, and even Options.

Mac users haven't been overlooked in the interface department, either. The browser supports OS X Lion's full screen view, along with overlay scrollbars that only appear when you're scrolling. Other more minor characteristics of the OS X "Aqua" style give Chrome on the Mac a more Mac-y appearance. Chrome also supports the new MacBooks' high-resolution Retina displays natively.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/temvDoCLwxU/0,2817,2373853,00.asp

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Printing innovations provide ten-fold improvement in organic electronics

June 2, 2013 ? Through innovations to a printing process, researchers have made major improvements to organic electronics -- a technology in demand for lightweight, low-cost solar cells, flexible electronic displays and tiny sensors. The printing method is fast and works with a variety of organic materials to produce semiconductors of strikingly higher quality than what has so far been achieved with similar methods.

Organic electronics have great promise for a variety of applications, but even the highest quality films available today fall short in how well they conduct electrical current. The team from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have developed a printing process they call FLUENCE -- fluid-enhanced crystal engineering -- that for some materials results in thin films capable of conducting electricity 10 times more efficiently than those created using conventional methods.

"Even better, most of the concepts behind FLUENCE can scale up to meet industry requirements," said Ying Diao, a SLAC/Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, which appeared today in Nature Materials.

Stefan Mannsfeld, a SLAC materials physicist and one of the principal investigators of the experiment, said the key was to focus on the physics of the printing process rather than the chemical makeup of the semiconductor. Diao engineered the process to produce strips of big, neatly aligned crystals that electrical charge can flow through easily, while preserving the benefits of the "strained lattice" structure and "solution shearing" printing technique previously developed in the lab of Mannsfeld's co-principal investigator, Professor Zhenan Bao of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, a joint SLAC-Stanford institute.

To make the advance, Diao focused on controlling the flow of the liquid in which the organic material is dissolved. "It's a vital piece of the puzzle," she said. If the ink flow does not distribute evenly, as is often the case during fast printing, the semiconducting crystals will be riddled with defects. "But in this field there's been little research done on controlling fluid flow."

Diao designed a printing blade with tiny pillars embedded in it that mix the ink so it forms a uniform film. She also engineered a way around another problem: the tendency of crystals to randomly form across the substrate. A series of cleverly designed chemical patterns on the substrate suppress the formation of unruly crystals that would otherwise grow out of alignment with the printing direction. The result is a film of large, well-aligned crystals.

X-ray studies of the group's organic semiconductors at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) allowed them to inspect their progress and continue to make improvements, eventually showing neatly arranged crystals at least 10 times longer than crystals created with other solution-based techniques, and of much greater structural perfection.

The group also repeated the experiment using a second organic semiconductor material with a significantly different molecular structure, and again they saw a notable improvement in the quality of the film. They believe this is a sign the techniques will work across a variety of materials.

Principal investigators Bao and Mannsfeld say the next step for the group is pinning down the underlying relationship between the material and the process that enabled such a stellar result. Such a discovery could provide an unprecedented degree of control over the electronic properties of printed films, optimizing them for the devices that will use them.

"That could lead to a revolutionary advance in organic electronics," Bao said. "We've been making excellent progress, but I think we're only just scratching the surface."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/eFEHtYEoxRg/130602144615.htm

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