An "artificial cricket hair" used as a sensitive flow sensor has difficulty detecting weak, low-frequency signals – they tend to be drowned out by noise. But now, a bit of clever tinkering with the flexibility of the tiny hair's supports has made it possible to boost the signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of 25. This is turn means that weak flows can now be measured. Researchers at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology have presented details of this technology in the New Journal of Physics.
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