of big-name debuts including Cafe Coffee Day and airline Indigo. Shares hit their lowest level in about a year last week,
which runs the Indigo airline, is seeking a $400 million listing. Analysts warn more uncertainty is given in store the US Federal reserve is expected to raise interest rates as early as September,
#New Polymer Gel Could Create Edible Devices for Ultra-Long Drug Delivery A team of scientists has developed a polymer gel that could allow for the development of long-acting devices that reside in the stomach,
However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern
This polymer is ph-responsive: It is stable in the acidic stomach environment but dissolves in the small intestine near-neutral ph,
and folding of devices into easily ingestible capsules meaning this polymer can be used to create safe devices designed for extremely prolonged residence in the stomach. ne of the issues with any device in the GI TRACT is that there the potential for an obstruction,
of this new polymer gel for creating gastric devices. Shiyi Zhang, a postdoc at the Koch Institute, is the paper lead author.
the researchers were interested in developing a polymer with elastic properties. n elastic device can be folded into something small,
But the size and shape of existing devices with elastic polymers have been limited by safety concerns,
Because of this, the researchers wanted their polymer to also be enteric or have a mechanism that would enable it to pass through the stomach unaltered before disintegrating in the intestines. o lower any possible risk of obstruction,
the researchers synthesized an elastic polymer and combined it in solution with a clinically utilized enteric polymer.
Adding hydrochloric acid and centrifuging the solution resulted in a flexible, yet resilient, polymer gel that exhibits both elastic and enteric properties.
The researchers used the gel polycaprolactone (PCL), a nontoxic, degradable polyester, to construct several device prototypes.
They first created ring-shaped devices by using the gel to link arcs of PCL in a circular mold.
the polymer gel dissolved, allowing for the safe passage of the small PCL pieces without obstruction.
Improving adherence The combined enteric and elastic properties of this polymer gel could significantly improve the design and adoption of gastric-resident devices.
With further work in adjusting the polymer composition or the design of the system they say that they could tailor devices to release drugs over a specific timeframe of up to weeks or months at a time.
Lithium metal, for example, can store about 10 times as much energy per gram, but is extremely dangerous,
who has a joint appointment in MIT Department of Materials science and engineering. e came up with the method serendipitously,
It is stronger than steel yet many times lighter more conductive than copper and more flexible than rubber.
The results are reported in the journal Nature Materials in a paper by MIT postdoc Yan Wang, visiting professor of materials science and engineering Gerbrand Ceder,
said Andrei Faraon, an assistant professor of applied physics and materials science at Caltech, and the study principal investigator. ut this new technology is very similar to the one used to print semiconductor chips onto silicon wafers,
including plastics and metals. Simultaneously, the cost of 3-D printers has fallen sufficiently to make them household consumer items.
molten glass is loaded into a hopper in the top of the device after being gathered from a conventional glassblowing kiln.
e can control solar transmittance. Unlike a pressed or blown-glass part, which necessarily has a smooth internal surface,
which is part of the Department of Materials science and engineering. At MIT, members of the research team also included Markus Kayser, Chikara Inamura,
#Pillared Graphene structures Gain Strength, Toughness and Ductility In a newly published study, scientists from Rice university reveal that putting nanotube pillars between sheets of graphene could create hybrid structures with a unique balance of strength, toughness
and ductility throughout all three dimensions. Carbon nanomaterials are common now as flat sheets, nanotubes and spheres,
particularly between carbon nanotubes and graphene, would affect the final hybrid properties in all directions. They found that introducing junctions would add extra flexibility
Carbon nanotubes are rolled-up arrays of perfect hexagons of atoms; graphene is a rolled out sheet of the same.
the lab assembled three-dimensional computer models of illared graphene nanostructures, akin to the boron nitride structures modeled in a previous study to analyze heat transfer between layers. his time we were interested in a comprehensive understanding of the elastic and inelastic properties
Shahsavari said. e compared our 3-D hybrid structures with the properties of 2-D stacked graphene sheets and 1-D carbon nanotubes.
But pillared graphene models showed far better strength and stiffness and a 42 percent improvement in out-of-plane ductility,
The latter allows pillared graphene to exhibit remarkable toughness along out-of-plane directions, a feature that is not possible in 2-D stacked graphene sheets or 1-D carbon nanotubes,
Shahsavari said. e believe the principles can be applied to other low-dimensional materials such as boron nitride and molybdenum/tungsten or the combinations thereof.
Shahsavari is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.
director of Berkeley Lab Materials sciences Division and a world authority on metamaterials artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature. ur ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat.
It is the scattering of light be infrared it visible , X-ray, etc.,from its interaction with matter that enables us to detect
director of Berkeley Lab Materials sciences Division and a world authority on metamaterials artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature. ur ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat.
It is the scattering of light be infrared it visible , X-ray, etc.,from its interaction with matter that enables us to detect
For more than 100 years, researchers have inferred how atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space using a technique called X-ray crystallography,
which involves measuring how light waves scatter off of a crystal. However X-ray crystallography only yields information about the average positions of many billions of atoms in the crystal,
and not about individual atomsprecise coordinates. t like taking an average of people On earth, Miao said. ost people have a head, two eyes, a nose and two ears.
Because X-ray crystallography doesn reveal the structure of a material on a per-atom basis,
and are discussed in many physics and materials science textbooks. Our results are the first experimental determination of a point defect inside a material in three dimensions.
The nanoparticle hydrophilic layer essentially locks in the active ingredient, a hydrophobic chemical called padimate O. Some sunscreen solutions that use larger particles of inorganic compounds, such as titanium dioxide or zinc oxide,
This degeneration is caused by the destruction of the cones and cells in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE),
or repelled by, a metal surface by changing the polarity of the voltage applied to the metal.
in turn, allows control over the rate of heat transfer between the metal and the liquid.
believe this latest work could usher in the fabrication of nanoscale superconducting quantum interference devices and single-electron superconductor quantum dots u
The researchers improved on the conductivity of the graphene by coating it with a thin layer of a polymer that also served as an adhesion layer to the perovskite active layer during the lamination process.
The researchers improved on the conductivity of the graphene by coating it with a thin layer of a polymer that also served as an adhesion layer to the perovskite active layer during the lamination process.
whether mounting solar cells onto more durable materials such as spring steel could make kirigami systems even more robust t
The french team constructed its resistance device from a high-quality sheet of graphene grown on a silicon carbide wafer.
one that includes carbon nanotubes. Now Fraunhofer has accomplished both feats, and with the most basic device imaginable:
The new TFET is made from two atomically-thin layers of semiconducting molybdenum sulfide crystal on top of a substrate of germanium.
treat cancer, strengthen polymers, sterilize medical devices, and even to make diamonds green and pearls black.
The process begins with liquid polymer and a collector plate. Voltage is applied to the polymer and plate,
which creates a pull to draw the liquid polymer out of its container toward the plate.
As the polymer travels, it becomes increasingly thin. So thin, in fact, that at some point
air resistance actually begins to influence the flow of the liquid, causing the now-thin polymer to become convoluted as it falls onto the collector plate.
During the trip, the polymer solution also converts to a solid. The resulting pattern is a 3d mat of a seemingly random, extremely thin fiber array.
Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 7. 24.11 AM This filtration membrane is highly flexible and durable
Nebia flat, circular shower head is made of a high-density polymer with nozzles that spray out micro droplets.
The organically designed polymers respond to energetic events such as space debris or bullets rapidly hitting the material.
This is because the polymer reacts to heating. s the bullet goes in it actually raises the temperature around the region,
and it is working to improve on the tensile strength of these polymers, but there is progress here.
A plastic tiled wall is one thing, but tables and beds clearly require a different composition. ee not expecting people to start using this right away as daily reconfiguration,
Scientists have discovered a new state of matter that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one.
Scientists have discovered a new state of matter that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one.
They were built out of small plastic cubes with motors inside. Each of the robots carries a"genome"
a silvery-white transition metal. New transition metal complexes do not easily breakdown, which is important for delivery of antibiotics to where they are needed to fight infections in the body.
Even though these compounds contain iridium, further testing by the researchers shows that they are nontoxic to animals and animal cells."
"So far our findings show that these compounds are safer than other compounds made from transition metals,
"In contrast to light, low-frequency ultrasound can travel through the body without any scattering, "he noted."
The microfluidic chip was made of a silicon-based polymer, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and had microvalves and fluidic channels to transport the sample between nodes for various sample preparation steps.
which is actually the larva of a beetle, eats Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene,
Microorganisms in the worms'guts biodegrade the plastic in the process. This first ever finding holds out hope for a world that is being swamped by plastic.
The world produced nearly 300 million tonnes of plastic according to 2013 data published by the Worldwatch Institute.
or 6. 6 million tons, of the post-consumer plastic produced in 2012 was recycled, while 36 percent was incinerated for energy generation.
The remaining 38 percent of post-consumer plastics in Europe went to landfills. In the United states, only 9 percent of post-consumer plastic (2. 8 million tons) was recycled in 2012.
The remaining 32 million tons was discarded. The new discovery is the first to provide detailed evidence of bacterial degradation of plastic in an animal's gut.
Understanding how bacteria within mealworms carry out this feat could potentially enable new options for safe management of plastic waste."
a professor of civil and environmental engineering who supervises plastics research by Wu and others at Stanford."
"In the lab, 100 mealworms ate between 34 and 39 milligrams of Styrofoam-about the weight of a small pill-per day.
The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source.
Within 24 hours, they excreted the bulk of the remaining plastic as biodegraded fragments that look similar to tiny rabbit droppings.
Mealworms fed a steady diet of Styrofoam were as healthy as those eating a normal diet,
the larvae of Indian mealmoths, have microorganisms in their guts that can biodegrade polyethylene, a plastic used in filmy products such as trash bags.
The new research on mealworms is significant, however, because Styrofoam was thought to have been non-biodegradable and more problematic for the environment.
Researchers led by Criddle, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, are collaborating on ongoing studies with the project leader
whether microorganisms within mealworms and other insects can biodegrade plastics such as polypropylene (used in products ranging from textiles to automotive components),
which is actually the larva of a beetle, eats Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene,
Microorganisms in the worms'guts biodegrade the plastic in the process. This first ever finding holds out hope for a world that is being swamped by plastic.
The world produced nearly 300 million tonnes of plastic according to 2013 data published by the Worldwatch Institute.
or 6. 6 million tons, of the post-consumer plastic produced in 2012 was recycled, while 36 percent was incinerated for energy generation.
The remaining 38 percent of post-consumer plastics in Europe went to landfills. In the United states, only 9 percent of post-consumer plastic (2. 8 million tons) was recycled in 2012.
The remaining 32 million tons was discarded. The new discovery is the first to provide detailed evidence of bacterial degradation of plastic in an animal's gut.
Understanding how bacteria within mealworms carry out this feat could potentially enable new options for safe management of plastic waste."
a professor of civil and environmental engineering who supervises plastics research by Wu and others at Stanford."
"In the lab, 100 mealworms ate between 34 and 39 milligrams of Styrofoam-about the weight of a small pill-per day.
The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source.
Within 24 hours, they excreted the bulk of the remaining plastic as biodegraded fragments that look similar to tiny rabbit droppings.
Mealworms fed a steady diet of Styrofoam were as healthy as those eating a normal diet,
the larvae of Indian mealmoths, have microorganisms in their guts that can biodegrade polyethylene, a plastic used in filmy products such as trash bags.
The new research on mealworms is significant, however, because Styrofoam was thought to have been non-biodegradable and more problematic for the environment.
Researchers led by Criddle, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, are collaborating on ongoing studies with the project leader
whether microorganisms within mealworms and other insects can biodegrade plastics such as polypropylene (used in products ranging from textiles to automotive components),
but liquid crystals lie between crystalline solids and liquids. They have ordered an structure like a crystal, but they can also flow like a liquid
and respond to stimuli, "he said. Mistry is working in collaboration with the Eurolens Research at the University of Manchester and with Ultravision CLPL,
"We print them onto plastic in more or less the same way we print our plastic banknotes,
so long as production isn't moved offshore as it was with silicone cells, he said. Some silicon cells were invented in Australia
a ceramic femoral head, a femoral stem, an acetabular cup, and apolyethylene insert. The currently used ceramic head is made in Germany,
the stems come from the United kingdom, only the Cup is manufactured by 3d printers. Deputy Director at the hospital Cai Hong explains,
In the past, the cup was made through titanium alloy casting, and needed to be melted into liquid and poured in the mold of titanium alloy
and then cooled down to form a shape. A micro-porous coating was added then the surface.
and Duraform HST Composite. Yost is acutely aware of his many critics and nonbeleivers, and so he has come up with a bold adventure to prove his concept works.
The team demonstrated that silicone elastomers can be printed seamlessly into gradient architectures composed of soft and rigid regions (meaning that for wearable devices,
is pipe-shaped polymer structure with a square cross-section, the inside of which is divided into five adjoining resonance chambers connected via small windows. he resonance achieved by this structure intensifies the evanescent waves,
They attached the 3d printed polymer structure along with microphones, to a robot close to the object surface,
and the method needs to be refined before it can be applied in practice. ecause the size of the polymer structure has to be adjusted to the operational wavelength,
or the tendency of the 3d printed object to deform after it is 3d printed because of surface tension, gravity,
Angelini and co were able to produce a kind of silicone jellyfish and suspended networks of veins written entirely out of living human aortic cells.
it has the highest strength of any isolated material (200x stronger than steel), is very light and flexible, an efficient conductor of heat and electricity,
and will allow an ever widening variety of manufacturers to consider incorporating the extraordinary qualities of graphene in wide range of materials from batteries to consumer electronics to plastics. s the most sought-after and groundbreaking material,
Basically, the OLO uses photopolymer 3d printing technology, wherein liquid polymer hardens when exposed to a light sourcehich in SLA
the polymer foam can be poured into a mold to form a soft yet solid material.
The porous channels are created by mixing salt with the rubbery elastomer when still in the liquid stage.
The salt is then removed upon the elastomer hardening. To seal an organ or prosthetic so air or fluid can be pumped through it without escaping,
the outside of the organ is coated with the polymer, minus the salt. This prevents the external layer from also becoming permeable and eakingfluid.
and allow greater airflow than other artificial hearts made from metals and plastics. nstead of taking a bunch of nuts and bolts
and screws and building and screwing them together and assembling them, we can just take a mold
The silicone on the outside of the heart is yet to be approved by the FDA, so it must be replaced
In a separate study published last month, Shepherd and his team developed a 3d printed elastomer
and encapsulated into a agemade from a strong 3d printed elastomer with the necessary flexibility to fit to the contours of the body.
This proprietary technique uses titanium with a surface roughness of 3-5 microns that unlike smooth titanium or other biomaterials such as PEEK, has been associated in preclinical data with bone growth (osteoblastic) activity.
The process of manufacturing these metals involves additive manufacturing process modelling sensor network, and seamless process integration.
The metal materials Liou and Sarangapani have been developing are Structural amorphous metals (SAMS), and they are made by using a laser to melt blown powder metal,
which is deposited then layer by layer to manufacture a 3d printed object. The two researchers have been working on finding the correct cooling rate
The appeal of making amorphous metals comes precisely from the randomized cellular composition. That is, the material
and more fracture resilience than regular metals because of the lack of pattern in their composition, so to speak.
While metals in their regular crystalline structure tend to break along lines of their cellular structure,
the amorphous metals would have no pattern to break along. As Dr. Liou explains, he smaller the grains,
The hope is that it will be possible to create new materials with 10 times the strength of conventional metals,
which combine two metals that normally don fuse easily such as stainless steel and titanium or copper and steel.
an associate professor of materials science and engineering. Their work is being sponsored by NASA Langley Research center In virginia, which has interests in the developing technology.
FGMS in combining different types of metal, would result in new types of metals, possessing the traits and properties of both individual materials.
the metals would have to be combined and blended with other types of metal to ridge the gapso to speak.
The new material, which would possess the qualities of both copper and titanium, could be useful for constructing such things as aircraft or spaceship parts.
you can fuse two metals together easily. The research conducted by Dr. Liou, Dr. Sarangapani,
as Made In Space was able to 3d print a number of specimens from aerospace-grade plastics that will now be analyzed in terms of their mechanical properties,
PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) is one of the most widely used thermoplastics there is. It is used to make plastic drink bottles as well as many other products (including fabrics) and for packaging purposes
and a 3d printer, any plastic and possibly ceramics or even metal (with binder jetting or future wire melting technologies) objects could be produced anywhere in the world.
3d Bioprinted Carbon nanotubes Used to Stimulate Bone Regrowth How do you 3d print bone? A couple of years ago,
3d printing bone requires a combination of a reabsorbable material such as a biodegradable polymer and an inorganic bioactive phase material such as ceramics.
The research group led by Prof. Maria Vallet-Regí at the faculty of pharmacy-Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) recently demonstrated that,
if you add carbon nanotubes to the mix to create a 3d electrical network within the bone tissue,
The polymer they used was a material that is rather easy to 3d print and that was approved FDA for use in implants:
and polymers are used widely as bone regenerators and biocompatible functional materials in tissue engineering, as they are very similar to the natural bone tissue,
and scaffolds with the required shapes and sizes. he carbon nanotubes (or CNT) were added to the bioprintable material mixture to create a hree-dimensional electrical conducting network all through the volume of the scaffold,
by adding conducting CNTS into the bioprinted polymer and mineral prosthetic bone implant, you can stimulate the regrowth of the actual bone cells.
while the polymer-based support dissolves efficiently. These research lines also involve the production and study of bioceramic systems for the controlled release of biotechnological and antitumoral species
Moreover, they are pioneers in the application of silica-based ordered mesoporous materials, as release systems of biologically active species, cell encapsulation in silica porous materials, mesoporous materials for gene therapy and transfection, organic-inorganic hybrid materials.
Using Envisiontec 3d bioplotter they were able to take their research to new levels creating very complex multilateral 3d structures following specific designs previously programmed on the computer. his is an incredible advantage
The multidisciplinary team was able to 3d print custom silicone guides infused with biochemical cues that proved to effectively regrow nerve tissue in lab rats.
the silicone guide was saturated with chemical cues (colored red and green in the video above) to trigger motor and sensory nerve growth.
With their own version of 4d printing, Fergal B. Coulter and Anton Ianakiev are exploring the fabrication of artificial muscle by creating a system for producing seamless tubular silicone membranes with dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA
a form of electroactive polymer that induces a change in form. Coulter and Ianakiev describe the DEAS as ssentially flexible capacitors sending low energy electric signals to the flexible tubular structure
The material used was a tough and flexible silicone material called Shore 73a which is composed of thixotropic, a bit of kaolin mineral filler (10),
%and alumina trihydrate (5%).The modified 3d printing system was engineered to print multiple layers of the silicone rubber material at a consistent rate,
Each surface layer of the 3d printed silicone was coated with graphite, capable of acting as a DEA electrode.
The team inflicted mechanical strain on these silicone muscles during the process by inflating the balloon-like mandrel structure,
the silicone was able to make an evenly distributed return to its original shape. The energy used in the shape change was kept to a minimum because of the compression within the 3d printed tubular structure.
Using robust silicone material, DEA electrodes, and a modified 3d printing system, the research team was able to not only replicate the structure of the muscle,
extruding ABS-carbon fiber composite over the course of 40 hours, before the body was milled to achieve a more refined look.
and the material supplier for the ABS-carbon fiber composite we were able to reduce the material
the UFL team were trying to find a way to deal with the problems of low surface tension
especially in the case of biomaterials. olding material within the gel negates the effects of surface tension, gravity,
including silicones, hydrogels, colloids, and living cells. For example, they have used this process to create complex multi-scale structures using PVA hydrogels and fluorescent colloids.
The 3d printed elastomer body of the Spongesuit bikini has a unique, spiderweb-like design, and acts as the structure for the pongetechnology filler.
#Turning plastic waste into a resource What if we were to stop thinking about plastic waste as something to be disposed of,
Plastics are made essentially polymers from long chains of carbon and other elements. They are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and their versatility,
But, because polymers and plastics are so cheap to manufacture the economic benefit of recycling can be marginal.
and her idea that the carbon and hydrogen in waste plastics might be a useful resource for the manufacture of steel.
the use of the waste polymers needed to be more cost-effective than traditional methods,
On the path to commercialisation, her team found an even more effective approach was to use the polymers in another type of waste used car tyres.
Most of the existing uses for old tyres involve making low value secondary products such as asphalt, aggregate for cement, artificial reefs, footwear, plastic and rubber composites,
Together with technology partner One Steel Veena's team perfected the technique of'polymer injection'for electric arc furnaces.
In Australia alone, this technology has resulted so far in over two million used car tyres being converted from waste into a valuable feedstock for steel production.
The technology has also been licensed to steel makers in South korea, Thailand and the UK enabling high quality steel products to be produced more economically and with less energy,
while at the same time reducing the environmental problems of waste tyre disposal s
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