#From good to bad with a copper switch At the molecular level, the difference between Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde lies in a metal, copper.
According to a new SISSA study, the mechanism underlying this change is a metal, copper, or rather a particular region of the protein to which the metal binds,
#Super-slick material makes steel better, stronger, cleaner Steel is ubiquitous in our daily lives.
We cook in stainless steel skillets, ride steel subway cars over steel rails to our offices in steel-framed building.
Steel screws hold together broken bones, steel braces straighten crooked teeth, steel scalpels remove tumors.
Most of the goods we consume are delivered by ships and trucks mostly built of steel.
While various grades of steel have been developed over the past 50 years, steel surfaces have remained largely unchanged--and unimproved.
The steel of today is as prone as ever to the corrosive effects of water and salt and abrasive materials such as sand.
Steel surgical tools can still carry microorganisms that cause deadly infections. Now researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) have demonstrated a way to make steel stronger, safer and more durable.
Their new surface coating, made from rough nanoporous tungsten oxide, is the most durable antifouling and anti-corrosive material to date,
capable of repelling any kind of liquid even after sustaining intense structural abuse. The new material joins the portfolio of other nonstick,
antifouling materials developed in the lab of Joanna Aizenberg, the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials science and core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard university.
Aizenberg's team developed Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces in 2011 and since then has demonstrated a broad range of applications for the super-slick coating, known as SLIPS.
The new SLIPS-enhanced steel is described in Nature Communications.""Our slippery steel is orders of magnitude more durable than any antifouling material that has been developed before,
"said Aizenberg.""So far, these two concepts-mechanical durability and antifouling-were at odds with each other.
We need surfaces to be textured and porous to impart fouling resistance but rough nanostructured coatings are intrinsically weaker than their bulk analogs.
The biggest challenge in the development of this surface was to figure out how to structure steel to ensure its antifouling capability without mechanical degradation.
The team solved this by using an electrochemical technique to grow an ultrathin film of hundreds of thousands of small and rough tungsten-oxide islands directly onto a steel surface."
"Electrochemical deposition is already a widely used technique in steel manufacturing, said Aizenberg.""I don't want to create another line that would cost millions
The team tested the material by scratching it with stainless steel tweezers, screwdrivers, diamond-tipped scribers,
and show anti-biofouling behavior but the tungsten oxide actually made the steel stronger than steel without the coating.
Medical steel devices are one of the material's most promising applications, said Philseok Kim,
which is a theoretical model that describes the normal state of most metals at sufficiently low temperatures."
#Single atom alloy platinum-copper catalysts cut costs, boost green technology A new generation of platinum-copper catalysts that require very low concentrations of platinum in the form of individual atoms to cleanly
which"poisons"the desired reactions, for example in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, which are the leading contenders for small-scale and mobile power generation not based on batteries or combustion engines.
in order to facilitate downstream polymer production. The current industrial catalyst for butadiene hydrogenation uses palladium and silver.
while a relatively cheap metal, is not nearly as catalytically powerful as platinum, noted Professor of Chemistry Charles Sykes, Ph d.,one of the senior authors on the paper."
"The researchers first conducted surface science experiments to study precisely how platinum and copper metals mix."
"We were excited to find that the platinum metal dissolved in copper, just like sugar in hot coffee, all the way down to single atoms.
We call such materials single atom alloys, "said Sykes. The Tufts chemists used a specialized low temperature scanning tunneling microscope to visualize the single platinum atoms and their interaction with hydrogen."
such as platinum-copper single atom alloy nanoparticles supported on an alumina substrate, and then tested them under industrial pressure and temperatures."
We believe this approach is also applicable to other precious metals if added as minority components in copper."
In the early 2000s, Maria's group had pioneered the single-atom approach for metals anchored on oxide supports as the exclusive active sites for the water-gas shift reaction to upgrade hydrogen streams for fuel cell use.
Together we embarked on a new direction involving single atom alloys as catalysts for selective hydrogenation reactions.
"Sykes and Flytzani-Stephanopoulos have used this approach to design a variety of single atom alloy catalysts that have,
and properties of single atom alloy surfaces and then applied this knowledge to develop a working catalyst.
and transition metal dichalcogenides,"said Awschalom.""It's not just that it's faster and easier.
"UW researchers used chemical vapor deposition to grow graphene nanoribbons on germanium crystals. This technique flows a mixture of methane, hydrogen and argon gases into a tube furnace.
"Not only are designed our facilities to work with all different sorts of materials from metals to oxides,
"What's even more interesting is that these nanoribbons can be made to grow in certain directions on one side of the germanium crystal,
each face of a crystal (1, 1, 1) will have axes that differ from one (1, 1, 0) to the other (1, 0,
At that point, a reflective metal layer is on the bottom.""In this structure--unlike other photodetectors--light absorption in an ultrathin silicon layer can be much more efficient
the researchers designed lenses no larger than the head of a pin and embedded them within flexible plastic.
Then they seeped a polymer between the silicon nanowire pillars. After the plastic support solidified they etched away the silicon backing, leaving bull's-eye patterned black silicon embedded in supple plastic.
This approach gave their lenses unprecedented crisp focusing capabilities, as well as the flexibility that enables them to capture a large field of view.
the researchers designed lenses no larger than the head of a pin and embedded them within flexible plastic.
Then they seeped a polymer between the silicon nanowire pillars. After the plastic support solidified they etched away the silicon backing, leaving bull's-eye patterned black silicon embedded in supple plastic.
This approach gave their lenses unprecedented crisp focusing capabilities, as well as the flexibility that enables them to capture a large field of view.
However, the quality of Gan crystals does not come up to that of conventional semiconductor materials such as silicon (Si)
For that reason, the establishment of technology for producing high-quality crystals with fewer defects and rearrangement is expected,
The group examined the intensity distribution of THZ generated by radiating ultraviolet femtosecond laser pulses on the surface of Gan crystal through LTEM.
The spill has turned the Animas River into a mustard-coloured pollution zone with the contaminated leak said to contain heavy metals like arsenic, mercury and lead,
Traditional 3d printing with plastics is done by heating a polymer, then applying it layer by layer to build an object.
#This new high-power diamond laser can cut steel Although lasers based on diamond have been around around for several years,
The ability to slice through steel has always been the benchmark for cutting power. With 380 Watts@1240nm, the new laser has enough oomph to handle the job.
The new diamond lasers make use of something known as Raman conversion to shift light to wavelengths that are long enough to be absorbed efficiently by steel.
Furthermore, the wavelength range of these fibers is restricted to the transparency of silica. The release stories for this laser mention that the infrared wavelengths used here are safer for the eye than either visible or UV radiation.
It sandwiched between two polymer panels to form an airtight seal. The resin remains liquid as long as that seal remains unbroken.
This revision will probably serve as a minor update to the existing hardware without a drastic change in design. 7000 series aluminum seems to be the alloy of choice here potentially the exact same material used in the Apple Watch Sport.
Previous systems, like Aquasar, still relied on a metal transfer plate between the coolant flow and the CPU itself.
which involved switching out gold metals used in manufacturing Gan devices for metals that were compatible with silicon fabrication,
#Scientists design technology to make PLA production process simpler Polylactic acid (PLA) is already a part of our everyday lives in biodegradable drinking cups
and vegetable wrapping foil but it is considered not yet a full alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics,
which in turn is a building block for polylactic acid. According to co-author Professor Bert Sels of hape-selective zeolite catalysis for bioplastics productionthe production process for PLA is expensive because of the intermediary steps."
"First, lactic acid is fed into a reactor and converted into a type of pre-plastic under high temperature and in a vacuum,
The pre-plastic-a low-quality plastic-is broken then down into building blocks for PLA. n other words,
you are first producing an inferior plastic before you end up with a high-quality plastic. And even though PLA is considered a green plastic,
the various intermediary steps in the production process still require metals and produce waste.""The KU Leuven researchers developed a new technique by applying a petrochemical concept to biomass."
"We speed up and guide the chemical process in the reactor with a zeolite as a catalyst,
and without using metals. In addition, the production process is cheaper, because we can skip a step."
LA will never fully replace petroleum-based plastics. For one thing, some objects, such as toilet drain pipes, are meant not to be biodegradable.
This is why the Stanford researchers placed the aluminum anode, a graphite cathode and an ionic liquid electrolyte inside of a polymer-coated pouch.
Reliance Games has developed several games based on well-known IP like Hunger Games and Real Steel. The robot battle game eal Steel World Robot Boxingis likely the best known Reliance Games app it has 7. 5 Million downloads,
while the cluster of three Real Steel tie-in apps has garnered 47 Million downloads. The Real Steel franchise has shown broad global appeal
with country tallies standing at US (10m+),Russia (4. 8m+),Thailand (2. 7m+),Mexico (2m+),Brazil (1. 9m+),S. Korea (1. 6m
+),China (1. 2m+.+This is one reason why many game developers are now pursuing IP licenses a reasonably successful movie
Real Steel is a 2011 movie that grossed $300 Million. Earlier this March, eal Steel Champions a new spin-off app by Reliance Games, hit Top 5 of US ipad download chart.
Licensed app franchises can have surprisingly long life spans, aiding app discovery years after the popularity of the original IP has peaked.
In the case of Real Steel, we focused on the robot combat and not the journey of the Hugh Jackman Character.
and patents, toured syringe manufacturing plants and studied plastic injection moulding techniques. Thirty one years later he found himself in Geneva again in February
Next, the scientists developed lightweight robots made of glass-fiber-reinforced composite materials that, in total, weighed only 0. 002 ounces a little more than the weight of three adult houseflies.
Both teflon and ceramic is abundant, making it easy and inexpensive to produce. The combination of this very thin material, its nonmetallic properties,
Rare and expensive metals such as platinum can serve as effective catalysts, but in its work the team discovered that it could create a much cheaper,
#quid teethplastic self-heals with water Scientists derived the genetic code of squid ring teeth to develop a polymer that self-heals with a single drop of water.
researchers say. hat unique about this plastic is the ability to stick itself back together with a drop of water,
The polymer can then either be molded using heat or cast by solvent evaporation. The two-part material is a copolymer consisting of an amorphous segment that is soft and a more structured molecular architecture.
The structured portion consists of strands of amino acids connected by hydrogen bonds to form a twisted and/or pleated sheet.
This part also provides strength for the polymer, but the amorphous segment provides the self-healing.
Healing wounds The researchers created a dog-bone shaped sample of the polymer and then cut it in half.
A new polymer structure, developed and produced with 3d printing by postdoc Miguel Molerón, is central to the new method.
They attached the polymer structure with the microphones to a robot very close to the object surface,
it would also be interesting to adapt the method for ultrasound that has shorter wavelengths. ecause the size of the polymer structure has to be adjusted to the operational wavelength,
The researchers used smart shape-memory polymers (SMPS) with the ability to remember one shape
ALLOVER TEMPERATURE The research creates self-folding structures from 3d printed patterns containing varying amounts of different smart shape-memory polymers.
These examples all require the precise control of the folding sequence of different parts of the structure to avoid collisions of the components during folding. e have exploited the ability to 3d-print smart polymers
which were made from varying ratios of two different commercially available shape-memory polymers. A simplified reduced-order model was developed also to rapidly
#Physicists discover a weird new form of matter A team of physicists has discovered an unusual form of matterot a conventional metal, insulator,
first consider a crystal with electrons moving around throughout its interior. Under certain conditions, it can be energetically favorable for these electrical charges to pile up in a regular,
repeating fashion inside the crystal, forming what is called a charge-ordered phase. The building block of this type of order, namely charge, is simply a scalar quantityhat is,
When spins line up parallel to each other (in a crystal, for example they form a ferromagnethe type of magnet you might use on your refrigerator
The Hsieh group experiment exploited the fact that changes in the symmetry of a crystal will affect the strength of each harmonic differently.
Since the emergence of multipolar ordering changes the symmetry of the crystal in a very specific way way that can be largely invisible to conventional probesheir idea was that the optical harmonic response of a crystal could serve as a fingerprint of multipolar order
. e found that light reflected at the second harmonic frequency revealed a set of symmetries completely different from those of the known crystal structure,
Using sugar, silicone, and a 3d printer, bioengineers and surgeons have created an implant with an intricate network of blood vessels.
leaving behind a network of small channels in the silicone. hey don yet look like the blood vessels found in organs,
Ribo-T may be able to be tuned to produce unique and functional polymers for exploring ribosome functions
or producing designer therapeuticsnd, eventually perhaps even non-biological polymers. No one has developed ever something of this nature. e felt like there was a smallery smallhance Ribo-T could work,
#Tiny metal illarssurvive 1, 100 degrees Celsius Scientists have produced a thin film out of a new class of metal alloys that can survive very high temperatures and extreme pressures.
Following heat treatment, micropillars made of the alloy perform significantly better in terms of strength and ductility than those made of pure tungsten.
This is despite the fact that the high-entropy alloy melting point is significantly lower than that of pure tungsten (around 2, 900 versus 3, 400 degrees Celsius.
The material is remarkable not only for its extremely intricate pillar structure but also for its internal crystal structure.
this material also consists of a large number of small individual crystals. The special feature of the alloy is that these individual crystals are tinyhis is referred to as a nanocrystalline material. lthough nanocrystalline materials have many desirable properties,
they often also bring disadvantages, explains Yu Zou, a doctoral student and first author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications. or example,
as heating causes the individual crystals to expand and therefore changes the properties of the material. ccording to the scientists,
the alloy ability to withstand extreme temperatures may be related to the relatively disordered atomic distribution of the elements inside the material.
In particular, the researchers suspect that the disorder at the internal boundary surfaces of individual crystals in high-entropy alloys means the crystals tend to grow less than in other materials when heated.
The OSU study (CD toxinroduced actin oligomers poison formin-controlled actin polymerization which is published in Science,
a monomer, or a single molecule, and a filament, which is a strand of those molecules strung together.
or a bit of saliva on a small plastic film that has a piece of cellulose plastic on it.
all packed within a flexible, polymer-coated pouch. And unlike lithium-ion batteries which can short circuit
Furthermore, the researchers point out that aluminum is a cheaper metal than lithium, and the aluminum-ion technology offers an environmentally friendly alternative to disposable AA
That alloy is a shape-memory material this means that although it will stay in a shape that it's been bent into
but even in the 1950s, the speed that tapes had to run was more than the plastic could handle without stretching or tearing,
and magnetic readers were developed so the tapes could run back and forth quickly without putting too much strain on the plastic.
The new tape is the result of 13 years of work on a high-density barium ferrite tape combined with new control technology for read write-heads heads involving advanced servo control technologies
"The Veg-01 experiment sees plants grown in zero gravity in a plastic greenhouse that consists of a collapsible plastic tent with a controllable atmosphere that is lit by red, blue,
Polymers like hydrogels carry large amounts of water within their structure which gives them the capacity to respond to variations in environmental factors such as acidity,
the team created an L-shaped polymer and changed the temperature repeatedly to observe its response.
The nanosheets were fixed then in place using a process called light-triggered in-situ vinyl polymerization where the light helped to stick them together within the polymer.
The nanosheets create electrostatic resistance in one direction, but not the other. The polymer"legs"not only lengthened
and contracted at pace, allowing it to move forward, but its overall volume also remained the same.
The L-shaped polymer can walk indefinitely, Ishida says, as long as the heating and cooling cycle is repeated.
#Snake skin-inspired steel could lead to better hard drives and more When it comes to human phobias,
With a fiber laser, they milled scales into a steel bolt of 8 mm in diameter.
With that in mind, researchers at KIT milled scales into a steel bolt 8 mm in diameter using a fiber laser.
Both designs were tested on lubricated (steel) and unlubricated (sapphire) contacts. For lubricated conditions, the untextured surface generated the least amount of friction
even with hard materials like steel and sapphire, it shows that scale-like texturing has potential application for dry-contact devices and/or environments that benefit from low friction and high wear resistance c
The meshes are made from a flexible polymer called POMAC (which is short for this mouthful:"
and bend the polymer meshes.""And when we apply electrical field stimulation, we see that they beat in synchrony."
the engineers used coils of copper wires insulated with PVC tubing. At one end of this arrangement, the wires terminate at a receiver and analyzer,
and Johns hopkins university collaborated on a ground-breaking procedure to produce a 3d printed silicone support structure that is implanted into living tissue to guide
which then produced the silicone nerve guide. The sciatic nerve in the rat was severed then, and the guide was implanted surgically into the rat by grafting it to the sliced ends of the nerve.
The short video below shows the 3d printing process used for the production of the silicone guides u
and the limited visibility that comes with being wrapped in a mobile fortress of ceramic and steel.
#Biodegradable implant could simplify bone replacement surgery Combining cornstarch with volcanic ash clay to create a plastic for bone grafts could make the surgical process of bone replacement much simpler in the future.
or hard plastic in the area may make future procedures easier.""The biodegradable polymer is reinforced with montmorillonite clay nanoparticles (we've seen nanoparticles used in other ways to heal bones) for strength,
and injected with carbon dioxide making the implant look like a kind of rigid foam that is porous like real bone.
#Teenage Girl Turns Plastic Trash Into Million-Dollar Biofuel An Egyptian teenager has discovered an inexpensive way to turn plastic trash into fuel
what some scientists are calling iofuelbecause the organic chemicals from plastic polymers she extracts, are the same chemicals extracted from vegetation to create ethanol biofuel.
The little black bundles, framed by stainless steel, were promised to anyone who donated#50 or more.
the researchers used a custom-built 3d printer to make silicone guides for nerve regeneration. These 3d printed nerve pathways were embedded with biochemical cues to promote growth.
He says ther metals have lower efficiency but higher thrust. So you would need more fuel to get to Mars,
but Neumann has achieved promising results with titanium, aluminium and other widely used metals. Spaceships using his drive might find capturing fuel made from a dead satellite a handy way to refuel,
Neumann says experiments with pulsed electric arcs on metals go back to the 1920s, and some of the data collected was useful to him in assessing
plastic-based material. What about organic materials, such as human organs? Wouldn it be great if new organs could be printed out and used in surgical operations to save people lives?(
These soft materials were not mere plastic copies of biological material: collagens, muscle fibers, miniature brain structures,
and copper supported by silicone. Most of the sensor bulk comes from a 40-micrometer-thick layer of silicone.
Each of the other layers has a thickness of just tens or hundreds of nanometers.
They were built out of small plastic cubes with motors inside. The experiments found that those baby robots passed down all of their best traits.
Apple will use a more reinforced metal for the phone body the reports have indicated. That slightly larger body will have a smaller battery than the iphone 6, according to previous leaks.
N y. For nearly three decades Krishan Luthra stubbornly labored away in a General electric research lab on a long-shot effort to cook up a new type of ceramic that few consumers will ever see or use.
The material is a type of ceramic that is hard and can handle high heat, like the ceramics people have been making for 25,000 years.
But this ceramic is a complex composite that is also very light, and tough like a metal.
No one wants the aircraft engine that is holding them 35,000 feet above the earth to shatter like a vase.
Success came only at the end of a tortured path of fluctuating research funding and disappointments that at times shook Luthra hopes. here were times where
because the alloys would melt. Already, today engines employ elaborate cooling mechanisms that divert air for cooling that otherwise would be used to power the plane.
Ceramic matrix composites can withstand temperatures 20 percent higher than these metals, and they are one-third the weight. or
says Gregory Morscher, a ceramic composites expert and mechanical engineering professor at the University of Akron.
The theoretical qualities of these ceramic composites have long been well known, but Luthra wanted to make them a reality,
and structure of the matrix thin filaments coated with a ceramic that is shaped into a lattice.
One leap forward was a new type of fiber developed in Japan made of silicon carbide.
But coating these fibers with a ceramic each just one eighth the width of a human hair, evenly, was extremely difficult. f you don do that right you get a ceramic that behaves like china,
and if you do it right you get ceramic with metal properties, and that the big deal, he says.
He figured how to apply the coatings to each individual fiber in something called a chemical vapor deposition reactor,
The fibers are bathed then in a polymer that arranges them into a latticelike structure. Then
like all ceramics, the material is baked. The polymer burns away and leaves behind a strong,
light lattice that is later filled with liquid silicon to create a solid structure. GE designed the material into an engine called the LEAP to be used on the coming Airbus 320neo and Boeing 737 MAX.
who manages the LEAP program for GE Aviation division, of the composite. GE says that by 2020,
He wants to improve the composites so they can handle even higher temperatures, and he wants to convince more divisions at GE to use the materials. don want to stop,
The researchers, from the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and Konkuk Univ. in the Republic of korea, coated cotton and polyester yarn with a nanoglue called bovine serum albumin (BSA.
or tiny crystals that have luminescent properties. Quantum dots (QDS) can be made with numerous materials, some
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