Synopsis: Materials: Classes of materials:


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'Robert Wood, the Charles river Professor of Engineering and Applied sciences At seas added:''Bioinspired robots, such as the Robobee, are invaluable tools for a host of interesting experiments--in this case on the fluid mechanics of flapping foils in different fluids.''


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Conductive Composites has created a method to layer nickel on carbon to form a material that's light

and manufacturing performance advantages of composites and plastics,'the firm says. Using the wallpaper would allow people to easily turn entire rooms into Faraday cages.


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By adding composites made of a polymer and reduced graphene oxide, the films are able to detect touch


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and is covered by a scratch resistant hardened glass. the dial has a rechargeable lithium polymer battery,


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and the enamel that defends your teeth from decay is protected. Same old circular brushing pattern.


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which proved to be tricky in our brass brush test video after the break. So what's the secret sauce behind this new coating?

For those who care about benchmarks, these can apparently resist brass brush weight of up to 2kg


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Plumestop is composed of very fine particles of activated carbon (1-2 m) suspended in water through the use of unique organic polymer dispersion chemistry.


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and encapsulates it in a netlike cage made of 3d-printed elastomer that forms to the body.


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#Wood instead of petroleum: Producing chemical substances solely from renewable resources Petroleum might well be replaced by wood soon

when it comes to manufacturing chemical substances. Research has made now significant progress towards using sustainable biomass, like wood, as an alternative raw material for chemical production.

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany and at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in the USA recently managed to synthesize two complex chemical substances from wood-based starting materials.

The process can be as cost-effective as the conventional petroleum product-based process and is less damaging to the environment."

substances used to produce automotive coatings, plastics, adhesives, and other commodity materials. At a conference in Goslar in Germany about two years ago, the two researchers realized that their experience

This new work shows that the relevant carbon skeletons can be created solely from wood-based starting materials.

"This shows that the implementation of a wood-based chemical economy is associated not necessarily with decreased cost-efficiency,"added Daniel Stubba, JGU first author of the publication."

like Canada, have extensive available wood resources s


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#A'profound'success in treating children and young adults with rare blood disorders Hematology researchers have safely and effectively treated children and young adults for autoimmune blood disorders in a multicenter clinical trial.


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Chiang and his colleagues plan next to use X-ray crystallography to create a three-dimensional image of Notch


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_biology.php 2015 00202.txt.txt

The groups created brush-shaped polymers with side chains that resemble bristles. From there they attached DNA to the tips of these bristles


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_business.php 2015 00086.txt.txt

A leading neuroscientist at Florida Atlantic University has developed the"Lewy Body Composite Risk Score"(LBCRS) to quickly

The LBCRS study,"Improving the Clinical Detection of Lewy Body Dementia with the Lewy Body Composite Risk Score,


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and transition metal dichalcogenides,"said Awschalom.""It's not just that it's faster and easier.


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_chemistry.php 2015 00044.txt.txt

called a solenoid, outside near the tumor. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a weak radiofrequency field.

The field causes the magnetic tails of the chain to vibrate bursting the liposome spheres,


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_chemistry.php 2015 00082.txt.txt

Through the use of this new ink, more versatile devices on paper or plastic can be made at a rate of 300 per minute, at a very low cost.


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"The metamaterial consists of silicon pillar arrays embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film.


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_chemistry.php 2015 00090.txt.txt

and oxygen, had an unusual property called the metal-to-insulator transition. In the metal state, electrons move freely,

In order to create a sharp metal-to-insulator transition, the ratio of vanadium to oxygen needs to be controlled precisely.

"The metal-to-insulator property of vanadium dioxide can ideally enhance state-of-the-art nonvolatile memories by using the material as an augmentation device,


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_chemistry.php 2015 00091.txt.txt

#Powerful plastic microscope brings better diagnostic care for world's rural poor You can learn a lot about the state of someone's immune system just by examining their blood under the microscope.

a research team from Rice university has developed recently a plastic, miniature digital fluorescence microscope that can quantify white blood cell levels in patients located in rural parts of the world that are removed far from the modern laboratory."

which consisted of one polystyrene lens and two polymethyl methacrylate aspheric lenses, the researchers used a single-point diamond turning lathe.

reflectors, and USB detectors, combined with the all-plastic housing and lenses will allow for future versions of the prototype to be mass-produced d


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_chemistry.php 2015 00094.txt.txt

#Gene on-off switch works like backpack strap A research team based in Houston's Texas Medical center has found that the proteins that turn genes on by forming loops in human chromosomes work like the sliding plastic adjusters on a grade-schooler


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#Cyclic healing removes defects in metals while maintaining strength When designing a new material, whether for an airplane, car, bridge, mobile device,

gentle stretching to eliminate preexisting defects in metal crystals. Their results have been published online today (Monday, Oct 19) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most materials are made of crystals. When materials fail, it is usually the result of defects in the crystal or in the arrangement of multiple crystals in a polycrystalline structure.

While much research has been done on metal fatigue at larger scales, new technologies are just now allowing researchers to see how atomic-scale defects nucleate,

In this study, the researchers used transmission electron microscopy to look inside sub-micrometer-sized specimens of aluminum crystals as they subjected the samples to stressors like repeated, small-amplitude deformation or fatigue loading.

a process that repetitively stretches the crystal, helps to unpin or shakedown rows of atomic defects known as dislocations in the metal and move these dislocations closer to free surfaces in the sample.

Image forces, which act to minimize the energy of the defects, attract the dislocations closer to the free surfaces and force them out of the crystal.

As a result, the crystal"heals,"becoming essentially free of preexisting dislocations, thereby significantly increasing its strength.

because cyclic deformation has an opposite effect in micro-and macro-scale metal crystals. In these larger samples, repeated stretching generally leads to the creation, accumulation and interaction of defects,

under certain controlled conditions, can lead to the removal of defects from crystals of small volume,


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#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,


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#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,


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which is a theoretical model that describes the normal state of most metals at sufficiently low temperatures."


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#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.


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and transition metal dichalcogenides,"said Awschalom.""It's not just that it's faster and easier.


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_nanotechnology.php 2015 00023.txt.txt

"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,


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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


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_nanotechnology.php 2015 00041.txt.txt

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.


R_www.eurekalert.org_bysubject_nanotechnology.php 2015 00042.txt.txt

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.


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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.


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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,


R_www.extremetech.com 2015 03195.txt.txt

Traditional 3d printing with plastics is done by heating a polymer, then applying it layer by layer to build an object.


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#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.


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It sandwiched between two polymer panels to form an airtight seal. The resin remains liquid as long as that seal remains unbroken.


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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.


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Previous systems, like Aquasar, still relied on a metal transfer plate between the coolant flow and the CPU itself.


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which involved switching out gold metals used in manufacturing Gan devices for metals that were compatible with silicon fabrication,


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#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.


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This is why the Stanford researchers placed the aluminum anode, a graphite cathode and an ionic liquid electrolyte inside of a polymer-coated pouch.


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since prehistoric man started forming beds, chairs and cubbyholes out of wood, stone and animal skins.


R_www.forbes.com_technology 2015 00286.txt

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.


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and patents, toured syringe manufacturing plants and studied plastic injection moulding techniques. Thirty one years later he found himself in Geneva again in February


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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.


R_www.foxnews.com_tech 2015 01381.txt.txt

Both teflon and ceramic is abundant, making it easy and inexpensive to produce. The combination of this very thin material, its nonmetallic properties,


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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,


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#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.


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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,


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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


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#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,


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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,


R_www.futurity.org_category_science-technology_feed_ 2015 00057.txt.txt

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,


R_www.futurity.org_category_science-technology_feed_ 2015 00082.txt.txt

#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.


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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.


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or a bit of saliva on a small plastic film that has a piece of cellulose plastic on it.


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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


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That alloy is a shape-memory material this means that although it will stay in a shape that it's been bent into


R_www.gizmag.com 2015 00001097.txt

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


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"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,


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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.


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