Metals aren’t known to “heal” themselves on their own; once they break, it’s assumed the materials remain broken unless outside forces reform them. But new research into metallic properties indicates this isn’t always the case. In fact, some metals appear to naturally mend of their own accord—a discovery that could one day change engineering designs here on Earth and beyond.
According to a study published last week in Nature, materials scientists from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Texas A&M University discovered at least some metals—in this case copper and platinum—can “undergo intrinsic self-healing.” As Live Science recently noted, the team’s observations came completely by accident while observing the two materials at a nanoscale level.
Scientists specializing in chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California, Riverside have discovered two types of bacteria in the soil capable of breaking down a class of stubborn “forever chemicals,” giving hope for low-cost biological cleanup of industrial pollutants.
Assistant Professor Yujie Men and her team at the Bourns College of Engineering have found that these bacteria are able to eradicate a specific subgroup of per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, particularly those that contain one or more chlorine atoms within their chemical structure. Their findings were published in the scientific journal, Nature Water.
Unhealthful forever chemicals persist in the environment for decades or much longer because of their unusually strong carbon-to-fluorine bonds. Remarkably, the UCR team found that the bacteria cleave the pollutant’s chlorine-carbon bonds, which starts a chain of reactions that destroy the forever chemical structures, rendering them harmless.
Engineering T cells to destroy cancer cells has shown success in treating some types of cancer, such as leukemia and lymphoma. However, it hasn’t worked as well for solid tumors.
One reason for this lack of success is that the T cells target only one antigen (a target protein found on the tumors); if some of the tumor cells don’t express that antigen, they can escape the T cell attack.
MIT researchers have now found a way to overcome that obstacle, using a vaccine that boosts the response of engineered T cells, known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, and also helps the immune system generate new T cells that target other tumor antigens. In studies in mice, the researchers found that this approach made it much more likely that tumors could be eradicated.
A new vaccine boosts the response of engineered CAR-T cells and helps the immune system generate T cells that target other tumor antigens. The researchers found this approach made it more likely that a tumor can be eradicated in mice.
Is Program Manager, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H — https://arpa-h.gov/people/ross-uhrich/), which is focused on advancing high-potential, high-impact biomedical and health research that cannot be readily accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity, accelerating better health outcomes targeting society’s most challenging health problems.
Under the ARPA-H portfolio, Dr. Uhrich is responsible for the recently launched Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis (NITRO — https://arpa-h.gov/engage/programs/nitro/) program which seeks to develop new ways of helping the human body repair its own joints, with the goal of revolutionizing treatment for osteoarthritis — a common and often very painful condition where bones and cartilage break down.
Dr. Uhrich joined ARPA-H in March 2023 from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where he worked as a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and assistant professor of surgery. In addition to these roles, he spent 12 years with the U.S. Navy, finishing his tenure as a Lieutenant Commander.
Throughout his career, Dr. Uhrich has cared for thousands of members of the U.S. Armed Forces at various healthcare facilities, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, Naval Health Clinic Quantico, and WRNMMC, and served as an oral and maxillofacial surgery consultant to Congress. He also treated patients at Charleston Area Medical Center, R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, and Suburban Hospital.
Dr. Uhrich holds a doctorate in dental medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from the University of Virginia, and completed his surgical residency at WRNMMC. He also has a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University.
Built using inexpensive semiconductors, the device packs all components to make hydrogen and can be scaled.
A research team led by Aditya Mohite, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice University in the US, has designed a device that can use sunlight to generate hydrogen, with a record efficiency of 20.8 percent, a press release said.
Hydrogen is being touted as the future of clean energy due to its high energy density that could be deployed even to fly large planes. However, the process of generating hydrogen is currently heavily dependent on fossil fuels. For hydrogen to herald a new future in clean energy, it needs to be produced sustainably and without carbon emissions.
File this under ‘That’s not supposed to happen!’: Scientists observed a metal healing itself, something never seen before. If this process can be fully understood and controlled, we could be at the start of a whole new era of engineering.
A team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University was testing the resilience of the metal, using a specialized transmission electron microscope technique to pull the ends of the metal 200 times every second. They then observed the self-healing at ultra-small scales in a 40-nanometer-thick piece of platinum suspended in a vacuum.
Cracks caused by the kind of strain described above are known as fatigue damage: repeated stress and motion that causes microscopic breaks, eventually causing machines or structures to break. Amazingly, after about 40 minutes of observation, the crack in the platinum started to fuse back together and mend itself before starting again in a different direction.
Microscopic cracks vanish in experiments, revealing possibility of self-healing machines.
In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have for the first time observed metal spontaneously healing its microscopic cracks, upending traditional material theories. This observation could lead to self-healing machines, significantly enhancing their safety and lifespan. The phenomenon, confirming a theory proposed in 2013, may pave the way for an engineering revolution, though further research is necessary to fully understand its practical applicability.
A team of scientists from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University has recently witnessed for the first time a stunning phenomenon: pieces of metal cracking, then fusing back together without any human intervention.
If this amazing phenomenon can be harnessed, it could give rise to an engineering revolution in which self-healing bridges, engines, or airplanes could reverse damage caused by wear and tear and thus become safer and longer-lasting.
“This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand,” said Brad Boyce, a materials scientist at Sandia. “What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale.”
Everyone knows that 2 + 2 = 4, but why do we have arithmetic in the first place, and why is it true? Researchers at the University of Canterbury have recently answered these questions by “reverse engineering” arithmetic from a psychological perspective. To do this, they considered all possible ways that quantities could be combined, and proved (for the first time in mathematical terms) that addition and multiplication are the simplest.
Their proof is based on four assumptions —principles of perceptual organization—that shape how we and other animals experience the world. These assumptions eliminate all possibilities except arithmetic, like how a sculptor’s work reveals a statue hidden in a block of stone.
Monotonicity is the idea of “things changing in the same direction,” and helps us keep track of our place in the world, so that when we approach an object it looms larger but smaller when we move away. Convexity is grounded in intuitions of betweenness. For example, the four corners of a football pitch define the playing field even without boundary lines connecting them. Continuity describes the smoothness with which objects seem to move in space and time. Isomorphism is the idea of sameness or analogy. It’s what allows us to recognize that a cat is more similar to a dog than it is to a rock.
Over the past decade, teams of engineers, chemists and biologists have analyzed the physical and chemical properties of cicada wings, hoping to unlock the secret of their ability to kill microbes on contact. If this function of nature can be replicated by science, it may lead to development of new products with inherently antibacterial surfaces that are more effective than current chemical treatments.
When researchers at Stony Brook University’s Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering developed a simple technique to duplicate the cicada wing’s nanostructure, they were still missing a key piece of information: How do the nanopillars on its surface actually eliminate bacteria? Thankfully, they knew exactly who could help them find the answer: Jan-Michael Carrillo, a researcher with the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
For nanoscience researchers who seek computational comparisons and insights for their experiments, Carrillo provides a singular service: large-scale, high-resolution molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on the Summit supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at ORNL.
