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Archive for the ‘materials’ category: Page 189

Jul 9, 2018

Engineers develop origami electronics from cheap, foldable paper

Posted by in categories: electronics, materials

UC Berkeley engineers have given new meaning to the term “working paper.” Using inexpensive materials, they have fabricated foldable electronic switches and sensors directly onto paper, along with prototype generators, supercapacitors and other electronic devices for a range of applications.

Research to develop paper electronics has accelerated in the last 10 years. Besides its availability and low cost, paper offers an intriguing potential: simply folding it could switch circuits on and off or otherwise change their activity—a kind of electronic origami.

But most efforts to fabricate electrodes onto paper with sufficient conductivity for practical use have employed expensive metals such as gold or silver as the conducting material, swamping the potential savings of paper as a substrate.

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Jul 5, 2018

Bulletproof Skin

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

Scientists have injected spider DNA into goats to create a bulletproof material! #DCode

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Jul 3, 2018

We know ocean plastic is a problem. We can’t fix it until we answer these 5 questions

Posted by in category: materials

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Jun 29, 2018

Tokomak Energy UK high temperature superconductors and better magnet path to commercial nuclear fusion

Posted by in categories: materials, nuclear energy

Tokamak Energy of the UK has built the ST40 prototype fusion reactor and they aim to reach 100 million degrees celsius by the end of 2018. They have already reached 15 million degrees.

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Jun 27, 2018

Niki Bayat invented materials that can heal eyes

Posted by in category: materials

By sealing up traumatic injuries or delivering crucial medications.


She invented materials that can heal eyes by sealing up traumatic injuries.

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Jun 21, 2018

Scientists Detect Possible Missing ‘Piece’ Of Universe Created By The Big Bang

Posted by in categories: cosmology, materials

Aside from dark matter and the dark energy that comprised the universe, there remained to be 5 percent of what was called the “ordinary matter.” About two-thirds of this ordinary matter was left unaccounted for until now. ( Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics )

After a 20-year-long experiment, a team of international scientists detects the last of the missing intergalactic material predicted to be created by the Big Bang.

Specifically, the team was finally able to detect the missing parts of the “ordinary matter” that makes up everything in the universe, from the stars to the cores of black holes. This ordinary matter is different from the “dark matter” that comprised the bulk of the universe’s mass. The dark matter remained to be undetected until now.

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Jun 21, 2018

‘Stealth sheet’ hides hot objects from prying infrared eyes

Posted by in categories: drones, materials

Infrared cameras are the heat-sensing eyes that help drones find their targets, even in the dead of night or through heavy fog.

Hiding from such detectors could become much easier, thanks to a new cloaking material that renders objects—and people—practically invisible.

“What we have shown is an ultrathin stealth ‘sheet.’ Right now, what people have is much heavier metal armor or thermal blankets,” says Hongrui Jiang, the Lynn H. Matthias Professor and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Jun 21, 2018

Laser bursts generate electricity faster than any other method

Posted by in category: materials

Take a glass thread a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Use it as a wire between two metals. Hit it with a laser pulse that lasts a millionth of a billionth of a second.

Remarkable things happen.

The glass-like material is transformed ever so briefly into something akin to a metal. And the generates a burst of electrical current across this tiny electrical circuit. It does so far faster than any traditional way of producing electricity and in the absence of an applied voltage. Further, the direction and magnitude of the current can be controlled simply by varying the shape of the laser—by changing its phase.

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Jun 19, 2018

Astronomers See Distant Eruption as Black Hole Destroys Star

Posted by in categories: cosmology, materials

For the first time, astronomers have directly imaged the formation and expansion of a fast-moving jet of material ejected when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole ripped apart a star that wandered too close to the massive monster.

The scientists tracked the event with radio and infrared telescopes, including the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299. The galaxies are nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. At the core of one of the galaxies, a black hole 20 million times more massive than the Sun shredded a star more than twice the Sun’s mass, setting off a chain of events that revealed important details of the violent encounter. The researchers also used observations of Arp 299 made by NASA’s Hubble space telescope prior to and after the appearance of the eruption.

Only a small number of such stellar deaths, called tidal disruption events, or TDEs, have been detected. Theorists have suggested that material pulled from the doomed star forms a rotating disk around the black hole, emitting intense X-rays and visible light, and also launches jets of material outward from the poles of the disk at nearly the speed of light.

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Jun 11, 2018

Wastewater treatment plants are key route into UK rivers for microplastics

Posted by in category: materials

Water samples from UK rivers contained significantly higher concentrations of microplastics downstream from wastewater treatment plants, according to one of the first studies to determine potential sources of microplastics pollution.

Scientists from the University of Leeds measured microplastics concentrations up and downstream of six wastewater treatment plants and found that all of the plants were linked to an increase in microplastics in the rivers—on average up to three times higher but in one instance by a factor of 69.

Lead author Dr. Paul Kay, from the School of Geography at Leeds, said: Microplastics are one of the least studied groups of contaminants in river systems. These tiny plastic fragments and flakes may prove to be one of the biggest challenges in repairing the widespread environmental harm plastics have caused. Finding key entry points of microplastics, such as wastewater treatment plants, can provide focus points to combating their distribution.

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