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Category: materials – Page 253

Discovery offers new avenue for next-generation data storage

The demands for data storage and processing have grown exponentially as the world becomes increasingly connected, emphasizing the need for new materials capable of more efficient data storage and data processing.

An international team of researchers, led by physicist Paul Ching-Wu Chu, founding director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston, is reporting a new compound capable of maintaining its skyrmion properties at through the use of high pressure. The results also suggest the potential for using chemical pressure to maintain the properties at ambient pressure, offering promise for commercial applications.

The work is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core

Could use magnetism to pull the iron back inside. O,.,o.

Earth’s molten core may be leaking iron, according to researchers who analyzed how iron behaves inside our planet.

The boundary between the liquid iron core and the is located some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below Earth’s surface. At this transition, the by more than a thousand degrees from the hotter core to the cooler mantle.

The new study suggests heavier iron isotopes migrate toward —and into the mantle—while lighter iron isotopes circulate back down into the core. (Isotopes of the same element have different numbers of neutrons, giving them slightly different masses.) This effect could cause core material infiltrating the lowermost mantle to be enriched in heavy iron isotopes.

Military labs test plastic billed as ‘armor’ against lasers

Circa 1988 o.,o.

While the Pentagon is busy developing laser weapons, a small California company claims it has discovered a type of plastic that acts as armor against laser energy. The company stumbled on the material by accident and doesn’t fully understand why it works. Samples have been sent to several United States military labs, which are running tests to see how strong a laser beam the plastic can withstand.

“We’re trying to find out the full magnitude of its capabilities,” says Slava Harlamor, president of Harlamor-Schadeck Company, which developed the material.

The military applications of an effective laser armor are obvious.

Mutant Enzyme Recycles Plastic in Hours, Could Revolutionize Recycling Industry

Scientists have engineered a mutant enzyme that converts 90 percent of plastic bottles back to pristine starting materials that can then be used to produce new high-quality bottles in just hours. The discovery could revolutionize the recycling industry, which currently saves about 30 percent of PET plastics from landfills, reported Science Magazine.

Cell muscle movements visualised for first time

The movements of cell muscles in the form of tiny filaments of proteins have been visualised at unprecedented detail by University of Warwick scientists.

In a study published in the Biophysical Journal, scientists from the University’s Department of Physics and Warwick Medical School have used a new microscopy technique to analyse the molecular motors inside that allow them to move and reshape themselves, potentially providing new insights that could inform the development of new smart materials.

Myosin is a protein that forms the motor filaments that give a cell stability and are involved in remodelling the actin cortex inside the cell. The actin cortex is much like the backbone of the cell and gives it its shape, while the myosin filaments are similar to muscles. By ‘flexing’, they enable the cell to exert forces outside of it and to propagate.

Self-Healing Pipelines

Circa 2006

Fixing leaking pipelines can be tricky and expensive. But now engineers at a company in Aberdeen, Scotland, have developed a novel way to get the job done. It involves using artificial platelets inspired by the way our blood clots when we get cut.

The platelets, actually small pieces of polymeric or elastomeric material, are introduced into the pipeline upstream and use the flow of the fluid to carry them down the pipe toward the leak. There the pressure forcing the fluid out of the leak causes the platelets to amass at the point of rupture, clogging up the escaping fluid in the process, says Klaire Evans, sales and marketing engineer with Brinker Technology, which is developing the technology.

The method has been tested on a handful of pipelines owned by BP and Shell. According to Sandy Meldrum, an engineer with BP, in Aberdeen, the technology was used to fix a leak in an undersea water injection pipe at an oil field near the Scottish Shetland Isles. Normally this kind of leak would have to be fixed using remotely operated vehicles, whose operators would place a clamp over the leak. But by using Brinker’s technology, BP saved about $3 million, says Meldrum.

Scientists turn bricks into gamma-ray cameras

O,.,o.

A team of scientists at North Carolina State University have developed a technique that could allow bricks and other common building materials to act as “cameras” that can reveal the location and distribution of radioactive materials that were once in their vicinity. Using optically stimulated luminescence, the team was able to retrieve a historical snapshot thanks to how radioactive elements like weapons-grade plutonium affected certain minerals in the materials.

On Christmas Day, 1972, the BBC aired a ghost story called The Stone Tape, which postulated that ghosts were the result of the stones in a room acting as a recording medium of past events – a stone tape, as it were. It was regarded as not only one of the best horror stories produced for television, it also popularized the hypothesis in paranormal circles known as residual hauntings or the Stone Tape theory.

Now, a North Carolina team has come up with a real-life version of the stone tape, only this time what it records is radiation, not phantoms. The idea is that building materials can act like a 3D camera that picks up residual gamma radiation signatures. This is because some minerals, such as quartz or feldspar, react to gamma rays by trapping electrons in their crystalline matrix. When stimulated, these electrons shift from their prison, releasing light that can be measured on a photomultiplier, allowing scientists to build up a picture of any strong radioactive source that might have been in the area.