One day, phones will be made from stardust and unicorns. For now, though, we have four choices.
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Category: materials – Page 285
Light-activated wrap designed to fix concrete structures
Utilizing tape to repair or reinforce concrete structures may seem like some hillbilly fix-it joke, but in fact that’s just what fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets are used for. Now, scientists have developed what they say is a better FRP, that halves the number of people and amount of time required for application.
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EHF Fellow: Veronica Harwood-Stevenson
Another possibility for an alternative to traditional plastics?
A substance made by solitary bees.
Sometimes the answers to life’s most complicated questions are hidden in the smallest details. That’s a truth Veronica Harwood-Stevenson discovered when she found there might be a way to create a sustainable alternative to plastic products by mimicking a natural substance produced by bees.
You have probably encountered your fair share of honey bees and bumble bees in your life, but fewer people know about solitary bees — a name for the 20,000+ species of bees that live on their own apart from a hive or colony.
These bees do not produce honey or wax, but they do make a material to waterproof their nests and protect their larvae from the environment that has shown resistance to heat, naked flames, acids, bases, and solvents.
Schwarzites: Long-sought carbon structure joins graphene, fullerene family
UC Berkeley chemists have proved that three carbon structures recently created by scientists in South Korea and Japan are in fact the long-sought schwarzites, which researchers predict will have unique electrical and storage properties like those now being discovered in buckminsterfullerenes (buckyballs or fullerenes for short), nanotubes and graphene.
The new structures were built inside the pores of zeolites, crystalline forms of silicon dioxide – sand – more commonly used as water softeners in laundry detergents and to catalytically crack petroleum into gasoline. Called zeolite-templated carbons (ZTC), the structures were being investigated for possible interesting properties, though the creators were unaware of their identity as schwarzites, which theoretical chemists have worked on for decades.
Based on this theoretical work, chemists predict that schwarzites will have unique electronic, magnetic and optical properties that would make them useful as supercapacitors, battery electrodes and catalysts, and with large internal spaces ideal for gas storage and separation.
Physicists Create Stable ‘Supercrystals’
Stimulation with ultrafast light pulses can realize and manipulate states of matter with emergent structural, electronic and magnetic phenomena. According to a new study, published in the journal Nature Materials, an ultrafast laser pulse plus ‘frustration’ resulted in a new state of matter — a ‘supercrystal.’
Skyscrapers of the Future Will Be Engineered to Copy Nature
By 2050, two-thirds of us wil be living in cities, so architects are taking inspiration from nature to build more sustainable skylines.
How Eyes Evolved to See the World Differently
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WOHA
The Wood Innovation and Design Centre
https://www.unbc.ca/engineering-graduate-program/wood-innova…ign-centre
Tokyo to build world’s tallest timber tower
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/wooden-skyscrapers-timber-…index.html
“The 70-story tower will be a hybrid structure made from 90% wooden materials. A steel vibration-control framework will underpin the design — an important feature in a city where earthquakes are frequent.”
A Lusher and Greener Singapore (URA and NParks Introduce Schemes to Promote Skyrise Greenery)