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Category: materials – Page 365

Transparent gel-based robots can catch and release live fish

A new technology for cleaning and maintaining your aquarium as well as useful for zoos, public aquariums, etc.

A new technology for fishing industry and hobbyists.1092647.htm

Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball underwater, and grabbing and releasing a live fish.

The robots are made entirely of hydrogel — a tough, rubbery, nearly transparent material that’s composed mostly of water. Each robot is an assemblage of hollow, precisely designed hydrogel structures, connected to rubbery tubes. When the researchers pump water into the hydrogel robots, the structures quickly inflate in orientations that enable the bots to curl up or stretch out.

The team fashioned several hydrogel robots, including a finlike structure that flaps back and forth, an articulated appendage that makes kicking motions, and a soft, hand-shaped robot that can squeeze and relax.

Has The ‘Holy Grail’ Of Solid Metallic Hydrogen Finally Been Created?

Another write up on last week’s news on the Hydrogen metal discovery. Definitely impacting many industries tech, auto, construction/ building materials, etc.

It’s been over 80 years since the idea of metallic hydrogen was first theorized.

It’s not that changing hydrogen into a different state isn’t possible, because it is – by cooling it to −253 degrees Celsius, it can be turned into liquid. The challenge, however, lies in changing hydrogen into a solid metallic state because of the extreme pressure required to do it.

Hypothetically, metallic hydrogen can revolutionize industries like electronics, magnetics and transportation; help reduce the world’s energy problems; and usher in a brand new age of interstellar exploration. Because it can be used as a superconductor at room temperature, it could make electricity distribution more efficient – no more wasted energy caused by resistance in power lines. And since metallic hydrogen is created under extreme pressure, once it is converted back to its original state, all that pressure will be released, making it the most powerful propellant ever produced, one that can make space travel that much faster.

Textile muscles could find use in a literal “power suit”

There are many people who could use a bit of help moving their limbs, but they don’t necessarily need a full-on exoskeleton. Well, imagine if their clothes could provide that help. Such a thing may one day be possible, thanks to the recent creation of “textile muscles.”

In a study conducted at Sweden’s Linköping University and University of Borås, scientists coated mass-producible cellulose yarn with a flexible electroactive polymer known as polypyrrole.

When a low voltage is applied to the polymer, it increases in volume, causing the yarn fibers to increase in length accordingly – when the electrical current is switched off, the fibers retract back to their original length. By varying the manner in which those fibers are woven together, it’s possible to tune the force of the material toward different tasks.

Making metallic hydrogen at Harvard

Nearly a century after it was theorized, Harvard scientists have succeeded in creating metallic hydrogen. In addition to helping scientists answer fundamental questions about the nature of matter, the material is theorized to have a wide range of applications, ranging from room-temperature superconductors to powerful rocket propellant.

Nanometric Imprinting on Fiber

Researchers at EPFL’s Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fibre Devices, which is run by Fabien Sorin, have come up with a simple and innovative technique for drawing or imprinting complex, nanometric patterns on hollow polymer fibers. Their work has been published in Advanced Functional Materials.

The potential applications of this breakthrough are numerous. The imprinted designs could be used to impart certain optical effects on a fiber or make it water-resistant. They could also guide stem–cell growth in textured fiber channels or be used to break down the fiber at a specific location and point in time in order to release drugs as part of a smart bandage.

GWU’s Innovations in Electric Propulsion Technology Help Vector Provide Unprecedented Access to Space

Since our launch in 2016, Vector has focused on connecting space startups and innovators with affordable and reliable space by dramatically increasing access and speed to orbit. And as a result, Vector is reshaping the multi-billion launch market. Building on over 10 years of research to develop the Vector-R launch vehicle, Vector is truly at the forefront of innovation and revolutionizing the next generation of rocket launches. George Washington University has developed ground-breaking plasma steering thrusters which will help put Vector ahead in the great “New Space” race. Our collaboration with George Washington University will help us move closer to achieving our long-term vision of furthering the technological achievements for our industry.

Through this agreement, Vector will license the plasma thruster technology created by the School of Engineering and Applied Science at George Washington University for the Vector-R launch vehicle. The technology will allow us to propel miniature satellites, which are significantly less expensive and made from common materials, and control them while in space. As part of the collaboration, Vector will develop the thruster for commercial space use, and the University will continue to develop the next generation of the technology.

Small spacecraft and satellites are extreme ly difficult to maneuver and control once in space, and George Washington University’s plasma thruster technology helps us manage this problem. The thrusters use titanium as a propellant, which is converted into a gas-like plasma to provide propulsion. The plasma then accelerates and expands into a vacuum at high velocities to produce thrust. This thrust helps the craft overcome drag and maintain the small satellite’s orbit. We plan to use the technology as part of our launch system dedicated to micro spacecraft.

Morphing metamaterial models take origami to a whole new level

Metamaterials are an almost magical class of materials that can do things that seem impossible, but they can only perform one miracle at a time. Now Harvard researchers have come up with a toolkit for constructing metamaterials that flow from one shape and function into another, like origami.

Metamaterials have been around since the 1940s, but only in recent years has their development taken off. Unlike conventional substances, metamaterials have functions and properties that are independent of what they’re made of. Instead, their repetitive microstructures allow them to do the seemingly impossible – think flat lenses that act like they’re curved, structures that shrink instead of expanding when heated, and even invisibility cloaks.

The problem is that the substructures that metamaterials rely on are very specific, so each metamaterial can only do one thing at a time. Last year, Harvard researchers demonstrated a way to overcome this limitation with reconfigurable metamaterials made of thin polymer sheets. Now a team from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a more general framework to help engineers to create metamaterials that can change shape and function.

Scientists Have Made a New Kind of Invisibility Cloak

In Brief

  • “Cloaking” or invisibility technology is a kind of scientific Holy Grail; but actually concealing objects in direct light is notoriously difficult.
  • A team of researchers has now found a way to achieve potential perfect invisibility by bending light—but only in “diffusive” atmospheres.

Concealing objects in direct light is already a difficult feat. While there is ongoing research into invisibility cloaks of some form or other, researchers at the Public University of Navarre (NUP/UPNA) and the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) are taking a not-so-straightforward approach. In particular, they are interested in developing a cloaking mechanism that works by bending light.

The team, whose work is published in the journal Physical Review A, has worked on simulations of an invisibility technology that conceals objects in diffusive atmospheres. This kind of invisibility, based on their study, can be achieved by surrounding an object with a special material that’s capable of bending light around it.

New low-cost technique converts bulk alloys to oxide nanowires

A simple technique for producing oxide nanowires directly from bulk materials could dramatically lower the cost of producing the one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures.

That could open the door for a broad range of uses in lightweight structural composites, advanced sensors, electronic devices – and thermally-stable and strong battery membranes able to withstand temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.

The technique uses a solvent reaction with a bimetallic alloy – in which one of the metals is reactive – to form bundles of nanowires (nanofibers) upon reactive metal dissolution.

On-demand pain relief, triggered by light

It will be amazing how this advances with Quantum.

Once injected into the body, a new material can repeatedly release small bursts of local anesthetic when zapped by low-intensity, near-infrared light for one minute (Nano Lett. 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b03588). The material’s developers, who have tested it in rats, say the on-demand system could make pain management safer and more effective, and give patients more control.

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