Lifeboat Foundation

In recent years, 3D printing has opened up interesting new possibilities for the large-scale production of electronic components, as well as of a variety of other objects. To this end, research teams worldwide have been trying to create materials and structures that can easily change shape, as these could be particularly useful for 3D printing applications.

Although many of the programmable and shape-shifting materials developed so far have proved to be promising for 3D printing, they are often not mechanically robust. This makes them unideal for printing objects that are resistant to a lot of weight or strain.

To overcome this limitation, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, Peking University and Beijing Institute of Technology have recently proposed a new shape-morphing material system that is also mechanically robust. This new material, created via the volatilization of a volatile component that has not fully reacted, was presented in a paper published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. The lead authors of this paper are Qiang Zhang and Xiao Kuang.

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 room temperature 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.

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 rocky mantle is located some 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below Earth’s surface. At this transition, the temperature drops by more than a thousand degrees from the hotter core to the cooler mantle.

Continue reading “Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core” »

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.

Continue reading “Military labs test plastic billed as ‘armor’ against lasers” »

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.

The diver’s team found four new species and something else no other expedition has seen — pollution.

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 cells 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.

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.

Circa 2015

This nifty “bio-concrete” might help buildings stand a little longer.