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Category: materials

Interesting position.

Anonymous by request.

“The human energy field exists as an array of oscillating energy points that have a layered structure and a definite symmetry and these properties fulfill the definition of a normal crystal in material form” – Marc Vogel.

The human body is a universe onto itself; a vast, intricate system of incredible sensitivity and detail. It has been the subject of wonder, philosophy and scientific study for centuries, yet its most elemental design is still shrouded in mystery. What is the relation of biological life to the Cosmos – to the fabric of space and time itself? Is our body the “earthen machine” of Descartes; an “automaton” of discrete mechanical function? Are we really locked in an endless struggle against the ticking clock of thermodynamic entropy – of increasing disorder – as is the view of contemporary physics? The fractal-holographic model sheds new light on these questions; a unified description of the Cosmos reveals its true relation to Man, a relationship so entangled, so intimate that the two cannot be viewed apart…

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Stronger Graphene; can you imagine have a car or SUV that is solid like a Sherman Tank and weighs the same or less than your car or SUV does today; or a commercial jet that it’s fuselage remains intact when it crashes while protecting others inside; or a building that does not get ripped apart in a tornado? With this form of graphene it may be possible.

Now a team of researchers at MIT have developed a computer model that simulates fusing flakes of graphene into three-dimensional configurations.

According to the researchers, Graphene is a strong material. As such, the porous graphene material can be used in the construction industry by creating strong and light materials.

This also suggests that other strong and lightweight materials can be made stronger as well by taking on similar geometric features. They were mechanically tested for their tensile and compressive properties, and their mechanical response under loading was simulated using the team’s theoretical models.

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In Brief

  • Researchers have created a 3D bulk material from silk fibroin that can be programmed to activate specific tasks when exposed to conditions like temperature or infrared light.
  • The material could be used to create everything from hormone-emitting orthopedics to surgical pins that change color when they near their mechanical limits.

Engineers from Tufts University have just created a new, versatile material that could be optimized for a number of purposes, particularly within the medical field. The material was constructed out of special proteins called silk fibroins, and it can be programmed for specific biological, chemical, or mechanical tasks. The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The team used water-based fabrication methods inspired by protein self-assembly to produce 3D bulk materials from silk fibroin. Fibroin, the structural protein that gives silk its durability, was chosen because it allowed for the easiest manipulation of the resulting substance’s form, as well as smoother modification of function. It’s also completely biodegradable.

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Creating tunable terahertz radiation.

Indium arsenide quantum dots in gallium arsenide wafers offer wider pump-wavelength range, significantly higher thermal tolerance, and higher conversion efficiency than typical terahertz radiation sources.

The terahertz (THz) range of electromagnetic waves (0.1–10THz)—which lies between the microwave and optical regions—is of great interest. This is mainly because this band of the electromagnetic spectrum includes the frequencies of rotational and vibrational spectra of complex (e.g., biological) molecules. Most dielectric materials are transparent in the THz region, and THz waves are already used in many biomedical applications (e.g., for the detection of dangerous and illicit substances, as well as for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases). Photoconductive antennas are the most-developed room-temperature sources of THz radiation. However, ultrafast low-temperature-grown gallium arsenide (GaAs)—which is typically used as a substrate for such antennas—suffers (because of its large band gap) from low thermal efficiency, low carrier mobility, and a pump limit at a wavelength of about 850nm.

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Inspired by the comic book character Wolverine, scientists have developed a self-healing, highly stretchable, transparent material that can be used to power artificial muscles.

The end product is a soft, rubber-like material that’s easy to produce at low cost. It can stretch to 50 times its original length, and can heal itself from a scissor cut in the space of 24 hours at room temperature.

Just 5 minutes after being cut, the material can stretch to two times its original length again – not a bad power for a comic book superhero to have.

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China makes heaving R&D investments in technologies for telecom and travel industry (namely railway) that reduces China’s dependency on foreign tech companies. Looks like we’re heading more and more into a protectionism world.

China will ramp up investment to develop essential industrial components and materials next year, in a move to reduce reliance on foreign technology in key sectors including telecommunications and railways.

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said on Monday the ministry will channel more resources to help tackle technological bottlenecks in 20 industrial parts and 15 industrial materials.

The initiative is designed to promote homegrown parts related to telecommunications, the internet of things, railway equipment, machinery manufacturing and other sectors.

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For the first time, MIT physicists have observed a highly ordered crystal of electrons in a semiconducting material and documented its melting, much like ice thawing into water. The observations confirm a fundamental phase transition in quantum mechanics that was theoretically proposed more than 80 years ago but not experimentally documented until now.

The team, led by MIT professor of physics Raymond Ashoori and his postdoc Joonho Jang, used a spectroscopy technique developed in Ashoori’s group. The method relies on electron “tunneling,” a quantum mechanical process that allows researchers to inject electrons at precise energies into a system of interest—in this case, a system of electrons trapped in two dimensions. The method uses hundreds of thousands of short electrical pulses to probe a sheet of electrons in a cooled to extremely low temperatures, just above absolute zero.

With their tunneling technique, the researchers shot electrons into the supercooled material to measure the energy states of electrons within the semiconducting sheet. Against a background blur, they detected a sharp spike in the data. After much analysis, they determined that the spike was the precise signal that would be given off from a highly ordered crystal of electrons vibrating in unison.

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