New materials are as light as "frozen smoke" but 10,000 times stiffer

New materials are as light as "frozen smoke" but 10,000 times stiffer

Researchers have worked out how to 3D print super-stiff materials that are lighter than aerogel, and could revolutionise the aerospace and automotive industries.

Image: Ryan Chen/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The new materials are as light as aerogel, a synthetic porous material that's the lowest known density solid - but 10,000 time tougher. They were created by researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US using an additive micro-manufacturing process. 

This means that the researchers first create 3D microscale super-tough "building blocks", so that the strength comes from the materials' geometric layout rather than their chemical composition.

Using this method, the researchers created materials out of polymer, metal and ceramic lattices that are unlike anything found in nature. The lightest of these is a ceramic-based material.

Most materials lose their mechanical properties as they get lighter because their structural elements are more likely to bend under extreme pressure. But the materials created using this new technique maintain a nearly constant stiffness per unit mass density, even at ultraslow densities, and could be used to create lightweight and super tough parts for aircrafts, space vehicles and cars. 

The team's research has been published in Science.

"These lightweight materials can withstand a load of at least 160,000 times their own weight," said Xiaoyu "Rayne" Zheng, lead author of the paper article from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in a press release. "The key to this ultrahigh stiffness is that all the micro-structural elements in this material are designed to be over constrained and do not bend under applied load."

Even better, they were created using a 3D desktop printer.

To begin with, the researchers first created a polymer core that acted as template for the microlattices. This was then coated with a thin-film of metal that ranged from 200-500 nanometres thick and the polymer was removed, leaving a light, tough tube of metal lattice material.

They then repeated the process with a 50-nanometre-thick ceramic coating. This resulted in a material around the same weight as aerogel, or frozen smoke, which holds the most word records of many material - in fact, the record holding graphene aerogel is 7.5 times lighter than air.

Image: Aerogel by JovanCormac/Wikimedia

"It's among the lightest materials in the world," co-author Chris Spadaccini said of the new ceramic material. "However, because of its micro-architected layout, it performs with four orders of magnitude higher stiffness than aerogel at a comparable density."

The team also created polymer-ceramic hybrid microlattice, with similar properties. According to the new paper, these materials are 100 times stiffer than other ultra-lightweight lattice materials previously reported in academic journals.

These new smart curtains respond to light and don't need batteries

These new smart curtains respond to light and don't need batteries

Scientists have made a new material out of carbon nanotubes that moves in response to as little light as that from a torch.

Image: whatsupic

Curtains that move in response to light could soon be a reality thanks to research conducted at the University of California, Berkley, in the US.

A team led by associate professor Ali Javey layered carbon nanotubes, which are tiny cylindrical structures made out of carbon allotropes, onto a plastic carbonate membrane to develop a new type of material that moves in response to light.

The carbon nanotubes absorb light, convert it into heat and transfer it to the plastic membrane, causing the membrane to expand and the composite material to bend.

“The advantages of this new class of photo-reactive actuator [a system for moving or controlling a mechanism] is that it is very easy to make, and it is very sensitive to low-intensity light,” Javey explains in a news release. “The light from a flashlight is enough to generate a response.”

The researchers believe this material could be used in energy-efficient buildings, where curtains could open and close automatically throughout the day.

The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications. Watch the video below to see how the material works.

"The 4th Dimensional Triangle"

The 4th Dimensional Triangle

"The 4th Dimensional Triangle"

Triangulation is Spirit's step to create form, enclosure, matter.
From the fertile union of Father and Mother, the Original 1 and 2,
a Child is born, the Essence of 3. It's name is Triangle.
Its next child is Volume called Tetrahedron or triangular-based pyramid
that is the leggo or basic building block of Earth's creations.
(If you had 5 cardboard-model tetrahedrons, ie: 5 Tetrahedra on your table, and you glued 4 of them around the 4 triangular faces of the 5th Tetrahedron, you would have this 4-Dim Triangle. Interestingly, if you shined a laser beam or light upon a wire-frame model of this,
its shadow would surprisingly create the 5-Pointed Star, which is the shape of all your proteins!).
From there, as we climb the Dimensional Ladder of Consciousness, our Stairway To Heaven,
is the 4th Dimensional Triangle, so mysterious, unfathomable, abstract, yet so simple, so pure, it has No Name;
it's progeny is All That Is, returning us, trinitizing us, back to The One.

Yes, staring at a screen all day DOES damage your eyes, and here's how

A new study has shown that working in front of a monitor for more than seven hours per day may lead to symptoms similar to those of dry eye disease.  

Image: bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock

Tears keep your eyes healthy, clean and lubricated. People who do not produce enough tears suffer from a condition known as dry eye, in which not enough moisture is produced to keep the surface of the eyeball lubricated. This leads to pain, grittiness, vision blur and stinging. According to the authors of a new study published in JAMA Ophthalmology, people who spend more than seven hours per day in front of a computer screen may experience similar symptoms. 

Researchers in Japan recruited 96 volunteers (60 men and 36 women) whose job requires long sessions in front of a screen. The scientists measured the quantity of the protein MUC5AC in the office workers' tears and asked them to fill in a questionnaire. MUC5AC is found in ‘tear film’, a layer of mucus that keeps the eye moist and is necessary for good vision, explained Robert T. Gonzalez at io9. 

When we stare at screens we blink less frequently and tend to open our eyes wider than when performing other tasks, such as reading a book, which contributes to faster tear evaporation. According to the study, people who continuously stare at computers screens have MUC5AC concentrations almost as low as those that have been diagnosed with dry eye. 

Participants who work with computer screens for more than seven hours a day had an average of 5.9 ng/mg of MUC5AC, while those who spend fewer than five hours in front of a monitor had 9.5 ng/mg. In comparison, people who definitely have dry eye measure an average of 3.5 ng/mg of MUC5AC, while people without the disease have 8.2 ng/mg. 

So what to do to keep your eyes moist and healthy? Doctors recommend keeping a humidifier in your office space and avoiding direct contact with air conditioners. One of the authors, Dr Yuichi Ochino also recommended over at The Independent: “The exposed ocular surface area can be decreased by placing the terminal at a lower height, with the screen tilted upward”.

Time travel has been simulated by Australian physicists

Using photons, scientists have simulated a way that quantum particles could travel through a wormhole back in time.

Image: edobric/Shutterstock

Physicists at the University of Queensland in Australia have used photons - single particles of light - to simulate quantum particles travelling through time and study their behaviour.

They were hoping to find out more about whether time travel would be possible at the quantum level - a theory first predicted in 1991.

In the study, the researchers simulated the behaviour of a single photon that travels through a wormhole and interacts with its older self. This is known as a closed timelike curve - a closed path in space-time that returns to the same starting point in space but at an earlier time. Their study is published in Nature Communications.

They did this by making use of a mathematical equivalence between two cases, lead author Martin Ringbauer told The Speaker. 

In the first case, photon one "travels trough a wormhole into the past, then interacts with its older version,” Ringbauer explained. And in the second case, photon two travels through normal space-time, but interacts with another photon that is trapped inside a closed timelike curve forever.

"We used single photons to do this but the time-travel was simulated by using a second photon to play the part of the past incarnation of the time travelling photon," said University of Queensland physics professor Tim Ralph. 

The research will hopefully help researchers bridge the gap between two critical theories, said Ringbuaer.

"The question of time travel features at the interface between two of our most successful yet incompatible physical theories – Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics," Ringbuaer explained.

"Einstein's theory describes the world at the very large scale of stars and galaxies, while quantum mechanics is an excellent description of the world at the very small scale of atoms and molecules,” he added.

According to Einstein’s theory, it could be possible to travel back in time by following a closed timelike curve. However physicists and philosophers have struggled with this theory given the paradoxes such as the grandparents paradox, where a time traveller could prevent their grandparents from meeting, thus preventing the time traveller’s birth in the first place.

But in 1991 it was suggested that time travel in the quantum world would avoid these kinds of paradoxes because the properties of quantum particles are “fuzzy” and “uncertain” - and this is the one of the first times anyone has simulated the behaviour of such a scenario.

“We see in our simulation (as was predicted in 1991) how many effects become possible, which are forbidden in standard quantum mechanics,” said Ringbauer. “For example it is possible to perfectly distinguish different states of a quantum system, which are usually only partially distinguishable. This makes quantum cryptography breakable and violates Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. We also show that photons behave differently, depending on how they were created in the first place.”

Fat is not that bad for you after all

A new controversial study found there’s no link between saturated fat and heart disease.

Image: shaiitka/Shutterstock

After reviewing nearly 80 studies involving more than half a million people, researchers at Cambridge University found that saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease.

The study, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, also shows that ‘good’ fats do not lower the risk of heart attack.

So is it time to stop demonising fat?

“It’s not saturated fat we should worry about,” says Dr Rajiv Chowdhury, lead author of the study. “It’s the high-carb or sugary diet that should be the focus of dietary guidelines.”

Carbs and sugar contain more artery-clogging particles than saturated and non-saturated fat, and the researchers suggest these should be the focus of new dietary guidelines.

In October 2013, cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, who works at Croydon University Hospital in London, published a report in the British Medical Journal saying there’s no link between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk. “Indeed, recent prospective cohort studies have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk. Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective."

Malhotra believes that our ‘fat obsession’ comes from “The Seven Countries Study”, which started in the late 1950s and was published in 1970. It was the first study to investigate the correlation between diet, lifestyle and heart disease in different countries, and it established that saturated and trans fats intake was associated with higher mortality rates. It was also the first one to high-light the many benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

The results of Chowdhury and Malhotra's studies, however, shouldn’t be an excuse gorge butter and cake. “It would be unfortunate if these results were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating butter and cheese with abandon,” said Alice H. Lichtestein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts University, to The New York Times.

Over the past few years we’ve been advised to cut fat intake to 30% of total energy and saturated fat to less than 10%, and we should stick to those guidelines until new ones are published.

Are you an indigo? See if any of these traits resonate with you!

Are you an indigo? See if any of these traits resonate with you!

Are you an Indigo?

“Indigo children” is the name given to the new type of human being born in this generation.  Displaying amazing feats of intuition and intelligence beyond their years, these indigos have started to become a much more common concept within the spiritual community.  This is a list developed by play therapist Jan Yordy, a former elementary school teacher and child counselor who has been working with parents and children for 25 years.

As we go over the list, see if you resonate with any of these traits:

1. May be strong willed independent thinkers who prefer to do their own thing rather than comply with authority figures/parents

 

2. Have a wisdom and level of caring beyond their youthful experience

 

3. Traditional Parenting and discipline strategies don’t appear effective  with these children. If you try to force an issue, a power struggle is the typical outcome.

 

4. Energeticly, Indigos are vibrating at a much higher frequencey so they can get scrambled by negative energy (human or machine)

 

5. Emotionally they can be reactive and may have problems with anxieties, depression or temper rages if not energetically balanced

 

6. Are creative right brain thinkers, but may struggle to learn in a traditional left brain school system

 

7. Often Indigos are diagnosed with ADD and ADHD since they appear impulsive (their brain can process information faster) and they require movement to help keep them better focused.

 

8. Indigos are very intuitive, and may see hear or know things that seem unexplainable.

 

9. Indigos have more problems with food and environmental sensitivities, since their system is more finely tuned.

 

10. When their needs are not met, these children seem self centered and demanding, although this is not their true nature.

 

11. These children have incredible gifts and potential, but they may be shut down when not properly nurtured and accepted

THIS is what an indigo child looks like in action!

- See more at: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/are-you-an-indigo-11-traits-of-indigo-children/#sthash.WcmbymFL.dpuf