Lifeboat Foundation

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.

Continue reading “EHF Fellow: Veronica Harwood-Stevenson” »

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.

Continue reading “Schwarzites: Long-sought carbon structure joins graphene, fullerene family” »

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.’

SciTech Europa explores some of the research taking place in the exciting field of spintronics, from spin-orbit coupling to practical spintronic devices.

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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Continue reading “Skyscrapers of the Future Will Be Engineered to Copy Nature” »

CHICAGO — Four stories underground — encased in several feet of concrete — is the University of Chicago’s new nanofabrication facility, where researchers apply the principles of quantum physics to real-world problems and technologies.

A small cadre of faculty and graduate students in a clean room bathed in yellow light wear protective clothing to ensure the integrity of the experiments they are conducting, which involves the very matter that comprise the universe: electrons, photons, neutrons and protons.

The William Eckhardt Research Center where they are working is located across the street from where a team led by Enrico Fermi, the architect of the nuclear age, carried out the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction.

Continue reading “SPECIAL REPORT: Defense Community Slow to Grasp Potential of Quantum-Based Devices” »

Messed up is the right phrasing for it, I figure.

March 18 (UPI) — After a dead whale washed ashore in the Philippines, scientists pulled 88 pounds of plastic debris from the mammal’s intestines. The young Cuvier’s beaked whale died from gastric shock, according to biologists.

The necropsy was conducted by scientists at the D’ Bone Collector Museum. They were assigned by biologists with the Philippines Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

Continue reading “Dead whale found with 88 pounds of plastic in stomach in the Philippines” »

New 2D materials research shows their capacity to survive and work well in the environment of space.

A new study from The Australian National University (ANU) has found a number of 2D materials can not only withstand being sent into space, but potentially thrive in the harsh conditions.

Discovery allows scientists to look at how 2-D materials move with ultrafast precision.

Using a never-before-seen technique, scientists have found a new way to use some of the world’s most powerful X-rays to uncover how atoms move in a single atomic sheet at ultrafast speeds.

The study, led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and in collaboration with other institutions, including the University of Washington and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, developed a new technique called ultrafast surface X-ray scattering. This technique revealed the changing structure of an atomically thin two-dimensional crystal after it was excited with an optical laser pulse.

Continue reading “Ultrathin and ultrafast: Scientists pioneer new technique for two-dimensional material analysis” »