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Category: materials – Page 258

Patents Secured for Revolutionary Nuclear Fusion Technology

Scientists in Australia are making some astonishing claims about a new nuclear reactor technology. Startup HB11, which spun out of the University of New South Wales, has applied for and received patents in the U.S., Japan, and China so far. The company’s technology uses lasers to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction in hydrogen and boron—purportedly with no radioactive fuel required. The secret is a cutting-edge laser and, well, an element of luck.

The laser doesn’t heat the materials. Instead, it speeds up the hydrogen to the point where it (hopefully) collides with the boron to begin a reaction.

Higgs Boson in Superconductors

Superfluid helium, describable by a two-component order parameter, exhibits only the Bogolubov mode with energy $\to 0$ at long wavelengths, while a Lorentz-invariant theory with a two-component order parameter exhibits a finite energy mode at long wavelengths (the Higgs Boson), besides the above mass-less mode. The mass-less mode moves to high energies if it couples to electromagnetic fields (the Anderson-Higgs mechanism). Superconductors, on the other hand have been theoretically and experimentally shown to exhibit both modes. This occurs because the excitations in superconductors have an (approximate) particle-hole symmetry and therefore show a similarity to Lorentz-invariant theories.

EP0050523A2 — Electromagnetic transmission using a curl-free magnetic vector potential field

A system for transmission of information using a curl-free magnetic vector potential radiation field. The system includes current-carrying apparatus for generating a predominantly curl-free magnetic vector potential field coupled to apparatus for modulating the current applied to the field generating apparatus. Receiving apparatus includes a detector with observable properties that vary with the application of an applied curl-free magnetic vector potential field. Analyzing apparatus for determining the information content of modulation imposed on the curl-free vector potential field is coupled to the detector. The magnetic vector potential field can be established in materials that are not capable of transmitting more common electromagnetic radiation.

The receiver may detect changes of phase of the sine function which determines the Josephson junction current. The distance of the transmitter can be determined from the strength of the received signal. By generating a field of predetermined orientation and using a detector responsive to orientation, the direction of the transmitter may be determined. A rotating field may be used for this.

Happy to announce Dr. Christian Schafmeister as a speaker for our 2020 Undoing Aging Conference

Christian Schafmeister, Ph.D., Professor at Temple University in Philadelphia says: “We are developing “therapeutic catalysts” — small, robust, non-immunogentic catalysts that will permeate the tight spaces within tissues and fix things. Our specific targets include reversing the unwanted cross-links that develop in the extracellular matrix with aging.”

Enzymes, while possessing exquisite substrate-specificity, are limited by their molecular size in their ability to gain access to their substrate when it is embedded within dense material. We have always known that this may be a problem for our approach to restoring the elasticity of aged tissues. Christian’s fascinating work offers the potential to solve this issue with molecules that have the same catalytic function as enzymes but are much smaller and can therefore reach these embedded substrates.

Pembient: For millennia, civilizations have recognized animal horn as a resilient, eco-friendly material capable of being crafted into a wide range of useful and beautiful objects

Its timeless appeal is evident globally, from jewelry in Asia to tools in the Middle East to containers in Europe, and beyond. Only in the last century have moldable, petroleum-based plastics overshadowed it. Our mission is to use biotechnology to grow horns larger than animals can produce, thereby unlocking the medium’s full potential…and eliminating the demand for animal ivory.

Biofabricated Horn.

From ‘living’ cement to medicine-delivering biofilms, biologists remake the material world

Engineered living materials (ELM) are designed to blur boundaries. They use cells, mostly microbes, to build inert structural materials such as hardened cement or woodlike replacements for everything from construction materials to furniture. Some, like Srubar’s bricks, even incorporate living cells into the final mix. The result is materials with striking new capabilities, as the innovations on view last week at the Living Materials 2020 conference in Saarbrüken, Germany, showed: airport runways that build themselves and living bandages that grow within the body. “Cells are amazing fabrication plants,” says Neel Joshi, an ELM expert at Northeastern University. “We’re trying to use them to construct things we want.”

Engineered microbes shift from making molecules to materials.

Graphene forms under microscope’s eye

You don’t need a big laser to make laser-induced graphene (LIG). Scientists at Rice University, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT Knoxville) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are using a very small visible beam to burn the foamy form of carbon into microscopic patterns.

Scientists record the formation of foamy laser-induced graphene made with a small laser mounted to a scanning electron microscope. The reduced size of the conductive material may make it more useful for flexible electronics.

Graphene: The magic material

Graphene is an allotropic form of carbon and posses some of the unique properties that are making this compound stand out of all other allotropic compounds of carbon. The compound was discovered in modern ages by two scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester, UK. After its initial discovery the compound soon began to make impact on every field of life and in recognition to their work they were awarded a physics noble prize in 2010. Graphene has unique physical and chemical properties and is much lighter, flexible and strong than many previously existing compounds.