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Magazine
In the Sept. 30 SN: Smog's health woes, secrets of the bat brain, slug slime inspires surgical glue, wild beer, Neandertal tar recipes, the sun's recent flare-ups and more.
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Science Visualized
Tiny ‘supraballs’ put a new spin on creating long-lasting color
09/15/2017 - 14:08 MaterialsTiny balls of melanin could someday paint the rainbow. They’re one of the key ingredients in a new way to craft a spectrum of structural colors — hues created when light interacts with special nanostructures.
Structural colors are a longer-lasting alternative to chemical pigments, which lose all pizazz when they break down. Examples of durable hues abound in nature. For instance, many...
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News
Animal goo inspires better glue
09/15/2017 - 12:00 Animals, Materials, BiomedicineFinding a great glue is a sticky task — especially if you want it to attach to something as slick as the inside of the human body. Even the strongest human-made adhesives don’t work well on wet surfaces like tissues and organs. For surgeons closing internal incisions, that’s more than an annoyance. The right glue could hold wounds together as effectively as stitches and staples with less...
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News
New antennas are up to a hundredth the size of today’s devices
08/22/2017 - 14:00 Technology, MaterialsAntennas just got a whole lot smaller.
Tiny chips that communicate via radio waves are a tenth to a hundredth the length of current state-of-the-art compact antennas. At only a couple hundred micrometers across — comparable to the thickness of a piece of paper — these next-gen antennas can relay the same types of signals as those used by TVs, cell phones and radios, researchers report...
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News in Brief
Robot, heal thyself
08/16/2017 - 14:09 Robotics, MaterialsA new type of soft robot can go under the knife and make a full recovery in about a day.
Researchers fashioned a robotic hand, gripper and muscle from self-healing rubbery material. To test their robots’ resilience, the engineers sliced each with a scalpel, then put them in an oven. After cranking up the heat to 80° Celsius, baking the bots for 40 minutes, then cooling them to room...
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50 years ago, steel got stronger and stretchier
08/10/2017 - 07:00 MaterialsDuctile, strong steel
Fundamental scientific knowledge of the behavior of metallic crystals has led to the design of a new series of alloy steels, stronger and tougher than those now available. The new alloys can be stretched from two to five times more than previous ones, yet also have high strength…. The alloys, called TRIP steels, are produced by [the process] Transformation Induced...
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News in Brief
Diamond joins the realm of 2-D thin films, study suggests
07/31/2017 - 07:00 Materials, PhysicsDiamonds are going 2-D. The superhard form of carbon can be forged in thin films known as diamondene, new evidence suggests. While graphite, the form of carbon found in pencils, can be made into atom-thick sheets known as graphene, scientists have struggled to create two-dimensional films of its relative, diamond.
When a pair of graphene sheets are squeezed to pressures around tens of...
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Science Ticker
Slug slime inspires a new type of surgical glue
07/27/2017 - 14:00 Materials, Biomedicine, AnimalsView video
For a glue that holds up inside the body, turn to the humble slug, Arion subfuscus. A new super-sticky material mimics slug slime’s ability to stick on slick wet surfaces and could lead to more effective medical adhesives.
The material has two parts: a sticky layer that attaches to a surface, and a shock-absorbing layer that reduces strain. That makes the adhesive less...
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News
The thinnest films of copper look flat, but they aren’t
07/27/2017 - 14:00 MaterialsLike the surface of an alien planet, thin sheets of copper display a complex topography of ridges and valleys. These never-before-seen undulations may spell trouble for electronic gadgets: The zigzagging surface could contribute to the electrical resistance of miniature copper wires that snake throughout computer chips.
Using a scanning tunneling microscope, scientists observed nanoscale...
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Feature
Perovskites power up the solar industry
07/26/2017 - 12:00 Materials, Sustainability, ChemistryTsutomu Miyasaka was on a mission to build a better solar cell. It was the early 2000s, and the Japanese scientist wanted to replace the delicate molecules that he was using to capture sunlight with a sturdier, more effective option.
So when a student told him about an unfamiliar material with unusual properties, Miyasaka had to try it. The material was “very strange,” he says, but he...
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News
Chemistry controlled on tiniest scale can create hollow nanoparticles
05/01/2017 - 09:00 Chemistry, MaterialsBlame oxidation for rusted bridges and browned avocados. But this fundamental process can be harnessed for good, too — and now scientists have scored front-row seats that could show them how.
Researchers watched at near-atomic resolution as iron nanoparticles transformed into iron oxide — not rust in this case, but related compounds. That closeup view could help scientists better control...