Tiny medical robots made of polymers derived from cellulose could one day travel through your body, delivering drugs, transporting cells, and taking biopsies. That’s the ultimate goal of Hamed Shahsavan, a chemical engineer at the University of Waterloo. Read more in CIC News.
materials
Creating a new kind of quasicrystal by accident
A funny thing happened when Sergio de la Barrera and his colleagues started playing around with sheets of graphene – they created a new type of “quasicrystal” with fascinating properties that could help scientists explore exotic kinds of physics. Read more in CIC News.
Making perovskite solar cells more durable
Expanding our use of solar energy is an important part of the fight against climate change by decarbonizing the economy. The silicon-based solar cells in widespread use today are pretty good – efficient, relatively cheap, and long-lasting – but making them is extremely energy-intensive. Read more in CIC News.
Refrigeration Research Seeks to Ditch Toxic, Polluting Gases
So-called plastic crystals could open new avenues in the quest to make refrigerators with only solid components. Refrigeration has been around for about 100 years, but hasn’t changed much in that time. A time traveller from the early 1900s would still recognize the big box full of chilled food in your kitchen. But soon, researchers […]
Kinetica Dynamics: Skyscraper stabilizer
Kinetica Dynamics may be a young start-up, but its approach to stabilizing tall buildings is based on a well-established idea.“It’s a reinvigoration of an old vibration damping technology,” says Michael Montgomery, an engineer and the company’s co-founder and chief executive. The technology, a polymer that diminishes vibration and shock, is bonded tightly to the structure […]
This Scientist Is Making Batteries Out of Recycled Crab Shells
Shellfish chitin is a starting material ripe for chemical modification. If you want to work in Mark MacLachlan’s lab, it helps to have a taste for seafood. The chemist, who works at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, is working on turning the discarded shells of shrimp, crabs, and lobsters into advanced materials that […]
Nature Outlook: Batteries
Batteries have the potential to transform the way we use energy, to make electric cars mainstream and to allow renewable energy sources, which tend to be intermittent, to be integrated into the power grid. Today’s best batteries are reaching their limits, but researchers are experimenting with new chemistries and designs. Read more in this Nature Outlook that […]
A drop in the river of time
Some things in science are worth waiting for. Sometime towards the end of this year, one of the rarest events in science is expected to occur. In a display case in the lobby of the physics department at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, a small drop of black tar distillate known as pitch […]
Pitch-drop custodian dies without witnessing a drop fall
John Mainstone, who for 52 years tended to one of the world’s longest-running laboratory experiments but never saw it bear fruit with his own eyes, died on 23 August after suffering a stroke. He was 78. Mainstone had been looking after the pitch drop experiment at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia since he arrived at the university […]
Extreme prospects
High gold prices are making it worthwhile to look for gold in some unusual places. Demand has never been higher, but nearly all the easy gold has already been mined. So, to maintain production, mining companies are turning to more difficult sources that would have been left in the ground if gold prices had been […]