News in Brief: Molecules/Matter & Energy

Metamaterial warp drives, secrets of coffee rings and more in this week's newsWeb edition : Sunday, August 21st, 2011

Toy warp drive proposed
A physicist who previously created a toy universe out of metamaterials that bend light in unusual ways has now dreamed up a way to use those materials to build a warp drive. Simulations by Igor Smolyaninov at the University of Maryland in College Park show that moving faster than light is still impossible in toy universes, just as it is in the real one. But the right material should allow superspeed travel at up to one-quarter light speed — by riding in a moving spacetime bubble, he reports in an upcoming issue of Physical Review B. —Devin Powell.

Butterflies sip like sponges
To sip nectar, a butterfly uses a proboscis that looks like straw but also works like a sponge. At the small scales of butterfly existence, liquid is just too thick to be slurped, a team led by researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina reports. X-ray images of butterfly feeding tubes reveal pores that draw fluid upward by capillary action, the same process that pulls water through a paper towel. This anatomy may help butterflies dine on a greater variety of foods, and its principle could be borrowed to design probes that sample the liquid inside cells, the researchers report online August 17 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. —Devin Powell.

Coffee ring regulation
Starbucks tables everywhere rejoice: There’s a way to prevent the coffee ring effect. The quiet drying of spilled coffee on a countertop produces a crusty edge because round particles flee in a frenzy from the center of the spill. But oblong particles in the liquid can’t flee that well and end up spreading out uniformly, University of Pennsylvania scientists report in the Aug. 18 Nature. Upping the number of elongated particles compared to spherical ones can prevent ring formation, suggesting that particle shape influences fluid interactions. The finding could help in designing better inks, paints and even foams and lotions.—Rachel Ehrenberg

Found in: Matter & Energy and Molecules

View the original article here

News in brief: molecules/matter and energy

Clear slime busters, batteries, invisibility Cloak 3-and more in this week's newsWeb edition: Sunday, July 31, 2011

Breaking up is hard to Goo
Scientists have hit on several of the compounds to weaken the rigid mucus that occurs most often in breeds many patients by fibrosis of the lung. Slime is usually Sticky traps and blanket which helps clear inhaled particles, but they guys by fibrosis, fibrous bundle BED allow slime dense, thick and strong clear it. Two extracts from alginate, a primary ingredient in algal cell walls, disturb the mucous tissue interactions, Catherine Nordgård and Kurt Draget University Norwegian report, science and technology in the upcoming Biomacromolecules. Associations can be useful to modify the mucus in the respiratory tract and beyond — Rachel Ehrenberg

Bats filter out clutter
Like the students of universities echolocating bats can tolerate the clutter. Big brown bat trick evolved to ignore the potentially confusing acoustic leaves and trees, in pursuing its prey through foliage is dense. By recording conversations trained bats, complicated frequency and audio copies, Mary Bates Brown University and colleagues found that bats filter out certain sounds like human beings, by ignoring the distractions in their peripheral vision. Bats Ignore echo returning from objects on a page or a long distance, which seem to be missing in the higher frequencies. This technique, reported in July 29 Science, could be useful for designing better sonar technology. — Devin Powell

3-invisibility cloak
Newest invisibility Cloak to hide the object 3D seen from any direction. Previous cloaks carpet can hide just the something is sitting on the surface, like a bump on a log. David Rainwater and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin introduced the new Mask tubes with a diameter of 1.25 centimetres, out of plasmonic metamaterials — synthetic structures with wobbly electrons on the surface that bend electromagnetic radiation in unusual ways. This new Mask plasmonic manipulates the ovens, but the concepts should keep for as well as infrared and optical wavelengths researchers report online 19 July on arXiv.org. — Devin Powell

Transparent lithium-ion battery
New battery lithium ion is a transparent step towards making mobile phones, e-readers and other electronic devices fully transparent. While scientists already have transparent circuits, batteries remained opaque czlonowych. That's because the electrodes must be thick to store energy. Created Yuan Yang and colleagues at the University of Stanford new electrode out of strips of material large enough for the eye to see, arranged in a grid like Tic-Tac-Toe. Flexible prototype is 60 percent transparent. Its energy density — the amount of energy is stored in a given volume — only 3% of that of a typical cell phone batteries, but can theoretically be increased by a factor of 10, researchers report in the upcoming PNAS. — Devin Powell

Found in: matter and energy and molecules

View the original article here

News in brief: molecules/matter and energy

Snake venom harrowing off, flexible display screens and detection of krill the penguins this week newsWeb edition: Sunday, 17 July 2011

Snake venom does not sweat for opossums

Pit viper venom is getting podpajeczynówkowy does not sweat for certain species of opossum, which devour snakes with impunity. Now finding Why opossums do not give a hoot about prepare bitten researchers at the University of Minnesota and the American Museum of natural history in New York. Snake venom aimed at important protein clotting of blood, but blood clotter opossums is chemically modified and penetrated the toxin molecular clutch, researchers report online on June 22 in PLoS ONE. Another retro, which eat snakes, such as the honey forest, mongooses and kune Desert, have different ideas for rozbrajania toxins, suggesting that strategies are themselves responsible for antivenom has evolved, since many times in animals. – Rachel Ehrenberg

Flexible screen

The scientists created a prototype of an electronic display screen, which is thinner than a dime, and can be folded up like a piece of paper. The device employs a flexible organic light-emitting diodes, color filter and a protective layer that can be made at low temperatures. After 10,000 bends to reduce display brightness was so low was indiscernible to the human eye, scientists from Samsung in Korea and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. report. When you bend deforms liquid crystal display, a new approach may make Paravane literally seamless. The prototype is described online July 7 in advanced materials. – Rachel Ehrenberg

Penguins Smells dinnertime

The smell of death is the dinner of the penguins. African penguins flock for Ocean spots which smell like dimethylsulfide, compound released when the krill and other small floaters meet their doom discovered the scientists in South Africa, from the University of Cape Town. Penguin for the presence of plankton dead or dying, it means that the feast of living fish eat krill in the vicinity. The penguins can track smell their prey food from two miles away, the team reports in the online journal of experimental biology, July 14. – Rachel Ehrenberg

Found in: matter and energy and molecules

View the original article here