If you were to soak even your best raincoat underwater for two months it would be wet through at the end of the experience. But a new waterproof material developed by Swiss chemists would be as dry as the day it went in. Lead researcher Stefan Seeger at the University of Zurich says the fabric, made from polyester fibres coated with millions of tiny silicone filaments, is the most water-repellent clothing-appropriate material ever created. Drops of water stay as spherical balls on top of the fabric and a sheet of the material need only be tilted by 2 degrees from horizontal for them to roll off like marbles. A jet of water bounces off the fabric without leaving a trace
An implant which works by firing infrared light into the inner ear is being investigated by US researchers
NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.
Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet,
said Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington
Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma jet
. This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts
Materials under development at MIT could lead to coatings that repel both water and oil. A group of MIT researchers have created an improved set of design rules for making any surface impervious to any liquid, be it water or gasoline. Such materials could eventually have promise as fingerprint-repelling coatings, fuel filters, self-washing car paints, and stain-resistant clothing
A relatively new approach to data centre cooling known as a heat wheel is gaining momentum, and likely to gain a higher profile from an upcoming demonstration of the technology. The heat wheel — also known as a rotary heat exchanger or Kyoto Cooling — is a refinement of existing approaches that take advantage of outside air to improve cooling efficiency and reduce data centre power bills
Thanks to a new technique, DNA strands can be easily converted into tiny fibre optic cables that guide light along their length. Optical fibres made this way could be important in optical computers, which use light rather than electricity to perform calculations, or in artificial photosynthesis systems that may replace today’s solar panels
Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it. It works for videos as well — you can play a video on a wall inside your video. The technology can cheaply do some of the tricks normally performed by expensive commercial editing systems
Internet search engine company Google has launched a new online tool to help track the spread of influenza in the United States. The company has found that Americans falling ill search for advice about flu online using its web facilities before they seek help from a doctor. Search patterns are analysed and mapped to where flu is spreading
Recently St Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant. The plant will use super-hot 10,000 degree fahrenheit plasma to effectively vapourise 1,500 tons of garbage each day, which in turn spins turbines to generate 60MW of electricity — enough to power 50,000 homes. Cutting down on landfill waste while generating energy is a pretty win-win proposition, and the plant will also be able to melt down inorganic materials to be reused for other applications, such as in roadbed and heavy construction
Every person has a unique body odour, like their fingerprints, that could be used as an odourprint
to identify them, a new study has found. Scientists revealed an individual’s odour signature remains detectable even when their diet is changed to include strong smelling foods such as garlic and spices
The promise of medical lasers goes beyond clean incisions and eye surgery: Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is proving successful in its first human trials
Many of the world’s deep-sea octopuses evolved from a common ancestor, whose closest relative still exists in the Southern Ocean, a study has shown
A scientist in Taiwan has invented the world’s first chlorophyll organic battery that can supply electricity within 10 seconds of being wetted with water, beverages or even urine. While the strength of the battery is about half that of an ordinary battery, its storage capacity is more than that of Japan’s water-powered fuel cells
The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease. The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days
An inch-long array of some of the tiniest solar cells ever built has been successfully tested as a power source for microscopic machines. Instead of using silicon, Xiaomei Jiang of the University of South Florida and her colleagues turned to a polymer (a long organic molecule made of repeating structural units). The polymer they selected has the same electrical properties as silicon wafers, but can be dissolved and printed onto flexible material
A bottle of cheap tequila is good for making margaritas or forgetting a night out. But a team of Mexican scientists have discovered a new use for the potent liquor: forming diamonds. It just so happens that the popular Mexican alcohol is the ideal compound for creating one of the hardest substances on Earth via io9
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created nanoscale particles that can self-assemble into various optical devices. By controlling how densely the tiny silver particles assemble themselves, the researchers can make several different kinds of devices, including photonic crystals. The self-assembling materials could be made cheaply and on a large scale. As a result, the silver nanoparticles could be used to make metamaterials, color-changing paints, components for optical computers, and ultrasensitive chemical sensors, among many other potential applications
The Cooperative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation say it is close to commercialising an unusual by-product of sugar cane — biodegradable plastic
Any mad scientists planning to genetically engineer Dracula this Halloween should look to the vampire bat for inspiration. New research pinpoints some of the genetic changes that allowed them to evolve to subsist on a diet of pure blood. Key among those is a knack for keeping their meals from coagulating. They do so with the help of a gene found in other animals — plasminogen activator. In humans the gene protects against heart attack by producing proteins that bust up blood clots and clear vessels. Previous research had shown that vampire bats activate the gene in their saliva, too
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