Lifeboat Foundation

In a feat requiring perseverance, world-leading technology, and no small amount of caution, scientists have used intense X-rays to inspect irradiated nuclear fuel. The imaging, led by researchers at Purdue University and conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, revealed a 3D view of the fuel’s interior structure, laying the groundwork for better nuclear fuel designs and models.

Until now, examinations of uranium fuel have been limited to mostly surface microscopy or to various characterization techniques using mock versions that possess little radioactivity. But scientists want to know at a deeper level how the material changes as it undergoes fission inside a nuclear reactor. The resulting insights from this study, which the Journal of Nuclear Materials published in August 2020, can lead to nuclear fuels that function more efficiently and cost less to develop.

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A team of researchers from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), Quebec, Canada, have developed an electrolytic process for treating wastewater, degrading microplastics at the source.

Microplastics are fragments of plastic less than 5mm long, often contained in toiletries or shedding from polyester clothing. They are present in virtually every corner of the Earth, and pose a particularly serious threat to marine ecosystems. High concentrations of microplastics can be carried into the environment in wastewater.

There are no established degradation methods to handle microplastics during wastewater treatment; although some techniques exist, these involve physical separation as a means of filtering the pollutant. These techniques do not degrade microplastics, which requires additional work to manage the separated fragments. So far, research into degradation of microplastics has been very limited.

Cooper pairs in a superconductor split and electrons collected by quantum dots.

We’ve finally made a room-temperature superconductor, so materials that transport electricity without wasting any of it are within our grasp.

Exotic and vibrant colors naturally occur in nature because of pigmentations. But nature is also capable of displaying a whole spectrum of eye-catching colors through building nano-scale surface structures. Creatures with intricate physical aesthetics, like a peacock’s feathers or the rich patterns on a butterfly’s wings, achieve this kind of high color resolution due to the small-scale arrays of distinctly shaped objects on their surfaces. This naturally occurring color structure was exploited by a team of researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). They developed a laser printing technique that doesn’t require ink.

Laser printing without ink

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Will this enable people to make super strong concrete the future? 🙂

Scientists in Japan have found a rare mineral in concrete walls of a decommissioned power plant, which is as strong as concrete the Romans used.

In groundbreaking materials research, a team led by University of Minnesota Professor K. Andre Mkhoyan has made a discovery that blends the best of two sought-after qualities for touchscreens and smart windows—transparency and conductivity.

The researchers are the first to observe metallic lines in a perovskite crystal. Perovskites abound in the Earth’s center, and barium stannate (BaSnO3) is one such crystal. However, it has not been studied extensively for metallic properties because of the prevalence of more conductive materials on the planet like metals or semiconductors. The finding was made using advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a technique that can form images with magnifications of up to 10 million.

The research is published in Science Advances.

The model is conceived to tackle the Great Pacific garbage patch — an island of plastic about 3 times the size of France.

New research led by researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Northwestern University employs machine learning to craft the best building blocks in the assembly of framework materials for use in a targeted application.