Lifeboat Foundation

It aims to introduce engineered optical materials (EnMats) and associated design tools for creating innovative optical systems with improved performance, new functionality, and drastically reduced size and weight.

It will do this by finding ways to manipulate light in ways beyond the conventions of classical reflection and refraction, delivering optical systems the size of a sugar cube.

If successful, EXTREME could introduce a new era in optics and imagers for national defense.

Continue reading “DARPA’s EXTREME Program will Manipulate Light to Strengthen US National Security” »

Washington, DC — The creation of a new material has long been either an accident or a matter of trial and error. Steel, for instance, was developed over hundreds of years by people who didn’t know why what they were doing worked (or didn’t work). Generations of blacksmiths observed that iron forged in charcoal was stronger than iron that wasn’t, and iron that was forged in a very high-temperature, charcoal-fired furnace and rapidly cooled was even stronger, and so on.

While we’re still learning things about steel, we now have all kinds of recipes that we can use to make steels with different properties depending on the application, but those recipes took a lot of time, sweat and toil to develop. Wouldn’t it be great if we could skip over all the trials and errors and design new materials from scratch with the exact properties we want?

3D Printing for the skull.

Continue reading “3DCeram 3D Prints Custom-Designed, Biocompatible Cranial Prostheses” »

Researchers have developed a liquid material that repairs torn clothes, and it it able to withstand subsequent washes in a washing machine.

Every invention starts with an idea. And a group of researchers at Pennsylvania State University have a rather great idea—making a piece of torn fabric heal itself.

After years of working on the concept, the team is more than pleased to have created a biodegradable liquid material that allows torn fabric to bind to itself back together, sans needles.

Continue reading “Self-Healing Textile: Welcome to the Age of Clothes That Can Heal Themselves” »

Metallic hydrogen could be the room temperature superconductor we’ve been waiting for.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Someday, chemically protective suits made of fabric coated in self-healing, thin films may prevent farmers from exposure to organophosphate pesticides, soldiers from chemical or biological attacks in the field and factory workers from accidental releases of toxic materials, according to a team of researchers.

“Fashion designers use natural fibers made of proteins like wool or silk that are expensive and they are not self-healing,” said Melik C. Demire l, professor of engineering science and mechanics. “We were looking for a way to make fabrics self-healing using conventional textiles. So we came up with this coating technology.”

Continue reading “Self-healing textiles not only repair themselves, but can neutralize chemicals” »

Have you ever seen the movie called “The Haunting” with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones? If you have; you will appreciate this article. A living building.

The US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is attempting to build living, self-healing, programmable buildings.

DARPA’s Engineered Living Materials (ELM) program imagines that materials like bone, skin, bark and coral could form future building blocks as they provide advantages over non-living materials built with today, in that they can be grown where needed, self-repair when damaged and respond to changes in their surroundings.

Continue reading “Forget concrete and cement. DARPA thinks skin and bone make better building blocks” »

How to turn green light blue.

Previous article in Early View: High-Performance Photovoltaic Polymers Employing Symmetry-Breaking Building Blocks.

In a development that could greatly help the study of quantum phenomena, scientists have created a theoretical model for a new form of light that combines the properties of photons and electrons. If turned into reality, the new light form could also be used to make electrical circuits which at present use electrons for conduction.

Scientists from Imperial College London published a study in the journal Nature Communications on Friday that shows “it is possible to create a new form of light by binding light to a single electron, combining the properties of both,” according to a statement issued by the college.

Light, which is made up of photons, usually interacts with a large number of electrons on the surface of whatever material it comes in contact with. For the study, researchers from Imperial used “a recently discovered class of materials known as topological inhibitors.” Combining that with “theoretical physics to model the behavior of light,” they found that light could interact with only one electron on the surface.

Continue reading “New Form Of Light Could Make Study Of Quantum Phenomena Easier” »