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Mushroom Roots Emerge As Eco Alternative to Styrofoam January 31, 2010 Move over Dow Chemical Co. Two recent engineering grads from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy have invented a new sustainable packaging technology that will challenge expanded polystyrene foam used in packaging and building insulation (Styrofoam). While classmates were enjoying pub crawls, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre were fascinated by mushrooms growing on wood chips. They saw how fungal mycelium (mushroom roots) bonded wood chips together, just like a matrix resin binds together prepregs.  In a class at Rensselaer called Inventors Studio, they used this idea to create a product now trademarked Greensulate. They take locally sourced agricultural byproducts such as rice hulls or cotton gin trash and use their now patent-pending process to introduce fungal mycelium. In 5-10 days loose agricultural byproducts are transformed into a rigid material that has similar material properties as synthetic foams like the expanded polystyrene invented by Dow in 1941. Greensulate and a packaging product called EcoCradle are aerobically and anaerobically compostable, which means they will biodegrade  in a garden, home compost pile or in a landfill. That’s a big plus compared to many plant-based plastics being proposed for packaging applications. There are no spores in the material. This stuff is even fire-safe. According to Bayer and McIntyre you can hold a blow torch up to Greensulate and it won’t catch on fire! They have a video on their Web site to prove it. Ok, what does it cost? They project costs will be competitive with expanded polystyrene foam or bubble wrap. But they haven’t scaled up the technology yet. They’re shipping samples, and are looking for partners to help them commercialize the technology. Their company, called Ecovative Design, is based near Troy, NY.

Dubbed a "spaser", this minuscule lasing object is the latest by-product of a buzzing field known as nanoplasmonics. Just as microelectronics exploits the behaviour of electrons in metals and semiconductors on micrometre scales, so nanoplasmonics is concerned with the nanoscale comings and goings of entities known as plasmons that lurk on and below the surfaces of metals. To envisage what as plasmon is, imagine a metal as a great sea of freely moving electrons. When light of the right frequency strikes the surface of the metal, it can set up a wavelike oscillation in this electron sea, just as the wind whips up waves on the ocean. These collective electron waves - plasmons - act to all intents and purposes as light waves trapped in the metal's surface. Their wavelengths depend on the metal, but are generally measured in nanometres. Their frequencies span the terahertz range - equivalent to the frequency range of light from the ultraviolet right through the visible to the infrared.

This is the discovery that could put the College of Wooster on the map: glass that swells like a sponge.  Put together like a nano-matrix, the new glass can unfold to hold up to eight times its weight.  The glass binds with gasoline and other pollutants containing volatile organic compounds but it does not bind with water, so it acts like a “smart” sponge, capable of picking and choosing from contaminated groundwater.

imes are changing, swiftly, and the way we keep time is too. The U.S. military will soon have greener devices on their wrist, with Hewlett-Packards current development. These wrist-watches by HP will boast flexible display screens that will show up a load of information besides the time, including maps and strategic information to aide soldiers in combat. The watch, known as the Dick Tracy will use a plastic screen. Soaking in the sun will help power up the watch and have it ticking. The prototype of the watch will be up and functioning in a year by HP. For starters, the U.S. military will use the Dick Tracy (named after the comic-strip detective with his awesome wristwatch) on a small group of soldiers first, who are bound to enjoy the technology, before spreading out to the entire force. The flexible plastic display, unlike the usual glass ones is also unbreakable, and can withstand the shocks of a battle field. Dick Tracy is yet another green addition for the U.S. military, this time in the form of wrist-watches

mico’s APEX expanded metal mesh offers many benefits such as texture, passage of light, air movement, reduction of solar gain, high strength-to-weight ratio and a variety of manufacturing material options. Carbon steel, galvanized steel, aluminum and stainless steel are commonly used to make expanded mesh, and Amico can also expand alloys such as brass, copper, Cor-ten, and titanium. One of the most striking aspects of expanded mesh is the small amount of raw material required to produce a large amount of product. The expanding method is a slitting and stretching process, which creates a product that is stronger and lighter than its original form and that will not unravel. Amico engineers can custom engineer new mesh designs based on functional requirements.

Veritas ResinArt plastic — By Blaine Brownell on October 16, 2009 at 8:00 am Veritas ResinArt is a fully interchangeable system of colors, patterns, textures, and materials within a multilayered, translucent PETG resin. Designed by Maybeth Shaw and manufactured by Schneller, Veritas is a customizable resin-based panel system—designers can create and order custom samples using a special tool on the Veritas website. Veritas ResinArt is ideal for a broad range of vertical and horizontal applications, such as doors, ceilings, desktops, and privacy screens. The material may be bent, cut, and fabricated with standard woodworking tools, is Class A fire-rated, and may be a lightweight and cost-effective alternative to glass. Veritas is made with recycled content and is fully recyclable. Moreover, the product is food safe, nontoxic, and manufactured at a solar-powered facility in Florida.

Graphene could someday replace silicon as a semiconductor material and make our chips smaller and faster, except for one tiny detail: it’s been rather hard to mess with its electronic properties. Until now. “We have experimentally realized and theoretically investigated, for the first time, perfect atomic wires in graphene,” Ivan Oleynik, one of the two University of South Florida professors behind the discovery, told Wired.com. Atomic wires are short chains of atoms that conduct electricity and so far, they have been hard to achieve in graphene.

MicroGREEN, developer of the Ad-air technology that makes this possible, can use different types of plastic resins and expand them for use in various applications. This expansion technology means that as little as 20 percent of the typically required amount of plastic can be used to create a traditional solid plastic.

Researchers have found a way to make flexible silicon solar cells using only 1 percent of the material used in conventional solar cells. The cells are made of micron-sized silicon wires that are encased in a flexible polymer that can be rolled or bent.  The researchers at Cal Tech who developed the cells eventually see them being used in clothing, but, for now, the cells could create cheaper and easier-to-install solar panels. Large consumer electronic companies like Sharp have experimented with organic thin-film solar cells, which are flexible, but they're less efficient than those made with silicon.  This breakthrough is the latest in a recent crop of studies combining the efficiency of silicon (about 15 to 20 percent efficiency) with the flexibility of the organic thin-film cells, but this one has the distinction of using only 1/100th of the amount of silicon per cell as a traditional silicon wafer. An added bonus to this type of solar cell is that existing manufacturing technology could be used to make them, further helping to keep cost down.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have unveiled their latest breakthrough:  a tiny solar power system that contains a processor, battery and solar cells all in 9 cubic millimeters! The miniature system measures 2.5 by 3.5 by 1 millimeters -- 1,000 times smaller than any comparable commercial system.  It's extremely energy efficient and the scientists say that it could almost operate perpetually if the battery didn't have to be replaced after many years. The system uses an ARM processor, a popular, widely-used processor which will make commercial adoption of this technology much easier. The system could be remodeled to generate power from movement or heat instead of light, making it fit for a variety of uses.  Like the small, flexible kinetic-energy harvester we profiled a last month, the scientists also see this device serving as a power source for medical implants like pacemakers.  Other possibilities include powering environmental sensors that track air and water quality and motion sensors for buildings, homes and bridges. The good news is that the researchers are already working on commercially developing the system.  With a host of possible applications, who knows where this itty bitty power generator might end up.

In an important first for a promising new technology, scientists have used a quantum computer to calculate the precise energy of molecular hydrogen. This groundbreaking approach to molecular simulations could have profound implications not just for quantum chemistry, but also for a range of fields from cryptography to materials science. "One of the most important problems for many theoretical chemists is how to execute exact simulations of chemical systems," says author Alán Aspuru-Guzik, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. "This is the first time that a quantum computer has been built to provide these precise calculations."

Smart dudes at Nanosys are figuring out a way to make the colors of LED lights more vivid, while using the same amount of energy as current LEDs. How are they accomplishing this feat? Why, they're using nanotechnology, of course. They slather this nano goop over blue LED lights, because that color is the most energy-efficient. This strange semiconductor material changes the colors of those LEDs, resulting in a rainbow of hues that look a whole lot brighter. Best of all, this nanotech can make the color rendering index (CRI) of warm white light look a lot more appealing. Bravo. Expect to see this tech on laptop displays, HDTV screens, and lighting fixtures by the end of this year.

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Translucent alumina ceramics have exhibited low mechanical properties and a low in-line transmission of unscattered light (less than fifteen percent) because of their coarse micro-structures (greater than 20 μm). New transparent corundum ceramics avoid these shortcomings and can be manufactured with complex (even hollow) shapes and with a four-point bending strength of six hundred to seven hundred megapascals and a macrohardness HV10 greater than 20 GPa. The in-line transmission of transparent ceramics is close to sixty percent in visible light and approaches the theoretical limit in the infrared range. An even higher visible light transmission (greater than eighty percent at one millimeter thickness) is enabled by new submicrometer spinel, which has a macrohardness of HV10 = 14.5 GPa.

Alkemi feature, metals — By Blaine Brownell on September 28, 2009 at 8:00 am Alkemi is a recycled composite material composed of a minimum of sixty percent postindustrial scrap aluminum and polymeric resins for use as a solid surface material. It is strong, durable, and exquisite to the eye. Alkemi offers a fresh and innovative alternative to the traditional commercial options such as plastic laminate, stone, and glass. Alkemi may be sanded and buffed to a matte or a high-gloss surface, and the material can be cut and shaped using conventional woodworking tools.