General science advances thread

[ScienceRocks]

Nanoscale Bioinspired Metamaterials, breakthrough quantum and laser tech from DARPA Nano and Quantum projects
[url="http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/nanoscale-bioinspired-metamaterials.html"]Next Big Future Nanoscale Bioinspired Metamaterials breakthrough quantum and laser tech from DARPA Nano and Quantum projects [/URL]

DARPA is and has been spending about$70-80 million per year on nano, quantum and material technology. DARPA is looking at the development and assembly of advanced nanoscale and bio-molecular materials, devices, and electronics for DoD applications that greatly enhance soldier awareness, capability, security, and survivability, such as materials with increased strength-to-weight ratio and ultra-low size, devices with ultra-low energy dissipation and power, novel spectroscopic sources, and electronics with persistent intelligence and improved surveillance capabilities.

1. Nanoscale/Bio-inspired and MetaMaterials

The research in this thrust area exploits advances in nano/micro-scale and bio-inspired materials, including computationally based materials science, in order to develop unique microstructures, material properties, and functionalities. This area also includes efforts to develop the underlying science for the behavior of materials whose properties have been engineered at the nano/micro-scale level, including metamaterials, bio-inspired materials for sensing and actuation, and materials that are designed to mimic biological materials from molecular to macroscopic function. Specific examples of areas of interest include materials that can self-repair, adapt, and respond for soldier protection against chemical and biological threats and optical based metamaterial imaging systems capable of detecting objects in cluttered environments and around or through structural obscurants.

FY 2014 Accomplishments:
- Designed materials with decoupled property combinations (e.g., strength/density, stiffness/thermal expansion) using architecture-to-property trade space capability.
- Demonstrated fabrication methods amenable to scaling and that permit architectural control capable of maintaining decoupled properties.
- Demonstrated targeted enhancement to material properties (e.g., tailored coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE)/energy dissipation and load bearing stiffness).
- Established manufacturability and amenability to scale up and provided fabrication and characterization data package.
- Initiated development of synthetic methods for preparing large sequence controlled polymer libraries.

FY 2015 Plans:
- Develop a method for screening non-natural polymer libraries for designed properties such as binding to target molecules. - Develop a method for sequencing non-natural polymers at low concentrations.
- Explore and develop modeling tools for the physics of scattering in metamaterials and the application of using ultra-short laser pulses to see and detect objects through various obscurants.

What do I mean by r&d? I mean shit like this and the super powerful war lasers being developed above. Of, course I mean more then this.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Not all breakthroughs are created equal. Some arrive more or less as usable things; others mainly set the stage for innovations that emerge later, and we have to estimate when that will be. But we’d bet that every one of the milestones on this list will be worth following in the coming years.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2015 MIT Technology Review

Some cool stuff


What It s Like to Try Magic Leap s Take on Virtual Reality MIT Technology Review

Magic Leap

A startup is betting more than half a billion dollars that it will dazzle you with its approach to creating 3-D imagery.

Availability: 1-3 years

Here is one of the list of things...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Not all breakthroughs are created equal. Some arrive more or less as usable things; others mainly set the stage for innovations that emerge later, and we have to estimate when that will be. But we’d bet that every one of the milestones on this list will be worth following in the coming years.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2015 MIT Technology Review

Some cool stuff


What It s Like to Try Magic Leap s Take on Virtual Reality MIT Technology Review

Magic Leap

A startup is betting more than half a billion dollars that it will dazzle you with its approach to creating 3-D imagery.

Availability: 1-3 years

Cheap Water from the World s Largest Modern Seawater Desalination Plant MIT Technology Review
Megascale Desalination
The world’s largest and cheapest reverse-osmosis desalination plant is up and running in Israel.

Availability: now

 

[ScienceRocks]

600 km/h: Japan's maglev train notches up new world speed record

Japan's state-of-the-art maglev train set a world speed record Tuesday in a test run near Mount Fuji, clocking more than 600 kilometres (373 miles) an hour.

The seven-car maglev—short for "magnetic levitation"—train, hit a top speed of 603 kilometres an hour, and managed nearly 11 seconds over 600kph Central Japan Railway said.

The new record came less than a week after the company clocked 590kph, by breaking its own 2003 record of 581 kph.

The maglev hovers 10 centimetres (four inches) above the tracks and is propelled by electrically charged magnets.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-kmh-japan-maglev-notches-world.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

Chevy embraces the future with the FNR autonomous vehicle
By C.C. Weiss
April 21, 2015
17 Pictures

This is the year that automotive companies will tantalize eyes and minds with full visions of autonomous cars. Mercedes opened up the year with the intriguing F 015 design study, and Italdesign Giugiaro showed its own version of autonomy with the Geneva-debuted GEA. Chevrolet has an equally intriguing self-driving vision, and it calls it the FNR. The "futuristic capsule" is loaded with next-generation styling, technology and ideas.

 

[ScienceRocks]

his snazzy LED lamp uses magnetic levitation to hover above its power source

Recently launched on Kickstarter, Flyte is a wirelessly-powered light that hovers in the air by way of magnetic levitation. It is also completely contactless, and draws power wirelessly from the charger block it hovers above.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com#ixzz3Y5GTBpEy
Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter | digitaltrendsftw on Facebook

 

[longknife]

his snazzy LED lamp uses magnetic levitation to hover above its power source

Recently launched on Kickstarter, Flyte is a wirelessly-powered light that hovers in the air by way of magnetic levitation. It is also completely contactless, and draws power wirelessly from the charger block it hovers above.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com#ixzz3Y5GTBpEy
Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter | digitaltrendsftw on Facebook

I clicked on both links and never found the Flyte thingie.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Polymer researchers create a new class of hybrid materials
29 minutes ago

Polymer science will have to add a new giant molecule to its lexicon thanks to a cutting-edge discovery at The University of Akron. Taking a revolutionary "building blocks" approach, researchers have pioneered a way to create a new class of very large polymer molecules, called macromolecules, which assemble themselves into strong, stable structures. The work has been done in collaboration with researchers at Peking University in China and The University of Tokyo in Japan.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-polymer-class-hybrid-materials.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

Scientists fully decode a pair of mammoth DNA genomes

A team of Harvard Medical School geneticists have deciphered the complete genomes of not one but two individual woolly mammoths. The results, recently published in the journal Current Biology, are already providing valuable insights into how the species initially died out.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Gene manipulation boosts tree growth rate and size
By Darren Quick
April 23, 2015
4 Pictures

Trees may be a renewable resource, but the rate of this renewal may not meet the increasing demand for plant biomass. But now researchers at the University of Manchester have potentially found a way to boost tree stocks by using gene manipulation to increase the size and growth rate of trees.

 

[ScienceRocks]

cool!


X-47B completes first ever unmanned refueling exercise
By David Szondy
April 23, 2015
17 Pictures

The US Navy's X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) aircraft has gone out on a high note (and added yet another acronym to the military lexicon) by conducting the first ever Autonomous Aerial Refueling (AAR) exercise. The autonomous aircraft rendezvoused with an Omega K-707 tanker plane off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, successfully taking on 4,000 lb (1,814 kg) of jet fuel as it completed the project's final test objective.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Researchers build real-time tunable plasmon laser
8 hours ago by Bob Yirka report

Enlarge
Lasing emissions from Au NP arrays tuned in real time. Credit: Nature Communications 6, Article number: 6939 doi:10.1038/ncomms7939

(Phys.org)—A combined team of researchers from Northwestern and Duke Universities has succeeded in building a plasmon laser that is tunable in real-time. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the team describes how they built their device and to what uses it might be put.

Traditionally, light can only ever be focused down to a point half the size of its frequency—aka the diffraction limit. Scientists have found a way around that limit, however, by building what are known as plasmon lasers, which are lasers that couple their beam with plasmons (oscillating surface electrons) on the surface of metals—gold for example, arranged in an array. But that approach has had its limitations as well, because it has had to rely on a solid bit of material called the gain—such lasers could not be tuned very easily, and not in real-time at all. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have found a way to use a liquid material as the gain, and because of that, are able to tune their laser in real time.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-real-time-tunable-plasmon-laser.html#jCp

 

[ScienceRocks]

Williams uses F1 tech to increase refrigerator efficiency
By Chris Wood
April 24, 2015

A new aerodynamic device has the potential to reduce the energy consumption of supermarket refrigerators by up to 41.5 percent. The product, currently being developed by Williams Advanced Engineering in collaboration with Aerofoil Energy, can be clipped onto existing cabinets, making it easy for companies to upgrade their stores

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

Good, new weapon systems to fire off!

US plans at sea railgun tests in summer of 2016 and will explore installation on the third Zumwalt Destroyer

In 2016, Naval Sea Systems Command will conduct the first at sea test of its electromagnetic railgun, hurling a guided 44 pound projectile and hypersonic speeds off the coast of Florida, NAVSEA officials said on Tuesday. The BAE Systems designed test weapon will be mounted on the newly delivered Joint High Speed Vessel USNS Trenton (JHSV-5)...


Officials expect to fire 20 shots from the EMRG on board Trenton ; the last five are expected to be aimed to hit targets anchored off the coast.

With the EMRG launcher on the flight deck, the rest of the system comprising the control van and pulsed power - housed in four 20-ft ISO shipping containers - will be placed below deck in Trenton 's mission bay. Cables will be routed from the pulsed power up to the gun via an existing flight deck access point. The containers are those used on the test range at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren in Virginia, Capt Ziv noted.
The Florida test will place a static floating target at a range of 25 to 50 nautical miles from the test ship and fire five GPS guided hyper velocity projectiles (HVP) at the target as the final part of 20 planned firings for the railgun at the Eglin range.

“It’s an over the horizon engagement. We’re firing on a ballistic trajectory and guiding into intercepting that target,” he said to reporters following the briefing.

“Eventually when we have a little bit more advancement in the projectile there will be some ability to communicate with [the round].”

As the program develops, the Navy is zeroing in on about 10,000-ton sized guided missile cruisers and destroyers as the anticipated platforms to field the weapons.
NAVSEA is currently conducting an in-depth study of including the railgun on the Zumwalt-class (DDG-1000) guided missile destroyers for the first platform for the weapon.

 

[ScienceRocks]

ISS-RapidScat wind data proving valuable for tropical cyclones
5 hours ago

ISS-RapidScat revealed sustained winds over 67 mph (30 mps/108 kph) (in red) were still occurring southeast of Tropical Cyclone Pam's center on March 16, 2015. Credit: NASA JPL/Doug Tyler

The ISS-RapidScat instrument has been in orbit seven months, and forecasters are already finding this new eye-in-the-sky helpful as they keep watch on major storms around the globe. RapidScat measures Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction over open waters. The instrument's data on ocean winds provide essential measurements for researchers and scientists to use in weather predictions, including hurricane monitoring. The NASA instrument arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 23, 2014, providing a new resource for tracking and studying storms ranging from tropical cyclones to nor'easters. RapidScat has kept busy in 2015's already active Southern Hemisphere hurricane season and the Northern Hemisphere's winter storm season.

 

[ScienceRocks]

DARPA tests its self-steering bullets against moving targets
By Chris Wood
April 29, 2015
2 Pictures

DARPA has conducted a new test of its self-steering bullets, with both experienced and novice shooters successfully hitting moving targets. The testing proves the effectiveness of the projectile, which was developed under the Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program, but the agency is still playing its cards close to its chest when it comes to how the technology actually works.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Affordable Star Trek-like transparent aluminum could protect phones, windows, and lenses
Affordable Star Trek-like transparent aluminum could protect phones windows and lenses ExtremeTech

Researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have announced a breakthrough in the construction of spinel, also known as transparent aluminum. The substance is named after an iconic scene in Star Trek, in which Enterprise’s Chief Engineer hands over the chemical formula for an advanced 23rd-century building material to a manufacturing company in 1980s San Francisco.

Spinel — chemical formula MgAl2O4 is an extremely hard, durable substance with a Mohs Scale rating of 8.0. Sapphire glass, which we’ve previously discussed, has a Mohs rating of 9, just below diamond, with its rating of 10. Spinel’s refractive index can be lower than sapphire’s, depending on the exact characteristics of the material — a trait which could make it better than sapphire for screens.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Small Jurassic Dinosaur May Have Flown Without Feathers

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
APRIL 29, 2015

Over the last two decades, scientists in China have paraded one surprising dinosaur discovery after another, enough to rewrite textbooks and even impress dinophile first graders. Some of the smaller newfound creatures, it turns out, had feathers, which shifted expert thinking to the dinosaurian origin of birds.

Now a discovery of 160-million-year-old fossils in northeastern China, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, calls attention to a dinosaur species that may have tried to take to the air on featherless wings. It was one of presumably many experiments in early flight that failed the test of time and was eventually abandoned.

http://www.nytimes.c...thers.html?_r=0