Graphene Used to Develop Superior Polymers
	A new nanocomposite polymer with remarkable thermal and mechanical properties has been developed by Northwestern University and Princeton University by incorporating functionalized, exfoliated graphite sheets. The material also conducts electricity and may be used to develop thermally stable optically transparent conducting polymers to coat solar cells. The study originally started several years ago when McCormick School of Engineering ... [read more >>]
	20 May 2008, 08:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Auto-Replicating 3D Printer, Now Available for Free
	The RepRap project managed to give birth to something that you might call a printer only if you think outside the box. The RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) device is able to replicate and update itself whenever it is necessary. In order to update itself, the unit prints its own parts. According to software developer and artist Vik Olliver, one of the persons involved with the 3D printing project, the regular 3D printer is ... [read more >>]
	08 April 2008, 09:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Mystery of the Squid Beak Explained
	A squid is like a mass of gelatinous tissues. Still, its razor-sharp parrot-like beak is one of the toughest natural materials. The beak of a jumbo squid can sever the nerve cord of a large fish, paralyzing it, and they can do this to divers as well. But each time they bite, powerful force ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 04:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Carbon Nanotube Conductivity Goes With the Flow. Literally!
	Only one thing comes to my mind when talking about carbon nanotube electrical properties, conductive transparent polymer plastics, which pretty much have a wide range of applications, especially in the manufacturing process of solar cells. It seems that the conductivity of a carbon nanotube additive can be changed relatively easily, turning it from conductor to insulator just by modifying the flow of the polymer. It turns out ... [read more >>]
	07 February 2008, 07:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nanotubes Fall into Place
	Carbon nanotubes have been considered for some time now the perfect building blocks for the future generation of ultrafast computers, but working with such small structures is no easy task, especially while trying to line them up into a specific architecture. This wouldn't be so big a deal, however it disables the possibility of mass production. Some reoriented their research towards spintronics and other nanoscale materials in th ... [read more >>]
	23 January 2008, 09:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Scientists Have Made Wonder Steel-Strong Flexible Plastic for Robocop Armors
	Science fiction materials have turned real. Steel strong plastic has been created by a team at the University of Michigan by imitating the brick-and-mortar molecular structure of the seashells. But unlike steel, the new material is lighter and transparent, even if not stretchy enough. The new plastic is built of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer similar to white glue. "Nevertheless, its further development ... [read more >>]
	05 October 2007, 04:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The First Non-Stick Gum!
	People spend annually $10 billion for chewing gum, but this leaves a sticky mess all around us, which is everywhere: from streets to cinema seats. And removing discarded gum is also an industry of millions of dollars. Now, a British company has announced the development of an easy-to-remove chewing gum. The team at the Revolymer has discarded some of the stickier chemicals from gum and developed a low cost polymer that could make about ... [read more >>]
	14 September 2007, 02:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Way Towards Soft Robots: The First Muscle-Polymer Devices
	Imagine a piece of paper that would move and have the shape of a fish. A Harvard team led by biomedical engineer Kit Parker has developed thin sheets of elastic film studded with rat heart muscle cells that can turn this into reality. The muscle-bound sheets react to electricity, as muscles contract, bend and flex the polymer layers. Sometimes the films kept on moving spontaneously; in other cases, they did it just in tandem with the e ... [read more >>]
	11 September 2007, 04:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Coating Means No Post-Surgery Infections
	A surgery can be performed very well, but one of the most dangerous side effects are infections. Only in US, each year 2 million people get infected while in the hospital and over 90,000 die. This number is much higher in developing countries, with less technology and less hygienic conditions. Penicillin could be employed now in a coating as a novel weapon against bacteria for medical implants and the surgical instruments, an ... [read more >>]
	10 September 2007, 03:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Miniaturization Is Everything
	Miniaturization is the key word to the entire computer hardware manufacturing industry as all the producers are constantly looking for new ways to increase the performance of their products while maintaining the same relative dimensions. As Moore's Law is still true and the number of the components inside a computer chip is doubling every 24 months, without the increase of the chips' surface area, hardware manufacturing companies ... [read more >>]
	07 September 2007, 08:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nanotechnology Creates Fireproof Paint
	A new discovery in the world of nanotechnology led to the production of a hard wearing and fireproof paint, by replacing the soap used to stabilize latex emulsion paints with nanotech sized clay armor. Latex is used in paint because it solidifies by coalescence of the polymer particles as the water evaporates and therefore can form films without releasing potentially toxic organic solvents in the environment. The method deve ... [read more >>]
	27 July 2007, 06:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Polymer Opal Films Identify Counterfeit Money and Rotten Food
	A new color-changing technology could have many practical applications, from letting you know if your dollar bill is counterfeit simply by stretching it to see if it changes hue, to showing you what food in your fridge is spoiled. Developed by scientists at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and the Deutsches Kunststoff-Institut (DKI) in Darmstadt, Germany, the new polymer opal films are a class of photonic crystals th ... [read more >>]
	26 July 2007, 11:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Solar Panels Could Be Produced at Home with Inkjet Printers
	Harvesting solar energy is a clever way to make use of a clean and renewable fuel. You don't need to dig the ground for it, there are no pipes and powerplants, and best of all, it's ecological. Unfortunately, existent solar cells are not too efficient and often too expensive. A new development made by researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) promises to make solar panels so affordable that people cou ... [read more >>]
	19 July 2007, 09:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Breakthrough Polymer Revolutionizes Engineering
	Carbon nanotubes, though a relatively recent find, have fueled the imagination of many scientists, who strongly believe that they are the future of electronic circuitry. Polymers are repeating structural units, or monomers, connected by covalent chemical bonds, present in many natural and artificial materials, from plastics to DNA. What happens when you combine the two materials? A revolutionary chemical compound, ultra-ligh ... [read more >>]
	04 July 2007, 09:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Organic Semiconductors Made with Grease
	Organic semiconductors have a good electrical conductivity, ranging between that of ordinary metals and that of insulating chemical compounds, but they have another advantage, given by their organic nature. Polyacetylene is a good example of organic semiconductors. Among future and present applications of these materials, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells are the most famous, where their organic nature co ... [read more >>]
	28 June 2007, 09:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

De-polymerizing Polymers Breaks Them Down to Reusable Basic Elements
	Plastics are made of semisynthetic polymerization products composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics. Their widespread use made them indispensable in almost all industry areas. There are methods by which plastics can be broken back down to a feedstock state, but so far none of them can break down the long chains of molecules that make up the mil ... [read more >>]
	27 June 2007, 16:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

"Green" Polymer Made from Wine
	Plastics are made of semisynthetic polymerization products composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics. Their widespread use made them indispensable in almost all industry areas. Unfortunately, plastic polymers are durable and degrade very slowly and in some cases, burning plastic can release toxic fumes, all of these contributing to the global pol ... [read more >>]
	15 June 2007, 06:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Transparent Transistors Made from Nanowires
	Organic light has fascinated mankind for centuries and the quest to replicate nature's engineering abilities has preoccupied many scientists. An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is any light-emitting diode (LED) whose emissive electroluminescent layer comprises a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymer substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows ... [read more >>]
	04 June 2007, 10:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Researchers Created Fireproof Plastic
	Plastics are made of semisynthetic polymerization products composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics. Their widespread use made them indispensable in almost all industry areas. Scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst were able to produce a new synthetic polymer, that plastic is made from, which overcomes the biggest problem of mo ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2007, 09:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

High-Tech Fibers Mimic and Improve Natural Materials
	Research in the field of artificial fibers have boosted in the last years and aim to create new and improved artificial replacements for natural materials that not only have the same properties, but also present artificial enhancements to benefit the clothing industry and other branches. An international science and technology conference called The Fiber Society 2007 Spring Conference held May 23-25 at the Westin Poinsett in Greenville ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2007, 15:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

"Wearing a Wire" Becomes Obsolete in Real Life. Will Hollywood Be Next?
	Everybody knows that wire tapping is an extremely useful tool for police agencies around the world. Getting a witness or an undercover agent to wear a wire on a meeting with a crime boss is something else. It's very risky for the cop and very easy for the bad guys to find a wire stuck to the body with duct tape. But a NASA sponsored technology is about to change the famous Hollywood quote to "wearing a wireless." For ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2007, 09:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Have You Tried Polymer Shish-kebab? It's Tasty and...Plastic
	Shish-kebab is a tasty meat dish usually made of lamb and beef, but chicken is not excluded. Only pork. Now, a new type of shish-kebab is on the market, but it's made of polymers. And it's not edible. Shish-kebabs are nanoscale structures that form when polymers crystallize during flow, looking like a skewer running through a stack of bell peppers. Inside plastics, they make car body panels stiff and carpet fibers strong. ... [read more >>]
	21 May 2007, 05:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

High Flux Isotope Uranium Reactor Back on Line
	A high flux isotope reactor went online after more than a year of repairs, systems checks and improvements that cost more that $70 million. It's a research reactor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory internationally recognized as a neutron source for materials studies and isotope production. New and improved, it now has a set of modern experiment instruments, like beam lines to channel neutrons, a new beryl ... [read more >>]
	18 May 2007, 15:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Candy-Like Vaccine
	Rotavirus is a dangerous pathogen for children, elders and persons with a weak immune system. It induces severe diarrhea and vomiting in children, killing roughly 600-650,000 annually, aged 0-2 years, mainly in developing nations. Rotavirus vaccine is currently delivered in a liquid or freeze-dried form that must be refrigerated for transport and storage, resulting very expensive where it's most needed. Moreover, newborns ... [read more >>]
	15 May 2007, 17:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Scientists Created Quasicrystalline Ploymers
	Quasicrystals are weird structures, aperiodic structures (aperiodic = lack of translational symmetry, which means that a shifted copy will never match exactly its original) that differ from crystals by lacking the regular repeating structure of crystal structures. The first officially reported case of what came to be known as quasicrystals was made by Dan Shechtman and coworkers in 1984, and since then they have appeared in metals and ... [read more >>]
	15 May 2007, 09:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A New Fish-Like Airship
	A Swiss team has created a new model of blimp that swims through the air like a fish. The fish-mimicking airship employs artificial muscles fabricated from electroactive polymers (EAPs) to move itself forward. The unique silent non-rigid airship employs its artificial muscles to power through the air like a tuna swimming in the ocean. It imitates the same "bending-rotation-stroke" employed by fish in their ... [read more >>]
	31 March 2007, 03:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Biodegradable Plastic Made of Feathers
	The problem of the plastic contamination could be solved by biodegradable polymers made of poultry feathers, a solution that would also decrease costs in poultry industry. Only in the US over 29 million tons of non-biodegradable plastic waste reach the landfills yearly. “12 % of all plastic packaging ends up in landfills because only a fraction is recycled," said Justin Barone, associate professor of biological systems e ... [read more >>]
	30 March 2007, 07:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Smart Sunglasses Can Change Colors
	A novel class of smart sunglasses can change instantly into virtually any color at will just by acting on a minute electronic knob on their frames. "We’ve developed lenses that aren't like anything else on the market. This could be the fashion statement of the future," said researcher Chunye Xu, a chemical engineer at the University of Washington at Seattle. Xu's team has developed lenses made from a type ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2007, 03:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flexible See-Through Battery
	What happened to the good old days when a having a notebook implied also having a membership at the local gym because you were forced to carry around something that “weighed a ton”, sometimes it could be considered an alternative to bodybuilding. Everything nowadays is lighter, smaller, costs less, has more power, and thanks to some people with ideas, one day your notebook could be transparent, maybe even invisible, who knows. Japanese ... [read more >>]
	23 March 2007, 12:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Stronger, More Flexible Polymer Sutures Made by Bacteria
	Imagine you pass through a surgery and never “see” the surgeon again. That's because he/she does not need to remove the threads. A biopolymer suture approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is made of compounds that our organism naturally produces and are safely absorbed when the wound is healed. These threads are also more effective, 30 % stronger than current ones and very flexible, so the surgeons can work ea ... [read more >>]
	23 March 2007, 10:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Microscopic Alphabet
	An UCLA team has imagined and mass-produced billions of fluorescent microscale polymeric particles in the shapes of all 26 letters of the alphabet in a liquid solution displaying “exquisite fidelity of the shapes”. The “LithoParticles” could have important technological and scientific uses. “We can even choose the font style; if we wanted Times New Roman, we could produce that,” said study co-author Thomas G. Mason, a UCLA associate pr ... [read more >>]
	22 March 2007, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Paper-Thin Flexible Battery
	The continuously advancing technology of portable electronic devices asks for more flexible batteries to power them. A Japanese team at Waseda University have developed a paper-like rechargeable battery. The battery is made of a redox-active organic polymer film roughly 200 nanometers thick and attached nitroxide radical groups function like charge carriers. The high radical density induces the battery a high charge/disch ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2007, 06:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia