Lifeboat Foundation

A typical nuclear reactor uses only a small fraction of its fuel rod to produce power before the energy-generating reaction naturally terminates. What is left behind is an assortment of radioactive elements, including unused fuel, that are disposed of as nuclear waste in the United States. Although certain elements recycled from waste can be used for powering newer generations of nuclear reactors, extracting leftover fuel in a way that prevents possible misuse is an ongoing challenge.

Now, Texas A&M University engineering researchers have devised a simple, proliferation-resistant approach for separating out different components of nuclear waste. The one-step chemical reaction, described in the February issue of the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, results in the formation of crystals containing all of the leftover nuclear fuel elements distributed uniformly.

The researchers also noted that the simplicity of their recycling approach makes the translation from lab bench to industry feasible.

Here is a source of great information ACS Publications has:

‚300,000 Research Articles

‚000 News Stories

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=h5jBjso6l6I

Circa 2015

Fittingly, these rifle-sized weapons would gun for other electronics.

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Not long ago nanotechnology was a fringe topic; now it’s a flourishing engineering field, and fairly mainstream. For example, while writing this article, I happened to receive an email advertisement for the “Second World Conference on Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery,” in Kerala, India. It wasn’t so long ago that nanomedicine seemed merely a flicker in the eyes of Robert Freitas and a few other visionaries!

But nano is not as small as the world goes. A nanometer is 10⁻⁹ meters – the scale of atoms and molecules. A water molecule is a bit less than one nanometer long, and a germ is around a thousand nanometers across. On the other hand, a proton has a diameter of a couple femtometers – where a femtometer, at 10⁻¹⁵ meters, makes a nanometer seem positively gargantuan. Now that the viability of nanotech is widely accepted (in spite of some ongoing heated debates about the details), it’s time to ask: what about femtotech? Picotech or other technologies at the scales between nano and femto seem relatively uninteresting, because we don’t know any basic constituents of matter that exist at those scales. But femtotech, based on engineering structures from subatomic particles, makes perfect conceptual sense, though it’s certainly difficult given current technology.

The nanotech field was arguably launched by Richard Feynman’s 1959 talk “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” As Feynman wrote there.

A new class of self-forming membrane to separate carbon dioxide from a mixture of gases has been developed by Newcastle University researchers.

Operating like a coffee filter, it lets harmless gases, such as nitrogen, exit into the atmosphere and then the carbon dioxide can be processed.

The team believe that the system may be applicable for use in carbon dioxide separation processes, either to protect the environment or in reaction engineering.

Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, affecting one in 10 people over the age of 65. Scientists are engineering nanodevices to disrupt processes in the brain that lead to the disease.

People who are affected by Alzheimer’s disease have a specific type of plaque, made of self-assembled molecules called β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides, that build up in the brain over time. This buildup is thought to contribute to loss of neural connectivity and cell death. Researchers are studying ways to prevent the peptides from forming these dangerous plaques in order to halt development of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.

In a multidisciplinary study, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with collaborators from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), have developed an approach to prevent plaque formation by engineering a nano-sized device that captures the dangerous peptides before they can self-assemble.

SEAKR Engineering, Inc. has been awarded as the prime contractor for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pit Boss contract to further expand its contractual work supporting the Blackjack program. The award for Phase I Option II is part of a three-phase effort seeking on-orbit demonstration of full processing capability in a multi-satellite constellation. SEAKR was first awarded a DARPA Pit Boss contract in October 2019.

DARPA’s Blackjack program focuses on integrating commercial satellite technologies into a constellation of military satellites. As sole prime, SEAKR will continue developing it’s Pit Boss solution to support the Blackjack program’s mission as a next generation on-board processor.

SEAKR said the solution will leverage off-the-shelf electronics adapted through design implementation to function reliably in space. The company said this award validates its program success in seeking on-orbit demonstration of state-of-the-art processing capability incorporating autonomous operations, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning techniques, and bridged terrestrial and on-orbit technologies.

Lithium-sulfur batteries have been hailed as the next big step in battery technology, promising significantly longer use for everything from cellphones to electric vehicles on a single charge, while being more environmentally sustainable to produce than current lithium-ion batteries. However, these batteries don’t last as long as their lithium-ion counterparts, degrading over time.

A group of researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has found a way to stabilize one of the most challenging parts of lithium-sulfur batteries, bringing the technology closer to becoming commercially viable. The team’s findings, published today in Joule, show that creating an artificial layer containing tellurium, inside the battery in-situ, on top of lithium metal, can make it last four times longer.

“Sulfur is abundant and environmentally benign with no supply chain issues in the U.S.,” said Arumugam Manthiram, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Texas Materials Institute. “But there are engineering challenges. We’ve reduced a problem to extend the cycle life of these batteries.”

Today’s virtual reality systems can create immersive visual experiences, but seldom do they enable users to feel anything—particularly walls, appliances and furniture. A new device developed at Carnegie Mellon University, however, uses multiple strings attached to the hand and fingers to simulate the feel of obstacles and heavy objects.

By locking the strings when the user’s hand is near a virtual wall, for instance, the device simulates the sense of touching the wall. Similarly, the string mechanism enables people to feel the contours of a virtual sculpture, sense resistance when they push on a piece of furniture or even give a high five to a virtual character.

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