Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers in Japan have found a way to make the ‘wonder material’ graphene superconductive — which means electricity can flow through it with zero resistance. The new property adds to graphene’s already impressive list of attributes, like the fact that it’s stronger than steel, harder than diamond, and incredibly flexible.

But superconductivity is a big deal, even for graphene, because when electricity can flow without resistance, it can lead to significantly more efficient electronic devices, not to mention power lines. Right now, energy companies are losing about 7 percent of their energy as heat as a result of resistance in the grid.

Before you get too excited, this demonstration of superconductivity in graphene occurred at a super cold −269 degrees Celsius, so we’re not going to be making power lines out of graphene any time soon.

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With the success of Graphene as a material for BMI plus the new micro stints that can travel through blood cells to the brain; prosthetic technology is only going to continue to improve to maybe even a point where some athletes may wish to have physical and endurance capabilities improved through this type of technology if it is approved and allowed by the various athletic associations.

A team of researchers has demonstrated the first-ever successful prosthetic arm that can control individual fingers with thoughts.

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A radical discovery by researchers at Harvard and Raytheon BBN Technology about graphene’s hidden properties could lead to a model system to explore exotic phenomena like black holes and high-energy plasmas, as well as novel thermoelectric devices.

Continue reading “A black hole on a chip made of a metal that behaves like water” »

Researchers have used graphene to create a lens that’s so flat, it’s 300 times thinner than a sheet of paper and weighs just 1 microgram. That means it’s small enough to split a beam of single photons — something that’s going to be crucial if we ever want to develop optical computers that process data at the speed of light.

These optical computers require devices called photonic chips, which store information as photons rather than electrons, and allow that information to move at light speed — and people are pretty excited about it. NASA is already using it, and the technology is getting more and more impressive. But there are still some limitations, and one of those is having lenses thin enough to split beams of light and divert them around the chip.

Attempts to make these lenses in the past have required expensive and impractical materials such as gold, but researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have been working on a solution, and they’ve managed to produce a lens using graphene oxide that’s not only thin enough to overcome the diffraction limit, but is also cheap, strong, flexible, and easy to produce.

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Liquid metal.

Abstract: Graphene is going to change the world — or so we’ve been told.

Since its discovery a decade ago, scientists and tech gurus have hailed graphene as the wonder material that could replace silicon in electronics, increase the efficiency of batteries, the durability and conductivity of touch screens and pave the way for cheap thermal electric energy, among many other things.

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Graphene is going to change the world — or so we’ve been told.

Since its discovery a decade ago, scientists and tech gurus have hailed graphene as the wonder material that could replace silicon in electronics, increase the efficiency of batteries, the durability and conductivity of touch screens and pave the way for cheap thermal electric energy, among many other things.

Continue reading “Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences” »

Making Nanowire Lasers

Feb. 11, 2016 — Scientists have found a simple new way to produce nanoscale wires that can serve as bright, stable and tunable lasers — an advance toward using light to transmit data.

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This material allows light to bend as it travels through it.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=NKeeHahhNL4

When the idea of a medical transplant is brought up, most people’s thoughts are usually drawn to procedures such as blood transfusions or organ replacements. But, oftentimes, we forget the importance of our bone structure, as well as the 2 million painful bone transplants that take place every year around world. Previously stuck in a Medieval-like operation method, surgeons had little option but to replace their patients’ bones with the bones of animals or human cadavers, and even this procedure can oftentimes led to complications due to the body’s rejection of the foreign replacement. But 3D bioprinting has been a major influence in changing the entire nature of this traditional surgical procedure, new methods of creating bone grafts have been developed by researchers around the world from Montana State University to Tokyo. 3D printing has become a recent revelation in skeletal reconstruction surgery, with 3D printed synthetic implants and even harvested stem cell materials proving to be a much safer and efficient surgical alternative.

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