Physics and chemistry together are very solid, indeed!
The Belorussian iron and steel mill decided to adopt marketing practices of major foreign corporations, which annually make colorful calendars with naked girls – and presented its own calendar with naked women workers of the plant.
![harvardseas:
Now you see it, now you don’t. A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75% of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras.
Composed of just a 180-nanometer-thick layer of vanadium dioxide (VO2) on top of a sheet of sapphire, the device reacts to temperature changes by reflecting dramatically more or less infrared light. [READ MORE]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me7ill2Cv31qe7yhao1_500.jpg)
Now you see it, now you don’t. A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75% of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras.
Composed of just a 180-nanometer-thick layer of vanadium dioxide (VO2) on top of a sheet of sapphire, the device reacts to temperature changes by reflecting dramatically more or less infrared light. [READ MORE]
File under WOW! This is one for my brother, TJ Anderson, the Material Science Engineer.
Connecting a human brain to a computer is as much a materials science problem as a biology one. What kind of interface is delicate enough not to damage nerve tissue, but resilient enough to last decades?
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The new microthread electrode, designed to pick up signals from a single neuron as it fires, is only about 7 micrometers in diameter. That is the thinnest yet developed, and about 100 times as thin as the conventional metal electrodes widely used to study animal brains.
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Researchers need long-lasting electrodes in order to improve brain-machine interfaces. These systems, in preliminary studies, have allowed paralyzed people to control robotic limbs or a computer mouse. By using electrodes to record the firing of individual brain cells, scientists have learned to decode these signals as representing the movement of a rat’s whiskers or a quadriplegic’s effort to move his arms (see “Monkey Thinks Robot into Action”).
C. A. Coulson (1910–1974, professor of chemistry, Oxford University)
(Found in a Gaussian03 output file, how classy)
Scotch tape finds new use as grasping ‘smart material’
Tim Butler: Diffraction pattern calculated from a circular array of dots
Aluminium
Aluminium is the third most abundant element (after oxygen and silicon), and the most abundant metal, in the Earth’s crust. It makes up about 8% by weight of the Earth’s solid surface. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite.
Despite its prevalence in the environment, aluminium salts are not known to be used by any form of life. In keeping with its pervasiveness, aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals. Owing to their prevalence, potential beneficial (or otherwise) biological roles of aluminium compounds are of continuing interest.
Liquid crystal
Excellent.
