#strontium
Electrospun sodium titanate speeds up the purification of nuclear waste water
Electrospun sodium titanate speeds up the purification of water based on selective ion exchange – effectively extracts radio-active strontium
With the help of this new method, waste water can be treated faster than before, and the environmentally positive aspect is that the process leaves less solid radio-active waste.
The properties of electrospun sodium titanate are equal to those of commercially produced ion-exchange materials.
“The advantages of electrospun materials are due to the kinetics, i.e. reaction speed, of ion exchange,” says Risto Koivula, a scientist in the research group Ion Exchange for Nuclear Waste Treatment and for Recycling at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Helsinki.
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Advanced biomaterials with silk fibroin-bioactive glass to engineer patient-specific 3-D bone grafts
The complex architecture of bone is challenging to recreate in the lab. Therefore, advances in bone tissue engineering (BTE) aim to build patient-specific grafts that assist bone repair and trigger specific cell-signaling pathways. Materials scientists in regenerative medicine and BTE progressively develop new materials for active biological repair at a site of defect post-implantation to accelerate healing through bone biomimicry.
Rapidly initiation of new bone formation at the site of implantation is a highly desirable feature in BTE, and scientists are focused on fabricating grafts that strengthen the material-bone interface after implantation. Bioactive glass can bond with bone minutes after grafting, and silk fibroin, a natural fibrous protein has potential to induce bone regeneration. Hybrid materials that exploit these properties can combine the osteogenic potential and the load-bearing capacity for potential applications in large-load bone defect models.
In a recent study, Swati Midha and co-workers developed a novel 3-D hybrid construct using silk-based inks with different bioactive glass compositions integrated to recreate a bone-mimetic microenvironment that supports osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (BMSC) lines in the lab. Now published in Biomedical Materials, IOP Science, the scientists used direct writing instruments to produce the silk fibroin-gelatin-bioactive glass scaffolds (SF-G-BG). The results delivered appropriate cues to regulate the development of customized 3-D human bone constructs in vitro.
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Capturing Engine Heat May Boost Gas Mileage
Automakers are looking for ways to improve their fleets’ average fuel efficiency, and scientists may have a new way to help them. In the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, one team reports the development of a material that could convert engine heat that’s otherwise wasted into electrical energy to help keep a car running — and reduce the need for fuels. It could also have applications in aerospace, manufacturing and other sectors.
In 2012, the Obama administration announced fuel-efficiency standards that would require U.S. vehicles to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Improving gas mileage could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global dependence on fossil fuels.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2015/07/capturing-engine-heat-may-boost-gas-mileage
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At the very centre of the image above is something incredible - a single, positively-charged strontium atom, suspended in motion by electric fields.
Not only is this an incredibly rare sight, it’s also difficult to wrap your head around the fact that this tiny point of blue light is a building block of matter.
The image was captured by physicist David Nadlinger from the University of Oxford, and it’s been awarded the overall prize in the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council photo competition.
To give you a little perspective on the size of this set-up, the atom is being held in place by electric fields emanating from those two metal needles on either side of it.
The distance between them is about 2 millimetres (0.08 inch).
The atom is being illuminated by a blue-violet laser. The energy from the laser causes the atom to emit photons which Nadlinger could capture on camera using a long exposure.
The whole thing is housed inside an ultra-high vacuum chamber and dramatically cooled to keep the atom still. Nadlinger took this photo through the window of the vacuum chamber.
To learn more, click here.
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A team of physicists has defied conventional wisdom by inducing stable ferroelectricity in a sheet of strontium titanate only a few nanometers thick. The discovery could open new pathways to find new materials for nanotechnology devices, said Alexei Gruverman, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln…
I have a comic in an upcoming anthology! This is for @liliesanthology, a semiannual woman’s romance magazine focusing on stories about women in romantic relationships with one another.
Here’s a little preview of my comic! I wanted to show off my black and white and also color versions of this one panel. Most of the other panels were colored with a gradient map; for this one shot however I wanted it to be visually distinct from the other panels, since it takes place in another world!
A preview of Izzy “Strontium” Hall’s charming comic Merry Christmas Hannah! to be published in our upcoming eighth volume, Nodding Lily!
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