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    Category Physics

    Engineers design a robotic gripper for cleaning up space debris

    June 29, 2017, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics, Astronomy/Space

    Close up of the robotic gripper made by the Cutkosky lab at Stanford University. The gripper is designed to grab objects in zero gravity using their gecko-inspired adhesive. Credit: Kurt Hickman/Stanford News Service

    Close up of the robotic gripper made by the Cutkosky lab at Stanford University. The gripper is designed to grab objects in zero gravity using their gecko-inspired adhesive. Credit: Kurt Hickman/Stanford News Service

     
    Right now, about 500,000 pieces of human-made debris are whizzing around space, orbiting our planet at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour. This debris poses a threat to satellites, space vehicles and astronauts aboard those vehicles. What makes tidying up especially challenging is that the debris exists in space. Suction cups don’t work in a vacuum. Traditional sticky substances, like tape, are largely useless because the chemicals they rely on can’t withstand the extreme temperature swings. Magnets only work on objects that are magnetic...
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    Bacteria-Coated Nanofiber Electrodes Digest Pollutants

    June 28, 2017, Categories  Physics, Health/Medical, Chemistry/Nanotechnology, Biology/Biotechnology, Environment/Geology

    Bacteria-coated nanofiber electrodes digest pollutants

    Carbon nanofibers coated with PEDOT in a scanning electron microscope image. Credit: Juan Guzman and Meryem Pehlivaner/Provided

    Cornell materials scientists and bioelectrochemical engineers may have created an innovative, cost-competitive electrode material for cleaning pollutants in wastewater. The researchers created electro-spun carbon nanofiber electrodes and coated them with a conductive polymer, called PEDOT, to compete with carbon cloth electrodes available on the market. When the PEDOT coating is applied, an electrically active layer of bacteria – Geobacter sulfurreducens – naturally grows to create electricity and transfer electrons to the novel electrode...

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    One Billion Suns: World’s Brightest Laser Sparks new behavior in Light

    June 26, 2017, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    A rendering of how changes in an electron's motion (bottom view) alter the scattering of light (top view), as measured in a new experiment that scattered more than 500 photons of light from a single electron. Previous experiments had managed to scatter no more than a few photons at a time. Credit: Extreme Light Laboratory|University of Nebraska-Lincoln

    A rendering of how changes in an electron’s motion (bottom view) alter the scattering of light (top view), as measured in a new experiment that scattered more than 500 photons of light from a single electron. Previous experiments had managed to scatter no more than a few photons at a time. Credit: Extreme Light Laboratory|University of Nebraska-Lincoln

    Physicists from University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeing an everyday phenomenon in a new light. By focusing laser light to a brightness one billion times greater than the surface of the sun – the brightest light ever produced on Earth – the physicists have observed changes in a vision-enabling interaction between light and matter...

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    Skin-based Biofuel Cell developed for Scavenging Energy from Human Sweat

    June 25, 2017, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics, Biology/Biotechnology

    Amay J. Bandodkar et al. Soft, stretchable, high power density electronic skin-based biofuel cells for scavenging energy from human sweat, Energy Environ. Sci. (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C7EE00865A

    Amay J. Bandodkar et al. Soft, stretchable, high power density electronic skin-based biofuel cells for scavenging energy from human sweat, Energy Environ. Sci. (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C7EE00865A

    A team at the University of California has developed a skin patch that uses human sweat as a fuel source to power an external device. Scientists and engineers are convinced that consumers want easy-to-wear consumer products—health monitors that are built into clothes, for example, or that adhere to the skin. In this new effort, they have found a way to harness human sweat as an energy source and report that the device they built was able to power a Bluetooth transmitter.

    Sweat can be used as an energy source because it contains lactate, which produces energy when it oxidizes with lactate oxidase...

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