Category Technology/Electronics

It contained blasts in a series of controlled explosions in the luggage hold of a Boeing 747 and an Airbus 321. The Fly-Bag, which lines an aircraft’s luggage hold with multiple layers of novel fabrics and composites, was tested under increasing explosive charges on disused planes at Cotswolds Airport, near Cirencester, this week. After the tests, explosives were placed in the aircraft without the lining to show the damage that could be caused.

>>Disasters such as the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 drove the need for this kind of invention, as well as the incident in which a printer cartridge bomb was found on-board a cargo plane at East Midlands Airport in 2010.
Fundamental to the design of the bag is a combination of fabrics which have high strength and impact and heat resistance...

>>could improve Med Imaging/ Cancer Rx’s + Increase Solar Cell efficency by 25 – 30%. Goal is to turn low-energy colors of light, such as red, into higher-energy colors, like blue/green. A traditional solar cell can only absorb light with energy above a certain threshold. Infrared light passes right through, its energy untapped. But if low-energy could be transformed into higher-energy light, a solar cell could absorb more.

UD’s College of Engineering’s A/Prof Matthew Doty said; “You can’t simply turn a red photon into a blue one, but you can combine the energy from two or more red photons to make one blue photon.” …”Photon upconversion” isn’t new but UD team’s approach is. They want to design a new kind of semiconductor nanostructure that will act like a ratchet...

The magnetic moments of the three organic molecules and the cobalt surface align very stably relative to each other.
Credit: M. Gruber, KIT

A thin layer of organic molecules can stabilize the magnetic orientation of a cobalt surface. “This special interaction between organic molecules and metal surfaces could help to manufacture information storage systems in a more simple, flexible and cheaper way,” explains Wulf Wulfhekel from KIT. Microscopic magnets with constant orientation are used in hard disks, for example. With a view to “printable electronics,” organic molecules indeed could open up new simple production methods utilizing the self-organization of molecules.

METHOD: 3 molecular layers of the dye phtalocynine were applied to the surface of ferromagnetic cobalt...

Durdu Güney stands in his lab where he and his team work on creating a ‘perfect lens’.
Credit: Michigan Tech

Imagine if we could see nanometer-sized viruses with the naked eye. That’s a real possibility with a “perfect lens.” It is a theoretical perfected optical lens made out of metamaterials, engineered to change the way the materials interact with light. MTU researchers have found a way to possibly solve one of the biggest challenges, getting light waves to pass through the lens without getting consumed. “These findings open the possibility of reviving the early dreams of making ‘magical’ metamaterials from scratch.”

Metamaterials go beyond the limits of natural materials such as glass, plastic, metal or wood...