2012 – Page 13 – GOLLYGEE!

11.13.2012

lightest metal on earth

Its called microlattice. Material was developed by scientists at UC Irvine and Caltech. It is lighter than styrofoam and as shown in the picture above can sit atop a dandelion without crushing it. From Popular Science:

The key structural component is a series of hollow tubes. In a study published last November in Science, the researchers exposed a light sensitive liquid to UV light through a patterned mask, which created a three-dimensional photopolymer lattice. They then deposited a layer of nickel-phosphorous onto the polymer lattice, which was then etched. The remaining structure was a macroscopic material with hollow tubes as the base structural elements. The resulting material had a density of .9 mg/cm³. By comparison, ultralight silica aerogels are 1 mg/cm³.

Though metallic microlattice is the lightest metal developed to date, it held the title of lightest material for less than a year. Aerographite, a carbon material developed by researchers at the Technical University of Hamburg and University of Kiel (and first reported in an Advanced Materials article in June 2012), weighs in at just .2 mg/cm³.

11.09.2012

malaria vaccine is a let down

A vaccine for malaria that was in clinical trials turns out not to produce robust effects. In a clinical trial only about 30% of study participants gained immunity as a result of the vaccine. From the NY Times:

Three shots of the vaccine, known as RTS, S or Mosquirix and produced by GlaxoSmithKline, gave babies fewer than 12 weeks old 31 percent protection against detectable malaria and 37 percent protection against severe malaria, according to an announcement by the company at a vaccines conference in Cape Town.

Last year, in a trial in children up to 17 months old, the same vaccine gave 55 percent protection against detectable malaria and 47 percent against severe malaria.

The new trial “is less than we’d hoped for,” Moncef Slaoui, Glaxo’s chairman of research and development said in a telephone interview. “But if a million babies were vaccinated, we would prevent 260,000 cases of malaria a year. This is a disease that kills 655,000 babies a year — 31 percent of that is a very large number.”

The company, which has already spent more than $300 million on the vaccine, wants to keep forging ahead, he said, “but it is not just our decision.”

The research was at least partially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

11.09.2012

continuous motion

Researchers at Brandeis have made a gel of microtubles and adding polymers to create a constantly moving material. From Scientific American:

The researchers first made a gel comprising microtubules — stiff polymer filaments that, in living cells, act as guiding tracks for kinesin, a ‘motor protein’ that is propelled along the microtubule cables by the cellular fuel ATP. “It’s like a tyre,” says Zvonimir Dogic, a physicist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, who led the study. Adding a small polymer to the mix encouraged the microtubules to form bundles and create a moving network. Water droplets containing this gel move continuously — in an oil emulsion and on flat surfaces — without external force, the researchers found.

Each molecule of ATP propels a kinesin molecule 8 nanometers forward along the microtubule track. With thousands of kinesins rumbling along multiple microtubules, a droplet that is 100 micrometers across spontaneously begins rolling when it touches a flat surface.

Check the Scientific American link for videos of the material in motion. The research appears in Nature.

GOLLYGEE!

Year: 2012 (page 13 of 55)

lightest metal on earth

malaria vaccine is a let down

continuous motion