179547752
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Live Science is reporting that researchers have modified a standard glue gun to 3D print a bone-like material directly onto fractures, paving the way for its use in operating rooms.
The device, which has so far been tested in rabbits, would be particularly useful for fixing irregularly shaped fractures during surgery, the researchers say.
Typically, large fractures or other defects in bones require bone grafting and the use of a metal fastener, such as a pin or plate, to support the broken bone as it heals. But because the shape of these implants is not specific to a given patient's fracture, this can result in poor alignment and compromised stability of the bone.
Previous studies have shown that 3D printing bespoke bone grafts for individual patients can be done, but these required considerable time and effort to make, preventing them from being used on the fly during surgery.
Now, in a study published Friday (Sept. 5) in the journal Device, Lee and colleagues detailed their new method of 3D printing a bone substitute directly onto a fracture using a glue gun. In the research, they successfully tested the technology on rabbits with leg fractures.
179438872
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fahrbot-bot writes:
In a lab in Turku, Finland, scientists have found a surprising ally in the fight for sustainable solar energy: the papery red skin of an onion.
Researchers from the University of Turku, in collaboration with Aalto University and Wageningen University, have developed a bio-based UV protection film for solar cells that not only blocks nearly all harmful ultraviolet light but also outperforms commercial plastic films. The key ingredient is a water extract made from red onion skins.
Sunlight can degrade the delicate components in solar panels—particularly the electrolyte inside dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), a type known for their flexibility and low-light performance. To mitigate this, manufacturers typically wrap cells in UV-protective films made from petroleum-based plastics like polyethylene terephthalate (PET). But these plastics degrade over time and are difficult to recycle.
Seeking a greener alternative, the team turned to nanocellulose, a renewable material derived from wood pulp. Nanocellulose can be processed into thin, transparent films that serve as the perfect substrate for UV-blocking compounds.
Their breakthrough came when they dyed these films using an extract from red onion skins, a common kitchen waste. The result was a filter that blocked 99.9% of UV radiation up to 400 nanometers, a feat that outstripped even the PET-based commercial filters chosen for comparison.
In solar cells, preserving visible and near-infrared light is crucial. That’s the part of the spectrum that powers electricity generation. And here, too, the onion-treated filter excelled: it let through over 80% of light in the 650–1,100 nm range—an ideal sweet spot for energy absorption.
Testing under 1,000 hours of artificial sunlight, the CNF-ROE film—short for cellulose nanofiber with red onion extract—held up remarkably well. It exhibited only minor discoloration and preserved the yellow hue of the electrolyte far better than any other filter. Even predictive modeling based on early degradation trends suggested the CNF-ROE filter could extend a solar cell’s lifetime to roughly 8,500 hours. The PET-based filter? Just 1,500 hours.
Google: red onions solar panels
179300016
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Phys.org is reporting on a study published in Nature Physics involving ICN2, at the UAB campus, Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an) and Stony Brook University (New York), showing for the first time that ordinary ice is a flexoelectric material — meaning it can generate electricity when subjected to mechanical deformation.
"We discovered that ice generates electric charge in response to mechanical stress at all temperatures. In addition, we identified a thin 'ferroelectric' layer at the surface at temperatures below -113C (160K)," explains Dr. Xin Wen, a member of the ICN2 Oxide Nanophysics Group and one of the study's lead researchers.
"This means that the ice surface can develop a natural electric polarization, which can be reversed when an external electric field is applied—similar to how the poles of a magnet can be flipped. The surface ferroelectricity is a cool discovery in its own right, as it means that ice may have not just one way to generate electricity, but two: ferroelectricity at very low temperatures, and flexoelectricity at higher temperatures all the way to 0 C."
This property places ice on a par with electroceramic materials such as titanium dioxide, which are currently used in advanced technologies like sensors and capacitors.
178748000
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Teachers from California and New York who want to work in Oklahoma public schools will be required to pass a certification test to prove they share the state's conservative political values.
Regardless of the subject or grade they teach, they'll have to show they know "the biological differences between females and males" and that they agree with the state's American history standards, which includes elements of a conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party stole the 2020 presidential election from President Donald Trump, which fact checkers have said are false.
The state Department of Education will implement the new certification test for teachers from the two largest Democrat-led states "who are teaching things that are antithetical to our standards" to ensure newcomers "are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids," Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, said in an interview with USA TODAY. [Oblivious to the obvious irony.]
Walters has dubbed the new requirement an "America First" certification, in reference to one of Trump's political slogans. Nonprofit conservative media company Prager U is helping Oklahoma's state department of education develop the test.
178636270
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fahrbot-bot writes:
The first extraterrestrial robotic rover was launched from Earth in 1970. It's only now, more than half a century later, that scientists have figured out why these marvels of ingenuity and engineering keep getting stuck in the soils of alien worlds.
"In retrospect, the idea is simple: We need to consider not only the gravitational pull on the rover but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better picture of how the rover will perform on the Moon," explains mechanical engineer Dan Negrut of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Our findings underscore the value of using physics-based simulation to analyze rover mobility on granular soil."
178621990
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Proposed spacecraft could carry up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri
Engineers have designed a spacecraft that could take up to 2,400 people on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to our own. The craft, called Chrysalis, could make the 25 trillion mile (40 trillion kilometer) journey in around 400 years, the engineers say in their project brief, meaning many of its potential passengers would only know life on the craft.
Chrysalis is designed to house several generations of people until it enters the star system, where it could shuttle them to the surface of the planet Proxima Centuri b — an Earth-size exoplanet that is thought to be potentially habitable.
The project won first place in the Project Hyperion Design Competition, a challenge that requires teams to design hypothetical multigenerational ships for interstellar travel.
The ship could theoretically be constructed in 20 to 25 years and retains gravity through constant rotation. The vessel, which would measure 36 miles (58 km) in length, would be constructed like a Russian nesting doll, with several layers encompassing each other around a central core. The layers include communal spaces, farms, gardens, homes, warehouses and other shared facilities, each powered by nuclear fusion reactors.
[My first thought was that someone read Arthur C. Clarke's book, Rendezvous with Rama and used it as a model design.]
178528022
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fahrbot-bot writes:
The test involves riding in a golf cart while your caddie drops balls for you.
178439258
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
NPR, and others, are reporting that Coca-Cola says it will use U.S. cane sugar in a new Coke, a plan pushed by Trump.
"We're going to be bringing a Coke sweetened with U.S. cane sugar into the market this fall," Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO James Quincey said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday.
Quincey said the new offering would "complement" Coca-Cola's core portfolio of drinks, suggesting it could arrive as an alternative, rather than a replacement, for its flagship Coke product.
CNN notes that, "sugar is more expensive in the US than in many parts of the world..." — there are also quotas and tariffs on cane sugar imported into the U.S.
The Sweeteners Users Association notes that cane sugar in the U.S. is grown mainly in Florida, Louisiana and Texas — so this will be a boon to some. Sugar beets are more widely grown in California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
178408074
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Reuters is reporting that Ukraine will let foreign arms companies test out their latest weapons on the front line of its war against Russia's invasion, Kyiv's state-backed arms investment and procurement group Brave1 said on Thursday.
Under the "Test in Ukraine" scheme, companies would send their products to Ukraine, give some online training on how to use them, then wait for Ukrainian forces to try them out and send back reports, the group said in a statement.
"It gives us understanding of what technologies are available. It gives companies understanding of what is really working on the front line," Artem Moroz, Brave1's head of investor relations, told Reuters at a defence conference in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Ukraine is betting on a budding defence industry, fueled in part by foreign investment, to fend off Russia's bigger and better-armed war machine.
178407942
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Scientists from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University have reported the world’s first electronic–photonic–quantum system on a chip, according to a study published in Nature Electronics.
The system combines quantum light sources and stabilizing electronics using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process to produce reliable streams of correlated photon pairs (particles of light)—a key resource for emerging quantum technologies. The advance paves the way for mass-producible “quantum light factory” chips and large-scale quantum systems built from many such chips working together.
Generating quantum states of light on chip requires precisely engineered photonic devices—specifically, microring resonators (the same devices recently identified by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as being integral to Nvidia’s future scaling of its AI compute hardware via optical interconnection). To generate streams of quantum light, in the form of correlated pairs of photons, the resonators must be tuned in sync with incoming laser light that powers each quantum light factory on the chip (and is used as fuel for the generation process). But those devices are extremely sensitive to temperature and fabrication variations which can push them out of sync and disrupt the steady generation of quantum light.
To address this challenge, the team built an integrated system that actively stabilizes quantum light sources on chip—specifically, the silicon microring resonators that generate the streams of correlated photons. Each chip contains twelve such sources operable in parallel, and each resonator must stay in sync with its incoming laser light even in the presence of temperature drift and interference from nearby devices—including the other eleven photon-pair sources on the chip.
178278162
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Interesting Engineering is reporting that Astral Systems, a UK-based private commercial fusion company, in collaboration with the University of Bristol, has claimed to have become the first firm to successfully breed tritium, a vital fusion fuel, using its own operational fusion reactor.
The milestone came during a 55-hour Deuterium-Deuterium (DD) fusion irradiation campaign conducted in March. Scientists from Astral Systems and the University of Bristol produced and detected tritium in real-time from an experimental lithium breeder blanket within Astral’s multi-state fusion reactors.
“There’s a global race to find new ways to develop more tritium than what exists in today’s world [currently about 20kg] – a huge barrier is bringing fusion energy to reality,” said Talmon Firestone, CEO and co-founder of Astral Systems.
Astral Systems’ approach uses its Multi-State Fusion (MSF) technology. The company states this will commercialize fusion power with better performance, efficiency, and lower costs than traditional reactors.
A core innovation is lattice confinement fusion (LCF), a concept first discovered by NASA in 2020. This allows Astral’s reactor to achieve solid-state fuel densities 400 million times higher than those in plasma.
The company’s reactors are designed to induce two distinct fusion reactions simultaneously from a single power input, with fusion occurring in both plasma and a solid-state lattice.
The reactor core also features an electron-screened environment. This design reduces the energy needed to overcome the Coulomb barrier between particles, which lowers required fusion temperatures by several million degrees and allows for higher performance in a compact size.
178103185
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fahrbot-bot writes:
The Cool Down is reporting that a team of chemical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a new process to separate crude oil components, potentially bringing forward a replacement that can cut its harmful carbon pollution by 90%.
The original technique, which uses heat to separate crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and heating oil, accounts for roughly 1% of all global energy consumption and 6% of dirty energy pollution from the carbon dioxide it releases.
"Instead of boiling mixtures to purify them, why not separate components based on shape and size?" said Zachary P. Smith, associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT and senior author of the study, as previously reported in Interesting Engineering.
The team invented a polymer membrane that divides crude oil into its various uses like a sieve. The new process follows a similar strategy used by the water industry for desalination, which uses reverse osmosis membranes and has been around since the 1970s.
The membrane excelled in lab tests. It increased the toluene concentration by 20 times in a mixture with triisopropylbenzene. It also effectively separated real industrial oil samples containing naphtha, kerosene, and diesel.
177062839
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fahrbot-bot writes:
The AP (and others) is reporting that an agency staffer at the General Services Administration (GSA) headquarters recently discovered a rectangular device on the rooftop patio attached to a wire that snaked across the roof, over the ledge and into the administrator’s window one floor below.
It didn’t take long for the employee — an IT specialist — to figure out the device was a transceiver that communicates with Elon Musk’s vast and private Starlink satellite network. Concerned that the equipment violated federal laws designed to protect public data, staffers reported the discovery to superiors and the agency’s internal watchdog.
On the GSA roof, employees found at least two transceivers, including the one with a wire running to the administrator’s office. It is not clear why the agency is using Starlink. The network provides internet service but is not generally approved for use in most government computer systems.
IT staffers, who reported the discovery to superiors, were concerned that the devices were not authorized to be used at GSA and DOGE might be utilizing them to siphon off agency data, according to internal emails obtained by the AP and a GSA employee who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
GSA’s IT staff opened an investigation to see if the terminals were a security threat, and an employee filed a complaint with the GSA’s inspector general, the emails show. The status of those probes could not be determined.
A GSA spokesman confirmed the presence of Starlink transceivers but said they were not connected “to GSA’s internal network, nor was there a security breach.”
176989267
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Consumers’ real-world stop-and-go driving of electric vehicles benefits batteries more than the steady use simulated in almost all laboratory tests of new battery designs, according to a Stanford-SLAC study – published in Nature Energy and discussed in a Stanford Report article.
The batteries of electric vehicles subject to the normal use of real-world drivers – like heavy traffic, long highway trips, short city trips, and mostly being parked – could last about a third longer than researchers have generally forecast, according to scientists working in the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center, a joint center between Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
This suggests that the owner of a typical EV may not need to replace the expensive battery pack or buy a new car for several additional years.
Almost always, battery scientists and engineers have tested the cycle lives of new battery designs in laboratories using a constant rate of discharge followed by recharging. They repeat this cycle rapidly many times to learn quickly if a new design is good or not for life expectancy, among other qualities. The study finds that this is not a good way to predict the life expectancy of EV batteries, especially for people who own EVs for everyday commuting.
176805911
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fahrbot-bot writes:
The Guardian (and others) is reporting that a reporter at The Atlantic was accidentally included in a group text on Signal that discussed upcoming military strikes in Yemen by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
Senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet have been involved in a serious security breach while discussing secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen.
In an extraordinary blunder, key figures in the Trump administration – including the vice-president, JD Vance, the defence secretary Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group.
Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.
Others in the chat included the Trump adviser Stephen Miller; Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and the key Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.
The breach was revealed in an Atlantic article published on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who discovered that he had been included in a Signal chat called “Houthi PC Small Group” and realizing that 18 other members of the group included Trump cabinet members.
Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he was unaware of the incident, saying, “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic.” [Which kind of misses the point.]
