Materials & Innovations

On thinking

By Eileen De Guire / November 17, 2011

Rodin’s bronze and marble sculpture, The Thinker. How does he do it? Credit: Wikipedia. Most of us think for a living. Our outputs—experiments, talks, papers, etc.—are evidence of our having…

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White House announces recent Materials Genome Initiative developments

By / November 15, 2011

The White House’s Cyrus Wadia, speaking above right with Penn State’s Zi-Kui Liu at the recent MS&T’11 meeting, and Tom Kalil revealed several new projects in support of the MGI.…

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Best birthday cake 2011

By / November 15, 2011

I am ashamed I overlooked the 20th birthday of the Oughtred Society. Picture via the International Slide Rule Museum.

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Much ado about nothing … and the study thereof

By Eileen De Guire / November 10, 2011

Being neither a physicist nor a mathematician, Shakespeare probably knew very little about nothing. This painting of the Bard is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Credit: Wikipedia Try…

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NERSC also partnering in ‘Materials Project’ effort

By / November 4, 2011

Kristin Persson is one of the experts behind the Materials Project, the new computational tool aimed at taking the guesswork out of new materials discoveries. Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt, LBL. Right…

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With ‘Materials Project,’ DOE and MIT launch new materials properties search engine

By / November 3, 2011

The details on this are a little skimpy at this point, however the DOE caught my attention this afternoon when it announced that a “first-of-its-kind” online search tool for materials…

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NSF releases more info on Materials Genome Initiative funding plans

By / October 28, 2011

NSF director Subra Suresh (above) reported during the MS&T11 plenary session that the next step in getting out information about MGI funding opportunities would come in the “Dear Colleague Letter.”…

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Wednesday materials fun: More jellyfish propulsion

By / October 18, 2011

We featured work before on the Naval Research Labs work with artificial jellyfish for aquatic sensor applications, but this is the first time I have seen the efficiency of jellyfish…

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ARPA-E awards $37.3M for disruptive thermal storage innovations, materials

By / October 13, 2011

Abengoa, designer of novel concentrating solar power towers, is a participant in several new ARPA-E funded projects for storing thermal energy. Credit: Abengoa Last week Eileen reported on ARPA-E’s new…

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Other materials stories that may be of interest

By / October 11, 2011

Check ’em out: US firm uses solar power to recover oil reserves A new technology to increase oil production is being tested on one of US’s oldest oil fields in…

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