International

Dry water – a.k.a. hydrophobic fumed silica/water – touted as CO2 absorbent, emulsion transporter

By / August 25, 2010

“Dry water.” Credit: ACS. The American Chemical Society today distributed a story that came out of one of its meetings regarding the use of “dry water” powder as a medium…

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GE’s $200 million ‘Ecomagination Challenge’ interesting combination of innovation farming, social media

By / August 10, 2010

Not quite a month ago, General Electric, along with partners Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Rockport Capital, launched a project (see video), called the Ecomagination Challenge, which would…

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Materials stories that missed the cut this week

By / August 6, 2010

At the end of each week, I end up with a list of a bunch of stories I started to write about, or started to investigate or didn’t even get…

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New speedy, high-res nanolithography method to allow the rapid prototyping of electronics

By / August 4, 2010

A new nanolithography process promises to speed up the “printing” of nanoscale patterns, which could soon allow investigators to quickly make prototypes of test electronic devices. Of course, various forms…

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Solar sail uses smart glass to steer through cosmos

By / July 27, 2010

Artist’s conception of solar sail. (Credit: JAXA.) Japan has successfully deployed a solar sail on a spacecraft, demonstrating for the first time that such technology can be used to convert…

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Rare earth’s brick wall

By / July 25, 2010

This falls into the “must read” category. A few weeks back, I posted on major cuts in China rare earth exports. Science magazine’s  Robert F. Service provides more context: “.…

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50 R&D 100 Awards given to national labs

By / July 22, 2010

Ultrasensitive Nanomechanical Transducers Based on Nonlinear Resonance, one of ORNL’s 2010 R&D 100 award winners. (Credit: ORNL.) R&D Magazine awarded DOE and other federal labs with 50 of its R&D…

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Because lithium has worked so very well for Bolivia’s economy

By / July 20, 2010

I hope a PIO is to blame for this too-clever headline: “Lithium could be gold mine for Afghanistan.” But, the premise of this story is false and is emerging as…

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Bad news for advanced ceramic & glass world: China enforcing new rare earths export restrictions

By / July 12, 2010

According to new reports in BusinessWeek and Metal-Pages, China is cutting export quotas for the rare earths and metals – required in many advanced ceramic and glass applications – by…

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40 years and still growing: Polymer-derived ceramics field still on upswing

By / July 1, 2010

A quartet of researchers from Italy and Germany have published an fascinating overview of polymer-derived ceramics in the most recent edition of JACerS. Paolo Colombo, Gabriela Mera, Ralf Riedel and…

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