Engineers develop surgical “duct tape” as an alternative to sutures

A staple on any engineer’s workbench, duct tape is a quick and dependable fix for cracks and tears in many structural materials. MIT engineers have now developed a kind of surgical duct tape — a strong, flexible, and biocompatible sticky patch that can be easily and quickly applied to biological tissues and organs to help […]

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New lightweight material is stronger than steel

Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had […]

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UK plants flowering a month earlier due to climate change

Climate change is causing plants in the UK to flower a month earlier on average, which could have profound consequences for wildlife, agriculture and gardeners. Using a citizen science database with records going back to the mid-18th century, a research team led by the University of Cambridge has found that the effects of climate change […]

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Does Cannabis Ease Pain, Speed Recovery in Injured Athletes?

Increasingly, professional athletes in sports ranging from football to bicycling to long-distance running have turned to using cannabis to reduce pain from post-game injuries and to help speed recovery. Anecdotal reports of cannabis’ purported benefits abound, but empirical evidence is scant. Today, the National Football League announced funding of a novel clinical trial that will […]

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New Super-Conducting Technology Takes Data Beyond Zeroes and Ones

Remember flip-phones? Our smartphones may one day look just as obsolete thanks to spintronics, an incipient field of research promising to revolutionize the way our electronic devices send and receive signals. In most current technologies, data is encoded as a zero or a one, depending on the number of electrons that reach a capacitor. With […]

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Real space alternative for magnetic spin-coupling models

Theoretical chemists have developed an approach for understanding magnetic spin coupling from a real space perspective, where they consider the delocalisation of electrons rather than focusing on the one-electron orbital picture. Completely compatible with existing models for magnetic spin coupling, this new perspective could help advance our understanding of the phenomenon.  Many modern technologies rely […]

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Shifting to a plant-based diet could drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions

Phasing out animal agriculture represents “our best and most immediate chance to reverse the trajectory of climate change,” according to a new model developed by scientists from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. The worldwide phase out of animal agriculture, combined with a global switch to a plant-based diet, would effectively halt the increase […]

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Increased storminess may give rise to North Atlantic’s ‘cold blob’

While climate change is making much of the world warmer, temperatures in a subpolar region of the North Atlantic are getting cooler. A team of researchers report that changes in the wind pattern, among other factors, may be contributing to this “cold blob.” In a study published in Climate Dynamics, the researchers report that a northward […]

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A new, nanoscale, 3D structure to control light

Metamaterials, made up of small, repeated structures, engineered to produce desired interactions with light or sound waves, can improve optical devices used in telecommunications, imaging and more. But the functionality of the devices can be limited by the corresponding design space, according to Lei Kang, assistant research professor of electrical engineering at Penn State. Kang […]

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