Les casques pourraient bientôt offrir une meilleure protection tout en étant plus confortables, grâce à un nouveau matériau de rembourrage développé par les laboratoires HRL de Californie. On dit qu’il résiste mieux aux impacts que la mousse, tout en gardant les têtes plus fraîches et plus sèches. lire plus…

A fine coffee froth does not last forever. The bubbles that make the milk light and creamy are eventually torn apart by the pull of gravity. But there is a place where foams have a more stable life—in the weightless environment of the International Space Station, bubbles don’t burst so quickly and foams remain wet for longer. lire plus…

A Rutgers-led team of engineers has developed an automated way to produce polymers, making it much easier to create advanced materials aimed at improving human health. lire plus…

Gel-like materials have a wide range of applications, especially in chemistry and medicine. However, their usefulness is sometimes limited by their inherent random and disordered nature. Researchers from the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Solid State Physics have found a way to produce a new kind of gel which overcomes this limitation. It is still malleable and adaptable like existing gels, but it has a more ordered structure, which can open up a new range of possible uses in various fields. lire plus…

It is not only thermally and electrically conductive, it is also intelligent,” said Carmel Majidi, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who directs the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon. “Just like a human recoil when touching something hot or sharp, the material senses, processes, and responds to its environment without any external hardware. Because it has neural-like electrical pathways, it is one step closer to artificial nervous tissue.” lire plus…

Hokkaido University researchers have developed a hydrogel that does the opposite of what polymer-based materials, like plastic bottles, normally do. Their material hardens when heated and softens when cooled. Their findings could lead to the fabrication of protective clothing items for traffic and sports-related accidents. lire plus…

Skoltech researchers in collaboration with scientists from the Institute for Problems of Chemical Physics of RAS and the Ural Federal University have shown that high-capacity high-power batteries can be made from organic materials without using lithium or other rare elements. In addition, they demonstrated the impressive stability of cathode materials and record high energy density in fast charge/discharge potassium-based batteries. The results of their studies were published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, and Chemical Communications. lire plus…

Conditioning is a method made famous by Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. Pavlov trained a dog by ringing a bell every time the dog was fed. The dog learned to associate the bell with food, and then drooled when it heard the bell ring, even if it didn’t see anything to eat. In an earlier study, researchers at Aalto University and Tampere University succeeded in conditioning a solid gel so that it melted to become liquid under the influence of light alone. Now, the same researchers have taught a liquid crystal polymer to move, and to stick to an object of a given color. lire plus…