• New cement absorbs CO2

    Concrete — the essential material used by the world’s $3.8 trillion construction industry — accounts for 5 percent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions; each ton of cement emits about 800 kg (1,763 lb.) of CO2 during manufacture — and every year, some 3 billion tons of cement turn into nearly 30 billion tons of concrete, a British start-up has devised a new cement — based on magnesium silicates rather than limestone — that absorbs and stores CO2 when it is produced

  • New Florida museum is glass-covered hurricane-proof fortress

    The new Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is designed to withstand category 5 hurricanes; the roof is 12-inch thick solid concrete; the walls are even thicker, at eighteen inches; the glass, which makes up big sections of the outside of the museum, can hold up to a category 3 hurricane; if that glass breaks, letting rain, wind, and debris into the facility, the art will still be safe: storm doors will shield the galleries on the third floor, and the vault, which is on the second floor (all of the art is placed on the second and third floors, above the 30-foot storm surge of a category 5 storm)

  • High-tech opportunities of lab-produced silk

    Tougher than a bullet-proof vest yet synonymous with beauty and luxury, silk fibers are a masterpiece of nature whose remarkable properties have yet to be fully replicated in the laboratory; thanks to their amazing mechanical properties as well as their looks, silk fibers have been important materials in textiles, medical sutures, and even armor for 5,000 years; Tufts researchers are getting close to producing silk in the lab

  • Good business: Developers make buildings more disaster-secure than building code requires

    A Florida developer hopes to get more business by making his building hurricane-proof; with debris-resistant windows on all thirty-five of its stories, the developer says the building would withstand a Category 5 hurricane without significant damage; the extra hurricane proofing built into the Miami building shows that sometimes the private market can overtake the public sector when it comes to building design and safety standards; for example, in New York and Washington, D.C., some developers have put in anti-terrorism safeguards that exceed building codes

  • New electronic fiber make smarter fabric a reality

    A soft, flexible fiber with a 1,000 times more capacitance than a co-axial cable could lead to smarter textiles; these smart fabrics could sense their environment, store, transmit, and process information — as well as harvest and store the energy necessary to do all this

  • Fibertect absorbent can clean Gulf oil spill's crude, holds toxic oil and mustard vapors

    New material — raw cotton-carbon Fibertect — can absorb oil up to fifteen times its weight; the material can clean up crude oil and adsorb toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon vapors which sicken oil spill clean-up crew members; also, the material has been tested to successfully remediate mustard vapors such as those found from dumped munitions

  • Next-generation HazMat boots made of leather

    The rubber boots that emergency personnel wear when responding to situations where hazardous materials (HazMat) are present may be functional, but they are not very comfortable; with the availability of new textile materials and surface treatments, researchers are confident they can develop a comfortable — and functional — leather boot for use in both fire-fighting and HazMat operations

  • Purdue University membrane technology could help cleanup oil spills

    Purdue University researchers developed a new type of membrane which may be used to clean up oil spills such as BP’s massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the technology could be used for a variety of other applications, including water purification and industrial uses

  • Yarn passes in-vehicle flame test

    Fire in an enclosed space, such as an aircraft, is extremely dangerous as occupants can die from smoke inhalation before there is any danger from the flames. Flame-retardant materials delay the spread of fire, but these typically contain halogenated substances that emit thick black smoke and toxic gases; new material developed which meets halogen-free flame-retardant regulations

  • Crack-proof concrete developed

    Researchers develop crack-proof concrete; the construction industry has spent decades looking for materials that would not crack when they are used to repair and reinforce older materials, because even hairline cracks can let in pollutants and start disintegrating the concrete; BASF engineers offer a solution

  • Self-healing concrete developed

    University of Rhode Island researchers develop a new type of self-healing concrete that promises to be commercially viable and have added environmental benefits; a microencapsulated sodium-silicate healing agent is embedded directly into a concrete matrix; when tiny stress cracks begin to form in the concrete, the capsules rupture and release the healing agent into the adjacent areas

  • Tiny sensors embedded in cell phones identify, map airborne toxins in real time

    Cell phones are everywhere people are, so University of California-San Diego’s researchers want to turn the devices into chemical sensors; the tiny sensor, a porous flake of silicon, changes color when it interacts with specific chemicals. By manipulating the shape of the pores, the researchers can tune individual spots on the silicon flake to respond to specific chemical traits

  • Researcher builds ultra-dense nanodot memory

    North Carolina State researcher develops a way to store binary data on dots 6 nm in size — possibly leading to a one-square-inch chip holding 2 TB of data; the nanodots are magnetic sensors integrated into a semiconductor and can be made as small as 6 nm in size using semiconductor manufacturing processes

  • Fiber polymer replaces steel bars in major building projects

    UAE University researchers have developed an inexpensive alternative to demolishing damaged buildings and rebuilding them: using FRP (fiber reinforced polymer); FRP can be used in strengthening and repair instead of concrete or steel jacketing, which are labor intensive; moreover, concrete and steel jacketing systems are also often vulnerable to the same deterioration mechanism that caused the problem in the first place

  • Designing terror-proof buildings

    Terrorists attack high-profile building for the symbolism such attacks carry; students at Purdue University test methods to make buildings terror-proof, and the research results could be used in high-profile construction projects