Marvin Young

From tires to clothes to shampoo, many ubiquitous products are made with polymers, large chain-like molecules made of smaller sub-units, called monomers, bonded together. Now, a team of researchers has created a new fundamental unit of polymers that could usher in a new era of materials discovery.

Bacteria and other swimming microorganisms evolved to thrive in challenging environments, and researchers struggle to mimic their unique abilities for biomedical technologies, but fabrication challenges created a manufacturing bottleneck. Microscopic, 3D-printed, tori -- donuts ­­-- coated with nickel and platinum may bridge the gap between biological and synthetic swimmers, according to an international team of researchers.

A flat plate floor system is a reinforced concrete frame system with a uniform thickness that is supported directly over the columns or the...

A soak pit or a soakaway is a closed porous chamber that is directly connected to a primary treatment unit. It serves the function of letting the...

Construction workers are more likely to use drugs than workers in other professions, finds a new study.

A team created the next generation of long-wave infrared plastic lenses. The plastic, a sulfur-based polymer forged from waste generated by refining fossil fuels, is incredibly useful for lenses, window and other devices requiring transmission of infrared light, or IR, which makes heat visible. The new lens material could make IR cameras and sensor devices more accessible to consumers.

Grit chamber is a long narrow or circular tank in the primary sewage treatment plant that is designed to reduce the velocity of the flow of sewage to...

Portland cement is an excellent building material generally used for its excellent binding properties giving strength to structural elements....

As everything in the world, concrete also has a lifespan and it wears out over time. Imperfections forms when the concrete hardens or sinks into the...

Flexible or bendable concrete gains ductility property while normal concrete shows the brittle property. This difference of flexible concrete from...

Concrete is pervious and porous compound which absorbs water, waterborne contaminants and chemicals that will cause deterioration to concrete. To...

Poisson’s ratio of concrete is the ratio of transverse strain to longitudinal strain in concrete specimen subjected to axial loads. The...

Nacre, the rainbow-sheened material that lines the insides of mussel and other mollusk shells, is known as nature's toughest material. Now, a team of researchers has revealed precisely how it works, in real time.

Scientists are studying the toll climate change may take on aging US infrastructure, which includes over 600,000 bridges. A new study links the potential impacts of climate change with the structural integrity of thousands of bridges transecting America's highways and towns. The analysis demonstrates a need to rethink the nation's priority order of bridge repair, as climate change looms and infrastructure funding remains limited.

A flexible or bendable concrete is an engineered cementitious composite (ECC) that exhibits the property of ductile material unlike the brittle...

Concrete is one of the most frequently used building materials worldwide. The distinctive characteristics like strength, durability, low-maintenance,...

Reinforced concrete is a combination of traditional cement concrete with reinforcements (steel bar). This combination is made to use the compressive...

Physicists predicted the Hubble Space Telescope would see a rising vapor plume as the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crashed into the far side of Jupiter in 1994. And sure enough, the plume produced by the impact matched their computational analysis.

A bollard is a short post used to create a protective or architectural perimeter. They come in a wide variety of shapes and styles to accentuate or...

Table Form shuttering is a kind of shuttering specializing in floor concreting and it is widely used in high building and skyscraper, multilayer...

In RCC structures, the placement of a single reinforcement bar may not meet the desired length of the concrete section. Hence, it becomes necessary...

The Power-Pole Finisher is a concrete finishing trowel that is used in achieving concrete finishes such as flatwork, decorative concrete and stamping...

Researchers have modeled the fluid dynamics of multi-rotor wind turbines via high-resolution numerical simulations. The simulations demonstrate a clear advantage for a turbine model with four rotors. The researchers found, that the wind turbine wake recovers much faster with multi-rotor turbines, that multi-rotor turbines produce slightly more energy than single-rotor turbines, and that a turbine with four rotors as far apart as possible is the optimal construction.

New insights into how the molecular organization of charged molecules can be regulated to transform large-scale structures from ribbons to scroll-like cochleate structures could inform future drug-delivery strategies.

A team of acoustic researchers has built macroscopic crystal structures that use internal rotation to attenuate the propagation of waves. The method makes it possible to build very light and stiff materials that can also 'swallow' low frequencies very well, as they report.

Wrapping a building in a fire-protective blanket is a viable way of protecting it against wildfires, finds the first study to scientifically assess this method of defense. Rigorous testing reveals that existing blanket technology can protect structures from a short wildfire attack, but for successful deployment against severe fires and in areas of high housing density, technological advancement of blanket materials and deployment methods, as well as multi-structure protection strategies, are needed.

New research integrates nanomaterials into heterostructures, an important step toward creating nanoelectronics.

Waterstops or waterbars are premanufactured joint filler used to prevent the transmission of water through the construction joint. Waterstops are...

Cracks in the desert floor appear random to the untrained eye, even beautifully so, but the mathematics governing patterns of dried clay turn out to be predictable -- and useful in designing advanced materials.

Using a new composite nanoparticle catalyst, researchers have shown they can make degradation-resistant PBO, a polymer used to make body armor and other high-performance fabrics.

Climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of natural hazards like flooding. In turn, floodwaters erode a bridge's foundation, creating scour holes that compromise the integrity of the structure. But to date, it's been possible to quantify that scour risk. A new model developed by civil engineering researchers takes a holistic approach combining climatology, hydrology, structural engineering, and risk assessment to determine the effects of climate change on bridges.

During the past 20 years, the oil industry has begun to transition away from light oils toward heavier oils. But transporting heavy oils cost-effectively is a challenge because heavy oils are viscous -- essentially a thick, sticky and semifluid mess. One way to outmaneuver this problem is a viscoplastic lubrication technique. It can complement existing methods to stabilize interfaces within multilayer flows.

Lateral torsional buckling is a buckling phenomenon observed in unrestrained beams. When a beam subjected to loads results in both lateral...

Follow the Fine Homebuilding Podcast on your favorite app. Subscribe now and don’t miss an episode: The Fine Homebuilding editors hear from listeners on gutter guards and can lights before […] The post Podcast 200: Home Shops, Working Lead-Safe, and Keeping Cool in Carolina appeared first on Fine Homebuilding .

A new way to calculate the interaction between a metal and its alloying material could speed the hunt for a new material that combines the hardness of ceramic with the resilience of metal.

A researcher has shown for the first time that the shape of a nanostructure has an effect on its ability to retain water. This has important ramifications for heat transfer, which is important when it comes to performance in small electronics.

Researchers have reported the high-performance SnS thermoelectric crystals combining the desirable features of low-cost, earth-abundant materials and environmental friendliness. For the first time, they discovered the interplay of triple electronic bands leading to the high performance of thermoelectric SnS crystals, which is promoted by Se alloying. Furthermore, Se alloying plays a second important role in lowering the thermal transport.