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James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday that the OceanGates’ Titan submersible that imploded underwater did so because it was not constructed out of the proper materials.Cameron, who is considered an expert at diving and submersibles, made the remarks during interviews with ABC News and The New York Times after officials announced that they had located the debris of the vessel on the ocean floor and the five passengers on board had all died.

Texas A&M University and the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory have developed a family of synthetic materials with self-healing capabilities. The polymers vary in texture, from ultra-soft to extremely rigid. They can be 3D printed, are recyclable, and stick to each other in air and underwater. Such materials are expected to fulfil the need of re-configurability in several military applications. The synthetic polymers comprise long strings of repeating molecular motifs, while the elastomeric polymers exhibit lightly crosslinked chains providing a rubbery feature to the material. Researchers of the study focused on the molecules involved in the...

May 8 (UPI) -- The study of a unique crystalline material, composed of aluminum and platinum atoms, has revealed a pair of electronic properties that have never been seen before. The atoms in the new materials are crystallized in a special pattern, with each row offset from the other. The pattern creates a spiral staircase of aluminum and platinum atoms. According to the new study, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, the material's unique crystalline structure produces Rarita-Schwinger fermions in its interior and extremely long quadruple topological Fermi arcs on its surface. Rarita-Schwinger fermions are a type of...

Simple processes can make wood tough, impact-resistant—or even transparent Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make bullet-resistant armor plates. Wood is abundant and relatively low-cost—it literally grows on trees. And although it has been used for millennia to build everything from furniture to homes and larger structures, untreated wood...

(CNN)Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday his whistleblowing website might release "a lot more material" relevant to the US electoral campaign. Assange was speaking in a CNN interview following the release of nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by suspected Russian hackers. However, Assange refused to confirm or deny a Russian origin for the mass email leak, saying Wikileaks tries to create ambiguity to protect all its sources. "Perhaps one day the source or sources will step forward and that might be an interesting moment some people may have egg on their faces. But to exclude certain...

Photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly, have the potential to enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But before such optical connections can be integrated into telecommunication systems and computers, researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale. A new on-chip zero-index metamaterial makes this possible, opening the door for technological innovation and research. This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and is described in the...

A truck carrying potentially "extremely dangerous" radioactive material has been stolen in Mexico, the UN atomic watchdog said Wednesday. The truck was transporting a cobalt-60 teletherapy source intended for medical use to a storage center when it was stolen on Monday in Tepojaco, near Mexico City, the International Atomic Energy Agency said, according to Agence France-Presse

Container's material properties affect the viscosity of water at the nanoscale Sep 19, 2013 Enlarge Georgia Tech associate professor Elisa Riedo poses with a glass water bottle and a plastic water bottle. While container materials don't significantly affect the rate at which water pours from bottles of this size, a new study shows that the properties of containers at the nanoscale dramatically affect the viscosity of water. Credit: Rob Felt Water pours into a cup at about the same rate regardless of whether the water bottle is made of glass or plastic. But at nanometer-size scales for water and potentially...

Squeeze something, it’s supposed to get smaller. But some odd substances grow in one direction when pressed on all sides. Andrew Cairns, a graduate student at the University of Oxford, has found one called zinc dicyanoaurate, a transparent material that expands by up to 10 percent when put under pressure. The unusual characteristic, called negative linear compressibility, is similar to how squid and octopus muscles work. And so it’s not too far-fetched to think that the new material could be used to make artificial muscles. The strange behavior happens because of the molecular structure of the zinc dicyanoaurate. It contains...

Packing foam now entering the marketplace is engineered from mushrooms and agricultural wasteA new packing material that grows itself is now appearing in shipped products across the country. The composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots is called Mycobond™, and its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material. And unlike most foam substitutes, when no longer useful, it makes great compost in the garden. The technology was the brainchild of two former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduates, Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer, who founded Ecovative Design of Green Island,...

BBC documentary reveals: Some 5,000 Muslim children being taught from Saudi textbook which teaches that Jews are transformed from pigs, apes. Islamic schools in Britain are teaching anti-Semitic material to high school children, with some exposed to extremist preachers and extremist Islamist groups, a BBC documentary was set to reveal on Monday evening. According to its flagship documentary program "Panorama," around 5,000 Muslim children are being taught from a Saudi Arabian textbook which teaches that Jews are transformed from pigs and apes and asks them to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jews. The documentary, titled "British Schools Muslim Rules," will...

Exclusive: Georgia trial reveals how sting netted highly enriched uranium that had been smuggled via train inside lead-lined cigarette box Highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia. Two Armenians, a businessman and a physicist, have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi. Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, informed other heads of state of...

A disc containing top secret materials that former soldier Anat Kam copied and removed from the Head of IDF Central Command's bureau is missing. Kam claims she has lost it and does not remember what she did with it or where it has gone. The Tel Aviv District Court allowed this fact to be published Monday. Kam, 23, was charged with serious espionage three months ago. She is accused of stealing more than 2,000 documents from the computers at the office of the Head of Central Command, Gen. Yair Naveh, when she served as an assistant to his aide-de-camp four...

If you're trying to buy happiness, you'd be better off putting your money toward a tropical island get-away than a new computer, a new study suggests. The results show that people's satisfaction with their life-experience purchases — anything from seeing a movie to going on a vacation — tends to start out high and go up over time. On the other hand, although they might be initially happy with that shiny new iPhone or the latest in fashion, their satisfaction with these items wanes with time. The findings, based on eight separate studies, agree with previous research showing that experience-related...

Prized for their impressive antlers, red deer have been caught in the hunters' sights for generations. But a deer's antlers are much more than decorative. They are lethal weapons that stags crash together when duelling. John Currey, from The University of York, UK, has been intrigued by the mechanical properties of bone for over half a century and has become fascinated by the mechanical properties of antler through a long-standing collaboration with Tomas Landete-Castillejos at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. 'Antlers look as if they are dry,' says Currey, 'but no one knew if they really are dry when used...

Scientists confirm that parts of earliest genetic material may have come from the stars Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008. The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars. The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, provides evidence that life's raw materials came from...

The material in action A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.The as-yet-unnamed material - a form of artificial rubber - is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine. The substance, described in the journal Nature, produces surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each other. Pieces of the material join together again as if never parted without the need for glue or a special treatment. This remarkable property comes from careful engineering of the molecules in the material. The French researchers...

Litroenergy is a patent pending designed light source material that emits light for 12 plus years- without electricity or sun exposure! Our development/design of long-life, self-luminous micro particles called Litrospheres (non-toxic) emit light continuously for 12 plus years (half-life point) without any exposure to a light or other energy (not effected by cold or heat). This extremely low cost material offers 24/7 light, which can be injection molded or added to paint. It is 5,000lb crush resistant, stable and constant light source (gives off no U.V. rays). It is designed to give off almost any color of light desired. Our...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM has developed a way to make microchips run up to one-third faster or use 15 percent less power by using an exotic material that "self-assembles" in a similar way to a seashell or snowflake. The computer services and technology company said the new process allows the wiring on a chip to be insulated with vacuum, replacing the glass-like substances used for decades but which have become less effective as chips steadily shrink.A cross section of a microprocessor shows empty space in between the chip's copper wiring in this undated handout photograph. REUTERS/IBM/Handout

Iran 'just two years away from having material for nuclear bomb' By Damian McElroy and David Blair Last Updated: 12:47am BST 10/04/2007 The confrontation between Iran and the West over its nuclear programme deepened yesterday when Teheran announced that it had started enriching uranium on an "industrial scale". The move is in breach of three United Nations resolutions and will raise fears that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime is seeking a nuclear weapon. In a carefully orchestrated atmosphere of national celebration, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "I proudly announce that as of today Iran is among the countries which produce nuclear fuel on...