A simple cotton T-shirt may one day be converted into tougher, more comfortable body armor for soldiers or police officers.
Researchers at the University of South Carolina, collaborating with others from China and Switzerland, drastically increased the toughness of a T-shirt by combining the carbon in the shirt’s cotton with boron – the third hardest material on earth. The result is a lightweight shirt reinforced with boron carbide, the same material used to protect tanks.
Dr. Xiaodong Li, USC College of Engineering and Computing Distinguished Professor in Mechanical Engineering, co-authored the recent article on the research in the journal, Advanced Materials.
“USC is playing a leading role in this area. This is a true breakthrough,” Li said, calling the research “a conceptual change in fabricating lightweight, fuel-efficient, super-strong and ultra-tough materials. This groundbreaking new study opens up unprecedented opportunities.”
The scientists started with plain, white T-shirts that were cut into thin strips and dipped into a boron solution. The strips were later removed from the solution and heated in an oven. The heat changes the cotton fibers into carbon fibers, which react with the boron solution and produce boron carbide.
German scientists have created a three-dimensional "invisibility cloak" that can hide objects by bending light waves.
The findings, published in the journal Science on Thursday, could in the future make it possible large objects invisible, but for now the researchers said they were not keen to speculate on possible applications.
"For now these...cloaking devices are just a beautiful and exciting benchmark to show what transformation optics can do," said Tolga Ergin of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Transformation optics use a class of materials called metamaterials that guide and control light.
If we need proof that their could be life on other planets we just need to see the extreme places that we find life on earth.
WASHINGTON – In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That's why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera's cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
"We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there," said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. "It was a shrimp you'd enjoy having on your plate."
"We were just gaga over it," he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it's not a shrimp. It's a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Do you know who is (truly) poor?" His companions replied: "A poor man amongst us is one who has (no money)." The Prophet then said: "The poor of my community will be he who comes on the Day of Resurrection with prayers and fasts and charity, but since he hurled abuses on others, brought slander on others, unlawfully consumed the wealth and shed the blood of others...his virtues will be credited to the account of the one (who suffered at his hand)."
Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1179
"Verily, for all men and women who have surrendered themselves to God, and all believing men and believing women, and all truly devout men and truly devout women, and all men and women who are true to their word, and all men and women who are patient in adversity, and all men and women who humble themselves (before God), and all men and women who give in charity, and all self-denying men and self-denying women, and all men and women who are mindful of their chastity, and all men and women who remember God unceasingly: for (all of) them has God readied forgiveness of sins and a mighty reward."
The Holy Quran, 33:35
SAY SOMETHING GOOD OR KEEP QUIET - TOP
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Whoever believes in God and the (Day of Judgment) should not hurt his neighbor...should serve his guest generously and...should say something good or keep quiet."
Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Number 158
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once offered prayer while carrying his granddaughter on his shoulder. “The (Prophet) led (the people) in prayer while she was on his shoulder. When he bowed he put her down and picked her up when he got up. He kept on doing so until he finished his prayer.”
Sunan of Abu-Dawood, Hadith 353
One commentator wrote: "The purpose behind the action of the Prophet of carrying (his granddaughter) in the prayer was to set an example before the Arabs who considered having daughters and carrying them around as something bad or shameful. The Prophet…acted differently from them, and carried a girl on his neck in the prayer, and making something clear by example is much more effective than a mere precept."
Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 2, Number 84
GOD ALWAYS ACCEPTS REPENTANCE - TOP
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “God will continue to hold out His hand at night so that anyone who has sinned during the day might repent, and to hold out His hand during the day so that anyone who has sinned at night might repent. And God will continue to do so until the sun rises from the west (on the Day of Judgment).”
Riyadh-us-Salaheen, Hadith 16
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "For every day on which the sun rises, there is a (reward from God) for those who establish justice among people."
Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 3, Hadith 870
NASA's first flight test of its Ares I-X booster is only slated to last two minutes, but it represents the culmination of years of work by the rocket-minded ATK Space Systems in Utah and almost 1,000 other NASA workers and private contractors across 17 states.
To ensure that they see the fruits of their labor, technicians have installed more than 700 sensors on the $445 million Ares I-X test vehicle. That electronic swarm should provide engineers with a smorgasbord of flight data, and has led to a few jokes regarding the sensor-studded rocket.
"It's almost like flying a Christmas tree," said Trina Patterson, a spokesperson for ATK Space Systems, an aerospace company based in Magna, Utah. The rocket is set launch at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) Tuesday fromNASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
ATK has good reason to want that data, because it produced the first rocket stage that plays the undeniable starring role in the upcoming launch. Its story represents just one out of many involved in the U.S. space agency's first small step back to the moon with its tallest rocket — the 327-foot (100-meter) Ares I-X — in more than 30 years.
European astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. Scientists using the European Southern Observatory telescope didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.
Six of the newly found planets are several times bigger than Earth, increasing the population of so-called super-Earths by more than 30 percent. Most planets discovered so far are far bigger, Jupiter-sized or even larger.
