Researchers from the University of Michigan have developed a new type of composite plastic. This new material constructed from clay nano-sheets and a water soluble polymer has been found to be as strong as steel but is lighter and transparent. While no official name has been given to this invention, it has been unofficially dubbed "plastic steel" by Nicholas Kotov, one of the scientists on the project.

The material was developed in the team's efforts to solve a problem that has befuddled both engineers and scientists. Former studies on nanotubes, nanosheets, and nanorods found that each one is stable in smaller configurations. However, when used to build larger devices, the final product came out to be structurally weaker than the base material. Kotov explained the problem in detail:

When you tried to build something you can hold in your arms, scientists had difficulties transferring the strength of individual nanosheets or nanotubes to the entire material. We've demonstrated that one can achieve almost ideal transfer of stress between nanosheets and a polymer matrix.

The current process to create the composite looks to be very tedious since it involves layering both the glue-like polymer called polyvinyl alcohol and nanosheets. Each layer must dry off before the next one can be added. Creation of larger objects would be a very difficult task indeed considering it would take 300 layers of both substances to make a piece of Plastic Steel as thin as a piece of plastic wrap.

The scientists behind this project are convinced that research on this plastic could lead to further advancements in both military and police armor, microelectromechanical devices, various vehicles like unmanned aircraft, microfludics, and even biomedical sensors. If the composite is as strong as they say it is, then their assessment would be correct.

Scientists and researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a nanoengineered battery that is physically identical to paper. Ultra thin and flexible, this could very well be the future of energy storage devices.

The creation of this product was pure genius. Paper was combined with aligned carbon nanotubes which act as electrodes and permit it to conduct electricity. Ann and John H. Broadbent Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer Robert Linhardt noted that:

It’s essentially a regular piece of paper, but it’s made in a very intelligent way. We’re not putting pieces together – it’s a single, integrated device.

The components are molecularly attached to each other: the carbon nanotube print is embedded in the paper, and the electrolyte is soaked into the paper. The end result is a device that looks, feels, and weighs the same as paper.

Engineered to function as both a lithium-ion battery and a supercapacitor, it has the capability of providing a consistent stream of energy like a normal battery in addition to the supercapacitor's high energy pulses. This versatility will come in handy if ever this technology becomes adopted by the masses.

It is very resilient with the ability to function in extreme temperatures. Running out of power is not even issue since sweat or even blood can be used powering the device (Matrix anyone?). All of these factors combine to make it ideal for use in hostile environments.

Currently, the development team behind the project are working on a way to mass produce it cheaply. It's a pretty safe bet that when they do, this new battery/supercapasitor will be sending waves through the electronics industry.

A new study by Brunel University may open up new possibilities for exploration on virtual worlds. The study was conducted by Dr. Simon Bradford and Nic Crowe over a period of three years following the world of Runescape, one of the more popular online games.

The study focused on the individual and social development of players inside and outside the game. The game essentially becomes something like the Matrix, where people live in a virtual universe independent of what is "real."

The virtual world provides players with the opportunity to explore what they can't do in the real world.  Well, aside from killing monsters and casting spells. Players are able to practice their entrepreneurial skills in ways they won't be able to do in the real world. They are also able to experiment with different social roles and identities, allowing them to express characteristics that are inhibited in the real world.

The virtual world also provides settings and themes that they can't experience in real life, offering them unlimited play on their imagination.  And on that note, it also provides the means to go to settings they can experience in real life but can't. Like going to the beach in the winter, or to clubs if they live in a rough neighborhood in the real life.

Says the study: "At a time when emerging technologies such as the internet, and computer games in particular, continue to be subject to suspicion and concern it is important that we also recognize the benefits of what is an increasingly popular and important activity for our young people."

Time travel offers you two paths- go to the past or go to the future. Of the two traveling to the past has always been the more desirable. That's because everyone has something in their past that they want to change, be it good or bad.

However, physicists from the most respected institutions have come to the conclusion that traveling back to the past is close to impossible for a number of reasons-logical and theoretical.

The most popular theory suggest that the universe is woven into a fabric called space-time which involves understanding that everything exists in four dimensions. These are length, width, height and time. We humans exist in the third dimensional plane, and we can move freely in it. However, humans cannot move through time, and that is the big hurdle.

To "rip" through the fabric of space and time, scientists say that there's a small chance that humans can access what is known as "wormholes." These wormholes are rifts in the matrix that constitutes reality- a hypothetical tunnel connecting two regions of space-time. The regions bridged could be two completely different universes or two parts of one universe.

Scientists say matter can pass through, so a man in a ship may be able to squeeze in. If he does, he may end up in another location and time in the universe, past or future. He may never find the tunnel that leads where he wants to be in the past, but it's a start.

Another theory is that there may be remnants of what was there before the universe came to be. These are called cosmic strings. These are virtual strings that either loop all over the universe or stretch to infinity. They're made of immense mass and unimaginable energy, making them potentially an avenue where time and space can be warped and that opens the window to the past.

Traveling to the past is hard, but a trip to the future is relatively easier says Professor Michio Kaku. "If you want to know what the Earth is like one million years from now, I'll tell you how to do that," said Greene, a consultant for Déjà Vu - a recent movie that dealt with time travel. "Build a spaceship. Go near the speed of light for a length of time—that I could calculate. Come back to Earth, and when you step out of your ship you will have aged perhaps one year while the Earth would have aged one million years. You would have traveled to Earth’s future."

Diamond, get off that high chair because there's a new "Stiff King" on the block. According to NewScientistTech, a new mineral that is stiffer than diamond - previously the stiffest material known - has been created by a team from Washington State University and Wisconsin-Madison University, both in the US, and from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany.

In order to create the new Stiff Lord, the team mixed molten tin, heated to about 300ºC, with pieces of a ceramic material called barium titanium - often used as an insulator in electronic components. The particles were each about one-tenth of a millimetre in diameter and were dispersed evenly through the tin using an ultrasonic probe.

"Because they are held inside the tin matrix, strain builds up inside the barium titanate," composite materials researcher Mark Spearing of Southampton University, UK explains, "at a particular temperature that energy is released to oppose a bending force."

During testing, the samples became stiffer than diamond between temperatures of 58ºC and 59ºC. Some were nearly 10 times as resistant to bending.

Here's an existential question for you: Are we real?

Apparently, some people believe that we may not be. That we are just all part of some kind of simulation. Bah, that certainly puts Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) argument to the grave. There are three points that support this simulation argument.

First, the chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small. Second, almost no technologically mature civilizations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours. Third, you are almost certainly in a simulation.

Whoa, backtrack on that last one. Almost certainly in a simulation? Hmm... like in the Matrix? Like in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? It would appear so.

According to the argument, assuming that the third point is true, that we are indeed in a simulation, it is highly possible because for one, there is the possibility that there are indeed technologically advanced civilizations out there capable of running a simulation of life. Secondly, and more importantly, these existing civilizations are interested in running a simulation, hence the human experiment.

Anyway, there sure is a lot of room for contention as to this topic. So if you wanna dig more into this simulation argument, feel free to check it out by clicking on the Read link below.

And don't bust your brains out.

Not familiar with the Freman Stillsuit? Didn't bother to read Dune? Well this development by researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science might just get us a few steps closer to Frank Herbert's water recycling suit.

The Team of researchers have apparently developed a new reverse osmosis membrane that promises to reduce the cost of seawater desalination and waste-water reclamation.

Reverse osmosis desalination basically uses extremely high pressure to force saline or polluted waters through the pores of a semi-permeable membrane. Water passes through, salt-ions and other impurities don't. Presto. Purified recycled water.

Developed by civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Eric Hoek and his research team, the membrane uses a cross-linked matrix of polymers and engineered nano-particles designed to draw in water ions but repel nearly all contaminants. The filter works at nano-scale.

Moreover, because the membranes repel particles that might ordinarily stick to its surface, the new membranes foul more slowly than conventional ones. The result is a process that is just as effective as current methods but more energy efficient and potentially much less expensive.

Initial tests suggest the new membranes have up to twice the productivity — or consume 50 percent less energy — reducing the total expense of desalinated water by as much as 25 percent. Yes, because of the high pressures required, this technology is currently applicable at an industrial level. But what if? Perhaps in the future we'll all be drinking our urine and our feces, just like the Fremen.

What is the "Matrix question"? Imagine a world that isn't really a world, where you think and feel and perceive everything is real, but in fact is only a construct. The question is, "What if that was our world? What if life is a dream?"

It's a question posed by philosophers everywhere, and now that same question will be asked by one of the world's top scientists. Professor Sir Martin Rees, Royal Society professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, mentions that computers complex enough to build an entire virtual universe are possible, with the "people" in it living real, "virtual" lives.

Now, some of us might think of MMOs and say, "STFU noob. We do that with MMOs," but the idea he is referring to is on an entirely different scale.

The professor will be part of a British TV documentary called "What We Don't Know" next month, and according to a report by The Times, he could very well say the exact same words they've listed on their article:

Over a few decades, computers have evolved from being able to simulate only very simple patterns to being able to create virtual worlds with a lot of detail. If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we think we’re living in. This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves be in such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense we could be ourselves the creations within this simulation.

See, it's the Matrix question being asked by scientists. Imagine if your avatar in WoW ran off one day and asked another wandering soul, "Do you ever feel like life is some sort of silly game? It's like I can't control my life anymore." Needless to say, if you ever find yourself asking a question like that, you might just hate it if the programmer of our virtual world decided to reply.

According to researchers, a part of the brain can be likened to a computer. Professor Randall O'Reilly of the University of Colorado said that the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia functions pretty much like your average PC or Mac.

Computers operate by manipulating electrical signals into binary "on and off" states. In the human grey matter, the prefrontal cortex is the binary while the basal ganglia is the switch. Basically, the two does the same thing. What can this new knowledge do for us?

Since the cortex is essential to intellectual ability, more understanding on how it works will allow scientists to suggest drugs or modifications that might enhance the human learning process. They can find a way to manually turn on or off some neurons to allow a more steady flow of info into the brain. Imagine a pill that will grant you high IQs for a limited amount of time. It's all nice, but how will they study this part of the brain?

According to the good professor, researchers can conduct studies on it like they do weather modelling. If enough information is collected, it can tell you how the system works. We'll see if this study can also help students improve studying habits, eh?