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IMAGE: The rotating furnace used to make light-weight, advanced telescope mirrors is located underneath of the stands of University of Arizona s football stadium. In this image, the oven s 33-foot diameter lid. view more
Credit: Damien Jemison, Giant Magellan Telescope - GMTO Corporation
At 3 p.m. on March 5, a gigantic furnace will slowly start spinning underneath the stands of Arizona Stadium at the University of Arizona. Fire-engine red, massive in size and resembling a sci-fi version of a Dutch oven, the furnace is the only one of its kind, and its sole purpose is to produce the world s biggest and most advanced telescope mirrors.
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VIDEO: Videos of test detonations at Sandia National Laboratories of thin explosive films, about as thick as a few pieces of notebook paper. view more
Credit: Sandia National Laboratories
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Using thin films no more than a few pieces of notebook paper thick of a common explosive chemical, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories studied how small-scale explosions start and grow. Sandia is the only lab in the U.S. that can make such detonatable thin films.
These experiments advanced fundamental knowledge of detonations. The data were also used to improve a Sandia-developed computer-modeling program used by universities, private companies and the Department of Defense to simulate how large-scale detonations initiate and propagate.
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Texas A&M University researchers have recently shown superior performance of a new oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloy they developed for use in both fission and fusion reactors.
Dr. Lin Shao, professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, worked alongside research scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Hokkaido University to create the next generation of high-performance ODS alloys, and so far they are some of the strongest and best-developed metals in the field.
ODS alloys consist of a combination of metals interspersed with small, nanometer-sized oxide particles and are known for their high creep resistance. This means that as temperatures rise, the materials keep their shape instead of deforming. Many ODS alloys can withstand temperatures up to 1,000 C and are typically used in power generation and engines within aerospace engineering, as well as cutlery.
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Interspecies interactions are the foundation of ecosystems, from soil to ocean to human gut. Among the many different types of interactions, syntrophy is a particularly important and mutually beneficial interspecies interaction where one partner provides a chemical or nutrient that is consumed by the other in exchange for a reward.
Syntrophy plays an essential role in global carbon cycles by mediating the conversion of organic matter to methane, which is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and is a source of sustainable energy. And in the human gut, trillions of microbial cells also interact with each other and other species to modulate the physiology of their human host.
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Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials (CDMM) and the Institute for Metals Superplasticity Problems (IMSP RAS) have studied the fatigue behavior of additive-manufactured high-entropy alloys (HEA). The research was published in the
Journal of Alloys and Compounds.
Conventional 20th century materials that are extensively used in industries and mechanical engineering have reached their performance limit. Nowadays, alloying is commonly used to improve the alloys mechanical performance and increase their operating temperature. An alternative to alloying, HEAs containing equal atomic fractions of their constituent elements were first obtained in 2004. Since then, various publications have offered ample evidence of excellent mechanical performance of HEAs over a broad temperature range. Most of the characteristics were demonstrated for HEAs manufactured by traditional metallurgy techniques.