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'Oleo Sponge' may be the key to cleaning up after oil spills
Cleaning up after an oil spill isn't an easy job. Just ask Exxon Mobil, or, for a more recent example, BP. Current clean-up methods include skimming it of a body off water's surface or burning it. Neither are ideal for a few reasons, but beyond impacting the environment even further, they don't account for the sludge that's trapped below the waves. That's where the Department of Energy's Oleo Sponge comes in.
Researchers create magic sponge to clean up oil spills
Researchers at Australia's Deakin University claim to have developed a new material that's capable of cleaning up large oil spills in a flash. A team, led by Professor Ying Chen, has created a new method that uses boron nitride powder as the building block for a sponge that can absorb oil separate from water. Since you couldn't just sprinkle the substance onto the area around a crashed oil tanker, it had to be built into a porous 3D structure. In doing so, the team has been able to increase the surface area per gram to roughly five and a half tennis courts.
Injectable 'smart sponge' controls diabetes, presents new targeted drug delivery method
Diabetics might appreciate high-tech glucose sensors when they're available, but the option for other advanced treatments is certainly intriguing. Take, for example, this new method developed by North Carolina State University researchers that uses injectable sponge to control blood sugar levels. No, it's not the same sponge you use to clean at home -- the material is made out of a substance taken from crab and shrimp shells called chitosan. This spongy material forms a matrix that's approximately 250 micrometers in diameter, where a rise in blood sugar causes a reaction in the pores that leads to the drug's release. Fighting diabetes is but one of the things this miraculous sponge can be used for; developed further, it could even "intelligently" release anticancer drugs whenever the chitosan reacts to tumors or cancer cells in close proximity. Seems like medical technology is getting smarter with each passing day.
Scientists find that graphene can be used to build lasers
You already know that graphene can be used to make transistors, solar cells and even Sennheiser-quality cans. But if you think that's about as cool as the carbon material can get, listen to this: It can also be used to make ultrashort-pulse lasers. According to scientists from a smattering of institutions, the atomic-scale chickenwire material has the ability to absorb light effectively -- much like a sponge -- over a broad range of wavelengths. It can then release the light it absorbs in quick bursts that last a few femtoseconds each (with one femtosecond lasting one millionth of one billionth of a second), which is what ultrashort-pulse lasers do. With graphene as a component instead of traditional materials, scientists could develop a laser as small as a pencil that's immune to thermal damage typically caused by intense beams. The finished product, if ever someone actually concocts one, could be applied across a variety of fields -- everything from pollution monitoring to medicine. For those unafraid of technobabble, there's plenty more in the source link. [Image credit: Michaelpkk, Wikimedia]
Alt-week 8.18.12: Graphene sponges, zero-g athletics and tweets in space
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. We see a lot of crazy stories here at Engadget, especially when we spend our week poking around in dark and scary corners of the internet specifically in search of them, just so you don't have to. We consider it a service almost. One that we're delighted to provide, we must add. When else would we be able to share such delights as an astronaut triathlete, soft, color-changing robots and a recent response to a thirty-year-old alien broadcast? Exactly. This is alt-week.
