Rubber
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May 23 | News
A new study by civil engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that using stiffer pavements on the nation's roads could reduce vehicle fuel consumption by as much as 3%—a savings that could add up to 273 million barrels of crude oil per year, or $15.6 billion at today's oil prices. This would result in an accompanying annual decrease in carbon dioxide emissions of 46.5 million metric tons.
12/1/2011 | News
The Harvard University laboratory of chemist George M. Whitesides, R&D Magazine’s 2007 Scientist of the Year, has produced a new type of flexible robot that calls to mind the clay animation character Gumby. It can wiggle and squirm through tight spaces much like the squid and starfish that inspired researchers to design it.
5/26/2011 | News
A
team of researchers at MIT has found a way to make complex composite
materials
whose attributes can be fine-tuned to give various desirable
combinations of
properties such as stiffness, strength, resistance to impacts, and
energy
dissipation.
5/11/2011 | News
As
a raw material, petroleum is risky because its pricing is so volatile.
By domesticating a Russian variety of dandelion and using the
milky-white substance that seeps from its roots, researchers from Ford
and Ohio State University believe they can create a new source of
natural rubber for cupholders, floor mats, and interior trim in its
cars.
12/6/2010 | News
Civil engineers at Purdue Univ.
helped the Indiana Department of Transportation save more than $1
million over
the past two years by using shredded tires as a new low-cost material in
construction projects.
9/8/2010 | News
Galileo Galilei’s experiments on the
motions of falling and rolling objects, described in his 1638 book, Two
New Sciences, are considered by many
to be the beginning of modern science. Now researchers at MIT have
conducted a
variation on his experiments that has produced unexpected results.
5/28/2010 | News
The rubber boots that emergency personnel wear when responding to
situations
where hazardous materials (HazMat) at present may be functional, but
they’re
not very comfortable. New research coming out of North Carolina State
Univ.
hopes to provide a next generation HazMat boot that meets both criteria.
5/24/2010 | News
New research from MIT indicates that not
only did pre-Columbian peoples know how to process the sap of the
local
rubber trees along with juice from a vine to make rubber, but they had
perfected a system of chemical processing that could fine-tune the
properties
of the rubber depending on its intended use.
3/25/2010 | News
Arrhythmic hearts soon may beat in time again, with minimal surgical invasion, thanks to flexible electronics technology developed by a team of Univ. of Illinois researchers, in collaboration with the Univ. of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Northwestern Univ. These biocompatible silicon devices could mark the beginning of a new wave of surgical electronics.
2/24/2010 | News
Princeton engineers have recently reported their success at making flexible, biocompatible rubber films for use in implantable or wearable energy harvesting systems. The material could be conceivably be used, for instance, to harvest energy from lungs and use it to run pacemakers without the need for batteries.
