Devices that need charged on a regular basis, such as smartphones and tablets, are apt to be left plugged in for long periods of time, even if the battery itself has reached it full charge. Though charged, there is still an energy draw that is taking place, which results in wasted power, and, though not […]
Oopsie. About a million liters of radioactive acid sludge accidentally poured out of a tank at the Ranger uranium mine in northern Australia. As if the spill itself weren’t bad enough, the mine is also located in the Kakadu National Park, where most of Crocodile Dundee was filmed. That place is a national treasure.
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Oil spills are considered to be a major environmental disaster, being a slippery substance by itself whenever it is on a microscope slide or when it is leaked into the ocean. In fact, it costs a whole lot to clean up an oil spill, but what is worse would be the negative impact on the environment. Since prevention is always better than cure, how about utilizing special surfaces which were specially designed in order for it to counteract oil’s naturally low surface tension? This is exactly what the researchers over at the University of Missouri have worked on, by developing a method so that it can control the unpredictable liquid.
Known as “virtual walls”, this creation by Missouri engineers might eventually consign oil spills to history. Professor Jae Kwon Kwon and graduate student Riberet Almeida of Missouri’s school of engineering work have plenty of faith in their material which they hope would eventually lower the chances of oil spills. Kwon shared, “Our newly developed surface helped keep oil, which is normally unmanageable, in predetermined pathways making it controllable. We feel that oil-repellant surfaces can be widely utilized for many industrial applications, and virtual walls for low-surface tension liquids also have immense potential for many lab-on-a-chip devices which are crucial to current and future research technique.”
Virtual Wall Could Prevent Oil Spills original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Solar energy is one method for powering homes and such with renewable resources, something that has seen great strides in past years but that still suffers from various limitations. One Japanese company has a big vision for the technology that would overcome some of these limitations, and it involves putting solar panels on the moon […]
While everyone is freaking out about Amazon’s plan to unleash an army of delivery drones
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Fresh Kills used to be New York’s largest landfill, until it was shutdown back in 2001. Seven years later a project would be started – to turn this massive landfill into a park, one of the biggest around. More recently it has been announced that the construction of a solar plant is part of this landfill’s conversion.
Aquariums are universally fascinating, but they’re usually a hassle to maintain. The EcoQube is a very low maintenance aquarium for fish and plants that successfully thrive off of each other, and it’s being crowdsourced now on Kickstarter. It’s a must have!
Cushion-san reusable packaging by Japanese designer Masashi Sano protects fragile housewares, artworks and other delicate possessions just as well as plastic packing peanuts. Unlike the latter, however, you’ll want to keep these cute foam cutouts around for your next moving experience.
When it comes to flying creations, inspiration is often gathered from a common pool of creatures: birds, insects, maybe a dragon or two. Researchers at New York University went a more unconventional route, and designed a flying robot based on, of all things, a jellyfish. The robot doesn’t need water to pull off its gravity-defying […]
The Yucca brevifolia, or Joshua tree, only grows in the southwest U.S., mostly in the Mojave Desert, so a lot of people don’t even know about the spike-y and pipecleaner-y weirdo.
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