When a material is made, you typically cannot change whether that material is hard or soft. But a group of University of Michigan researchers have developed a new way to design a “metamaterial” that allows the material to switch between being hard and soft without damaging or altering the material itself.
Metamaterials are man-made materials that get their properties—in this case, whether a material is hard or soft—from the way the material is constructed rather than the material that constructs it. This allows researchers to manipulate a metamaterial’s structure in order to make the material exhibit a certain property.
In the group’s study, published in the journal Nature Communications, the U-M researchers discovered a way to compose a metamaterial that can be easily manipulated to increase the stiffness of its surface by orders of magnitude—the difference between rubber and steel.
Since these properties are “topologically protected,” meaning that the material’s properties come from its total structure, they’re easily maintained even as the material shifts repeatedly between its hard and soft states.
They crowded in closets and piled in bathtubs, bracing for their lives as a tornado leveled a southern Georgia mobile home park, killing at least seven people there.
In all, the storms that ravaged the region overnight Saturday into Sunday left at least 18 people dead in the Southeast, including 14 in Georgia. Authorities did not release names of victims on Sunday.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency said seven people died in Cook County, and there were two deaths each in Berrien and Brooks counties, in a largely rural area along I-75 between Albany, Georgia and Lake City, Florida, and three in Dougherty County.
“You can imagine putting a bomb in a mobile home and having it explode. That’s about what it looks like,” Adel Mayor Buddy Duke said Sunday of Sunshine Acres, a community of about 60 mobile homes outside of Adel in Cook County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta.
The Atlanta Falcons spent 25 years playing in the Georgia Dome, and they saved their best for last.
Led by a four-touchdown passing performance by Matt Ryan, the Falcons ended their tenure in this stadium with their biggest home win in franchise history, routing the Green Bay Packers 44-21 in the NFC Championship Game to advance to Super Bowl LI.
“For the fans, for this city and for the teams that rocked this place for 25 years, we felt your energy from the very beginning,” Falcons head coach Dan Quinn said. “So it’s only fitting, at the NFC Championship Game, the last game played here, we felt that too.”
A Russian company has unveiled commemorative silver and gold coins featuring Donald Trump’s face ahead of his presidential inauguration.
The limited-edition coins ― only 45 have been made ― feature a cherubic mug of the incoming president as well as the Statue of Liberty and the inscription: “In Trump We Trust.”
Vladimir Vasyukhin, director of the metal-works company Art-Grani, recently showcased the nearly two-pound medallion to The Associated Press Television Network.
Heavy-hitting lawyers plan to sue President Donald Trump in federal court Monday over business interests that they say put him in violation of the Constitution by receiving payments from foreign governments.
The nonprofit good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, will file the suit Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the organization said.
The suit alleges that Trump violated the Constitution the moment he was sworn in as president on Friday because he had not divested his interests in the Trump Organization
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Donald Trump at a news conference Jan. 11 with his attorney Sheri Dillon to discuss his business interests. AFP – Getty Images
There’s no denying that director M. Night Shyamalan’s filmmaking career has been polarizing, with movies in the quality range of The Sixth Sense to, somehow also,After Earth. Of course, if there’s a calling card to Shyamalan’s directorial style, it’s his propensity for third act twists that can flip a movie on its head. That’s what makes The Sixth Sense so iconic.
To that end, his controversial film Split is quintessential Shyamalan, with a final twist that puts the entire narrative in a whole new light and adds exciting possibilities for a sequel. The twist is perhaps worth the price of admission in and of itself, but here, we can discuss it in length. Just, seriously, don’t read on if you don’t want this twist spoiled — it’s actually quite clever.
A chunk of ice half the size of Jamaica which is breaking away from West Antarctica is now attached to its parent ice shelf just by a thread, scientists reported Friday.
.Covering 5,000 square kilometres (1,900 square miles) and nearly 100 storeys deep, the formation is poised to snap off from Larsen C ice shelf, creating “one of the largest icebergs ever recorded,” the researchers said in a statement.
A widening rift running the length of the finger-shaped, 350-metre (1150-feet) -thick ice block grew 10 kilometres (six miles) longer some time during the last three weeks, satellite images revealed.
“The rift is likely to break off in the next few months—if it doesn’t, I’ll be amazed,” said Adrian Luckman, a professor at Swansea University in Wales, and leader of Britain’s Project Midas, which tracks changes in West Antarctic ice formations.
“It’s so close to calving that I think it’s inevitable,” he told AFP.
Researchers have found a way to trigger the innate, but previously hidden, ability of graphene to act as a superconductor – meaning that it can be made to carry an electrical current with zero resistance.
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The finding, reported in Nature Communications, further enhances the potential of graphene, which is already widely seen as a material that could revolutionise industries such as healthcare and electronics. Graphene is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms and combines several remarkable properties; for example, it is very strong, but also light and flexible, and highly conductive.
Since its discovery in 2004, scientists have speculated that graphene may also have the capacity to be a superconductor. Until now, superconductivity in graphene has only been achieved by doping it with, or by placing it on, a superconducting material – a process which can compromise some of its other properties.
A team of researchers with members from Iceland, the U.K. and the Netherlands has found a genetic factor that plays a role in how much education a person might attain over their lifetime and that the factor is becoming less common. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they analyzed genomic information in a national database in Iceland and what it showed.
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Prior efforts have demonstrated that the more education a person has, the fewer offspring they are likely to produce. This has caused some concern among social scientists, as it suggests that we as a species might be evolving to become less intelligent beings. In this new effort, the researchers sought to determine if there might be a way to see this process at work.
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A depiction of the double helical structure of DNA. Its four coding units (A, T, C, G) are color-coded in pink, orange, purple and yellow. Credit: NHGRI
Is there anybody out there? The question of whether Earthlings are alone in the universe has puzzled everyone from biologists and physicists to philosophers and filmmakers. It’s also the driving force behind San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane’s research into exoplanets—planets that exist outside Earth’s solar system.
As one of the world’s leading “planet hunters,” Kane focuses on finding “habitable zones,” areas where water could exist in a liquid state on a planet’s surface if there’s sufficient atmospheric pressure. Kane and his team, including former undergraduate student Miranda Waters, examined the habitable zone on a planetary system 14 light years away. Their findings will appear in the next issue of Astrophysical Journal in a paper titled “Characterization of the Wolf 1061 Planetary System.”
“The Wolf 1061 system is important because it is so close and that gives other opportunities to do follow-up studies to see if it does indeed have life,” Kane said.
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An artist’s rendering of an exoplanet is shown. An exoplanet is a planet that exists outside Earth’s solar system. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Georgia storms
Credit: Newcastle University
Credit: AlexanderAlUS/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0
An artist’s rendering of an exoplanet is shown. An exoplanet is a planet that exists outside Earth’s solar system. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
