Catalyst renders nerve agents harmless

A team of scientists including researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has studied a catalyst that decomposes nerve agents, eliminating their harmful and lethal effects. The research ...

Asymmetric sound absorption lets in the light

If you've ever lived in an apartment building or stayed in a hotel room, you are probably familiar with the inconvenience of inadequate sound absorption. Acoustic absorption refers to the absorption of sound energy by a material. ...

Nature-inspired material uses liquid reinforcement

Materials scientists at Rice University are looking to nature—at the discs in human spines and the skin in ocean-diving fish, for example—for clues about designing materials with seemingly contradictory properties—flexibility ...

Breakthrough in harvesting energy from automotive shock absorbers

Boosting the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles by "harvesting" the energy generated by their shock absorbers and feeding it back into batteries or electrical systems such as air conditioning has become a major goal in automotive ...

Making colorful buildings that convert solar light into energy

By converting sunlight into usable energy, solar thermal devices could become an important part of a sustainable future. To that end, researchers have developed a new solar-light-absorbing surface that can have almost any ...

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