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Gizmorama - April 20, 2015
Good Morning,
How would you like to pick up oil spills with a net? No, really!
When environmental messes rear their ugly head, cleanup could become much easier with the use of stainless steel mesh technology.
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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*-- Nano-coated mesh could help clean up oil spills, cheaply --*
COLUMBUS, Ohio (UPI) - Environmental cleanups could become a lot easier, cheaper and more effective if researchers at Ohio State University can find a way to scale their newly developed stainless steel mesh technology.
Designing steel mesh doesn't sound all that impressive, but this isn't an ordinary sheet of metal with holes in it. This mesh can separate water and oil.
Pour a solution of oil and water through the mesh and the magic can be witnessed firsthand. The oil collects on top, while the water filters through and collects in a beaker below.
"If you scale this up, you could potentially catch an oil spill with a net," Bharat Bhushan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State, said in a press release.
By layering a series of materials atop the mesh -- including silica, surfactant and polymer -- researchers created a nanostructure that binds to oil but not water. Tiny pieces of glass, or silica, were sprayed atop the mesh to mimic the texture of lotus leaves, which have been proven to repel oil and attract water. Surfactant, a compound that lowers surface tension, was then embedded in a polymer layer and laid atop the mesh.
Together, the layers create a half-smooth, half-rough surface that performs the opposite function of the lotus leaf, attracting oil and repelling water. Bhushan says his latest work is the product of ten years of testing differing combinations of materials.
"We've studied so many natural surfaces, from leaves to butterfly wings and shark skin, to understand how nature solves certain problems," Bhushan said. "Now we want to go beyond what nature does, in order to solve new problems."
"Nature reaches a limit of what it can do," added research partner Philip Brown. "To repel synthetic materials like oils, we need to bring in another level of chemistry that nature doesn't have access to."
Bhushan is working on variations of the new technology for use on automotive glass like car mirrors, and also as an additive for liquid lubricants.
The research is detailed in two new papers published in Nature Scientific Reports.
*-- Scientists have developed a breath test that might be able to predict stomach cancer --*
HAIFA, Israel (UPI) - A new breath test may be able to indicate whether someone is at a high risk for stomach cancer.
A study looked at how reliable the breath test might be and found promising results. The test picks up "breath prints," which means it finds compounds that are associated with cancer risk. Of the 484 people included in the study, the test was 92 percent accurate at judging which ones had some level of stomach cancer.
"The attraction of this test lies in its non-invasiveness, ease of use, rapid predictiveness, and potentially low cost," said author Professor Hossam Haick, Department of Chemical Engineering and Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, Haifa, Israel, according to The Telegraph.
A larger study needs to be conducted to confirm the results, but if the larger study finds the test to be accurate, it could become commonly used. The study was published in the journal Gut.
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