Higher-throughput combinatorial printing illustration. The new 3D printing strategy, substantial-throughput combinatorial printing (HTCP), greatly accelerates the discovery and creation of new resources. Credit: College of Notre Dame
A novel 3D printing method identified as significant-throughput combinatorial printing (HTCP) has been produced that noticeably accelerates the discovery and manufacturing of new products.
The procedure entails mixing a number of aerosolized nanomaterial inks during printing, which enables for good control around the printed materials’ architecture and local compositions. This strategy generates products with gradient compositions and properties and can be utilized to a large array of substances like metals,
The time-honored Edisonian trial-and-error process of discovery is slow and labor-intensive. This hampers the development of urgently needed new technologies for clean energy and environmental sustainability, as well as for electronics and biomedical devices.
“It usually takes 10 to 20 years to discover a new material,” said Yanliang Zhang, associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Notre Dame.
“I thought if we could shorten that time to less than a year — or even a few months — it would be a game changer for the discovery and manufacturing of new materials.”
Now Zhang has done just that, creating a novel 3D printing method that produces materials in ways that conventional manufacturing can’t match. The new process mixes multiple aerosolized nanomaterial inks in a single printing nozzle, varying the ink mixing ratio on the fly during the printing process. This method — called high-throughput combinatorial printing (HTCP) — controls both the printed materials’ 3D architectures and local compositions and produces materials with gradient compositions and properties at microscale spatial resolution.
His research was published on May 10, 2023, in the journal Nature.
The aerosol-based HTCP is extremely versatile and applicable to a broad range of metals, semiconductors, and dielectrics, as well as polymers and biomaterials. It generates combinational materials that function as “libraries,” each containing thousands of unique compositions.
Combining combinational materials printing and high-throughput characterization can significantly accelerate materials discovery, Zhang said. His team has already used this approach to identify a semiconductor material with superior thermoelectric properties, a promising discovery for energy harvesting and cooling applications.
In addition to speeding up discovery, HTCP produces functionally graded materials that gradually transition from stiff to soft. This makes them particularly useful in biomedical applications that need to bridge between soft body tissues and …
Read MoreThe World’s Largest Technology Companies In 2023: A New Leader Emerges
Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images
Though overall profits have started to decline, revenue growth—and the promise of artificial intelligence—are boosting tech companies’ market value.
Despite lingering economic headwinds, higher interest rates threatening profits and widespread layoffs across the industry, technology companies have been largely resilient over the past year—continuing to post record sales and recouping vast stock losses as artificial intelligence promises to reinvigorate the battered sector.
The number of technology companies landing on the Global 2000, Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s largest companies (based on revenue, profits, assets and stock market value), ticked up to 169 this year from 164 in 2022. That’s still fewer than the record 177 spots they nabbed in 2021, thanks to their relative outperformance during the pandemic. But the tech companies on our list nevertheless posted a record $4.2 trillion in combined annual revenue over the last 12 months, up from about $4 trillion the year before and $3.3 trillion two years before.
Amid the economic uncertainty, however, new leadership has emerged. Breaking Apple’s seven-year reign atop the tech rankings, Alphabet emerges as the world’s largest technology company after rising four spots to No. 7 in the global list. The Google parent’s stock is still about 15% below peak levels in 2021, but its unshakeable search division (still its largest revenue-driver by far) and momentum in cloud services helped last year’s tech runner up post record sales of $282.8 billion.
Next up, Microsoft lands at the No. 2 spot for tech after a three-spot ascent in the global rankings to No. 9 overall. Shares of the storied tech giant have surged 40% this year and are just 2% away from record levels thanks in no small part to buzz around AI. Analysts have lauded the firm’s $13 billion investment in chatbot creator OpenAI this year as a watershed moment in the global AI arms race, and CEO Satya Nadella has asserted the technology will “change every software category, starting with the largest of all—search.”
As for last year’s leader, Apple now comes in as the world’s third-largest technology firm. Though it remained the most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of more than $2.6 trillion, the iPhone maker slipped three spots to land at No. 10 in the overall rankings while competitors gained an edge on sales and assets. With more consumers cutting back on big-ticket spending, the firm posted its second-consecutive quarter of revenue declines last month. That took it down one peg in the overall sales rankings, but doesn’t explain most of Apple’s slippage on the list. Rather, its assets have fallen about 13% to $332 billion (moving its ranking for assets down from 107 to 127) as the firm offloaded some of its receivables—a common move as companies cut risky balance sheet items and gear up for potential recession.
Rounding out the top five, Samsung Electronics is steady at No. 14 globally, and Meta Platforms climbs one spot after its stock surged 20% over the past year. Shares
New Old City bridge could use Brewer company’s progressive technologies
Old Town, Maine — The Maine Office of Transportation could use impressive design supplies created to last a lot more than 100 several years when it replaces a deteriorating bridge in Aged Town future 12 months.
The Maine DOT strategies to install a momentary, two-way bridge ahead of replacing the Llewellyn G. Estes Memorial Bridge in 2024, department spokesperson Paul Merrill explained. The style staff is exploring the use of GBeams from Brewer-primarily based manufacturer Highly developed Infrastructure Systems, which are fiber-reinforced polymer bridge beams, he claimed.
The bridge is far more than 70 a long time old and deemed structurally deficient. When it closed for aspect of a day earlier this month since a utility pole leaning more than the bridge prompted basic safety worries, area people wondered if the substitution challenge date would shift up.
Though the substitute challenge is even now slated for 2024, men and women can be expecting that set up of the temporary bridge will commence in July and increase into late slide. If Advanced Infrastructure Technologies’ composite beams are utilised, it would stick to initiatives like alternative of the Grist Mill Bridge in Hampden, which was the initial in the nation to use the technology.
The bridge, which is made up of two buildings that have Stillwater Avenue throughout the Stillwater River, was slated for replacement as part of a multi-year, $20 million challenge.
The office turned down all bids last April after they arrived in approximately double the budgeted total, delaying the project about two yrs. It resolved to individual the bridge substitution from other street function.
The alternative bridge style is in development, so a value estimate was not available Friday.
GBeams are created to last many years longer than standard steel and concrete buildings, are resistant to corrosion and call for tiny servicing, in accordance to the corporation, which formulated the engineering with University of Maine researchers.
The content is also more environmentally friendly and lighter, earning it less costly to transport as perfectly as much easier to operate with.
Considering the fact that design of the Hampden bridge wrapped up in late 2020, AIT has completed sets of GBeams for projects in Maine, Florida and Rhode Island, and is functioning on other individuals on the West Coastline, in accordance to its web-site.
“Drivers and pedestrians will be equipped to use the momentary bridge all through building,” Merrill stated. “The short-term bridge will be taken off just after the proposed bridge is opened to visitors.”
The previously marketed bridge construction package deal also involved a short-term bridge, he reported.
Pieces of Aged Town’s bridge
Metallic Clusters With Exceptional Qualities for State-of-the-art Engineering
A multi-institute research workforce synthesized a family of nano-wheel-like metallic clusters, each individual with certain attributes — this kind of as fluorescence and unique varieties of magnetism — that could progress up coming-technology technologies. Credit rating: Polyoxometalates, Tsinghua University Push
Researchers in China have produced nano-wheels, a new spouse and children of metallic compounds with exclusive properties for use in innovative sensors and other systems. The team synthesized lanthanide-dependent nano-clusters with assorted applications, which includes fluorescence and magnetic cooling.
Although the wheel does not require to be reinvented, there are gains to the improvement of new nano-wheels, according to a multi-institute investigate team primarily based in China. The group fabricated a novel spouse and children of metallic compounds, just about every of which displays unique properties desirable for subsequent-technology technologies, these types of as state-of-the-art sensors.
Their results ended up published not too long ago in Polyoxometalates, a peer-reviewed, worldwide, and interdisciplinary investigation journal that focuses on all factors of polyoxometalates.
“Polymetallic complexes are of wonderful fascination not only for their attractive molecular framework but also for their adaptable applications in many fields,” explained co-corresponding author Yan-Zhen Zheng, professor in the Frontier Institute of Science and Technology (FIST) at Xi’an Jiaotong University.
Polymetallic complexes, which comprise many atoms of several metals or a mixture of metals and other things, have the prospective to imbue resources with certain homes if the molecules can be synthesized, Zheng reported. These attributes consist of the capacity to fluoresce, or glow, and magnetic quirks that let drastic temperature modifications and regulate.
Zheng and his group concentrated on generating polymetallic complexes built with lanthanide features, a team of 15 metallic components also known as unusual earth components. They specially used europium, terbium, and gadolinium.
“Among all polymetallic complexes, lanthanide-based mostly compounds have drawn unparalleled notice due to their intriguing magnetic and luminescence behaviors,” Zheng explained. “Several these compounds have been effectively isolated, but direct synthesis has been a obstacle.”
The components of the complexes call for are geometrically diverse, necessitating substantial coordination, according to Zheng.
“Previous findings discovered that managing the hydrolysis — breaking down a compound with drinking water — of lanthanide metal ions in the existence of proper natural and organic ligands would be a strong method to acquire preferred atom. Its addition to the …
Read MoreUH relocating Higher education of Technologies to Sugar Land
The University of Houston is transitioning technology departments that had been dependent on its primary campus to the Cullen University of Engineering at UH’s Sugar Land campus.
The changeover is occuring by the merger of UH’s faculties of technological know-how and engineering and is envisioned to acquire two many years. The consolidation will make improvements to obtain to a broader array of undergraduate and graduate-stage systems and lessen duplication, in accordance to the college.
UH also expects the alter to supply faculty users with improved entry to interdisciplinary grants, foremost to a lot more patents, technological innovation transfer and new products.
“It is all through this two-calendar year transition phase that the issues relevant to inside operations will be worked out by the two models,” UH spokesman Chris Stipes mentioned.
The merger grew to become helpful March 1.
The departments that are transferring — info and logistics engineering, human development and purchaser sciences, design management and engineering technological know-how — will type the technological know-how division within just Cullen Higher education of Engineering.
Departments in just the university of engineering will go on to be the Brookshire Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department and the courses for biomedical, industrial, mechanical, petroleum, civil and environmetal and the electrical and pc engineering.
The merger did not change the place pupils enrolled in the present-day semester consider classes, said Stipes.
The university of engineering, which now has more than 200 college members and much more than 2,000 graduate learners, will serve the university’s main campus and its spots in Sugar Land and Katy, college president Renu Khator reported in February.
“The changeover of technological innovation programs to UH at Sugar Land, which begun just before the merger, will continue other than in scenarios exactly where a program’s dwelling wants to be on the major campus,” she claimed at the time.
Free of charge, WiFi-equipped shuttles run day-to-day among the primary campus and the Sugar Land campus. Learners might obtain the UH GO application to track shuttles.
If a university student or staff members member has a main campus parking allow, they can use it at the Sugar Land campus at no further charge.
The Sugar Land buildings have capabilities for livestreaming in circumstance a college student is not able to show up at courses at UH at Sugar Land.
The merger will not effects the existing graduate or undergraduate tuition expenses.
Biden counting on two little-utilized systems to struggle local weather alter
The Biden administration this 7 days proposed a new rule that could go a prolonged way towards meeting the president’s ambitious climate goals. But it relies on two very little-applied technologies, which could make its targets complicated to achieve.
The new proposal lays out strict limits for earth-warming emissions from coal plants and some gas plants that would noticeably cut down their contributions to local climate transform.
It suggests coal crops that intend to continue being in operation past 2039 require to set up technology that cuts their carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2030. The major present pure fuel vegetation and any new types that open also would be expected to use engineering to slash their emissions 90 percent by 2035 or operate largely on low-carbon hydrogen electrical power by 2038. Crops that choose the hydrogen pathway would have to get 30 p.c of their electrical power from hydrogen by 2032 and 96 per cent from hydrogen by 2038.
But neither hydrogen nor the other engineering, regarded as carbon capture, is widely employed by the electricity sector — leading some experts to dilemma whether their use can be scaled up in time to meet the rule’s prerequisites
The only American plant that was using carbon capture shut down in 2020. The plant, identified as Petra Nova, shuttered amid falling oil costs, and it marketed the carbon it captured for use in oil recovery. Plans to restart it were lately introduced, nonetheless.
Canada also has a plant utilizing the technological innovation, and the Environmental Security Company (EPA) rule factors to some added illustrations of where it has been in use.
But carbon capture has a way to go prior to it turns into mainstream.
“In the electrical power generation marketplace, bringing new systems to that scale, we commonly want to see a quantity of complete-scale demonstrations prior to calling it commercial-completely ready,” explained Brandon Delis, director of investigation and enhancement for era sector environmental investigation at EPRI, a nonprofit study corporation.
“I assume there’s continue to far more to find out, there’s even now much more work to do, and we want to study about items like operational problems, maintenance challenges, how to improve the system … before you’re deploying this technology universally across the fleet,” Delis additional.
Julia Attwood, head of sustainable elements at analysis provider BloombergNEF, also introduced up a logistical challenge — getting carbon seize accepted.
She called prevalent adoption of carbon seize “technically feasible” but described a “backlog” for finding governing administration acceptance, declaring it can get about 6 many years to get a allow now.
She also claimed transporting and storing the carbon that is captured results in a obstacle.
“It’s quite tough to locate plenty of people today who have the knowledge to look at these proposals and decide them. Most of the folks who recognize underground geology like that function for oil companies,” she reported.
“The present transportation and storage web pages are generally clustered around petrochemical and oil creation due to