The technology that enables a computer to print off a full-working bicycle

The technology that enables a computer to print off a full-working bicycle

  9:58:00 AM    Science Lover

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This bicycle is the first in the world to be created simply by printing it out on a computer, using groundbreaking new technology.

The fully-working cycle, which is made of nylon, is the result of an extraordinary project and is as strong as steel and aluminium but weighs 65 per cent less.

Scientists in Bristol designed the bike on a computer and sent it to a printer, which placed layers of melted nylon powder on top of each other to build-up the machine.

Let's ride: The fully-working cycle, which is made of nylon, is the result of an extraordinary project and is as strong as steel and aluminium but weighs 65 per cent less.

On the move: Scientists designed the bike on a computer and sent it to a printer, which placed layers of melted nylon powder on top of each other to build-up the machine

Individual components such as gears, pedals and wheels are usually made in different factories and assembled into a finished bike but the Airbike is a single, complete part.

The wheels, bearings and axle are incorporated into the 'growing' process, known as Additive Layer Manufacturing.

The Airbike can be built to the rider's own specification so requires no adjustment. It also requires no conventional maintenance or assembly.

It is made by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space group in Filton, near Bristol, The 3D printing method allows products to be made from a fine powder of nylon, carbon-reinforced plastics or metals such as titanium, stainless steel or aluminium.

They are drawn using computer-aided design and then sent to a printer, which is filled with the powdered material.

A computer splits the 3D design into many 2D layers and a laser beam is used to melt the powder material into the first of the layers.

This is then covered by a new layer of powder and the process is repeated with the next 'slice'.

The manufacturing process uses about one-tenth of the material required in traditional methods, reducing waste.

The technology is likely to be used in industrial applications such as aerospace, the motor industry and engineering.

Lead engineer Andy Hawkins said: 'The possibilities with ALM are huge - it's a game-changing technology.

'The beauty is that complex designs do not cost any extra to produce. The laser can draw any shape you like.

'Many unique design features have been incorporated into the Airbike, such as saddle cushioning or the integrated bearings encased within the hubs.'

Robin Southwell, chief executive of EADS UK, said: 'The Airbike is a fantastic example of British innovation at its very best.

'The team at EADS in Bristol includes world-class engineers who continue to push boundaries by working at the forefront of technology.'

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Salt Grain-Sized Cameras Can Travel Inside Body

Salt Grain-Sized Cameras Can Travel Inside Body

  11:57:00 PM    Science Lover

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Cameras have shrunk over time, but they've never been this small. 
* German engineers have created the smallest microcameras of their kind.
* The new inexpensive disposable cameras can be produced 25,000 at a time.
* The microcamera's applications include medical and automotive imaging.

A new microcamera developed by German 
researchers measures a mere 1 millimeter on each side.

A new camera is as small as a coarse grain of salt -- the tiniest of its kind. This microcamera could go far: traveling deep into the human body to reveal hidden nooks and crannies. And it could be used in cars to keep drivers safe.


"I have it here on the desk," said Michael Töpper, project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration in Berlin, the large German R&D facility that worked on the device. "If you look at the camera, it's hard to believe that this is working."


Fraunhofer developed the camera with the specialized image sensor company Awaiba, which sought to improve miniaturized cameras for medical applications. Current microcameras require individual, manual manufacturing techniques that have kept costs high. Töpper and his colleagues developed a method to assemble the cameras on a single wafer using specialized polymers to bond the parts.


"The last step is then dicing the image sensor into individual camera chips," he said.


Each of the three sides of the camera measures a mere 1 millimeter. One wafer can be used to assemble 25,000 lenses on 25,000 cameras. The resulting resolution for each of the miniature cameras is in the range of 25,000 pixels. While that's not high enough for a professional photographer, it is high for medical applications, Töpper said.


More efficient manufacturing means lower costs, and the microcameras themselves are disposable. Töpper points to a process for sterilizing reusable endoscopic cameras, saying that usually involves lots of chemicals. Although the new microcameras are not recyclable, he says that they are primarily made from silicon and glass. "There are no hazardous materials."


In medicine, gastroenterologists regularly use small cameras to check patients. Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death, resulting in 150,000 cases every year, according to Dr. Gregory Cooper, a Case Western Reserve University professor of medicine and oncology, and gastroenterologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.


"Most colon cancers are thought to be preventable if the patient has a colonoscopy," he said.


Screening for polyps and colorectal cancer can involve a fairly invasive double-balloon endoscope requiring sedation, or a large swallowable "pill cam" that sometimes moves through a 25-foot small bowel too fast to capture all the information.


Dr. Cooper said he thinks the Fraunhofer microcamera technology looks interesting, although he notes that a scope used with the disposable camera would still need sterilization.


"If it can get around some of the current limitations of endoscopy, i.e. the sedation and the need to sterilize things, the limited visualization of the small bowel -- I think it has promise," he said.


At the moment Awaiba is testing the devices, and plans to put the microcameras into production within the next two years, Töpper said. Beyond medicine, the cameras could serve a useful purpose in the automotive industry. Installing them in cars might make camera-assisted parking more ubiquitous, and they could also help monitor drivers who risk falling asleep at the wheel.


"If you think about very, very small cameras, you will find dozens of applications," Töpper said. "Just think about the camera in the phone: 10 years ago everybody was laughing. 'Who needs a camera in a phone?'"

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Miniature Lasers Could Help Launch New Age of the Internet

Miniature Lasers Could Help Launch New Age of the Internet

  5:49:00 PM    Science Lover

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A new laser device created at the University of Central Florida could make high-speed computing faster and more reliable, opening the door to a new age of the Internet.

Sabine Freisem, a senior research scientist who 
has been collaborating with Deppe for the past eight 
years, works on lasers in their UCF lab. (Credit: UCF)

Professor Dennis Deppe's miniature laser diode emits more intense light than those currently used. The light emits at a single wavelength, making it ideal for use in compact disc players, laser pointers and optical mice for computers, in addition to high-speed data transmission.

Until now, the biggest challenge has been the failure rate of these tiny devices. They don't work very well when they face huge workloads; the stress makes them crack.

The smaller size and elimination of non-semiconductor materials means the new devices could potentially be used in heavy data transmission, which is critical in developing the next generation of the Internet. By incorporating laser diodes into cables in the future, massive amounts of data could be moved across great distances almost instantaneously. By using the tiny lasers in optical clocks, the precision of GPS and high-speed wireless data communications also would increase.

"The new laser diodes represent a sharp departure from past commercial devices in how they are made," Deppe said from his lab inside the College of Optics and Photonics. "The new devices show almost no change in operation under stress conditions that cause commercial devices to rapidly fail."

"At the speed at which the industry is moving, I wouldn't be surprised if in four to five years, when you go to Best Buy to buy cables for all your electronics, you'll be selecting cables with laser diodes embedded in them," he added.

Deppe and Sabine Freisem, a senior research scientist who has been collaborating with Deppe for the past eight years, presented their findings in January at the SPIE (formerly The International Society for Optical Engineering) Photonics West conference in San Francisco.

Deppe has spent 21 years researching semiconductor lasers, and he is considered an international expert in the area. sdPhotonics is working on the commercialization of many of his creations and has several ongoing contracts.

"This is definitely a milestone," Freisem said. "The implications for the future are huge."

But there is still one challenge that the team is working to resolve. The voltage necessary to make the laser diodes work more efficiently must be optimized

Deppe said once that problem is resolved, the uses for the laser diodes will multiply. They could be used in lasers in space to remove unwanted hair.

"We usually have no idea how often we use this technology in our everyday life already," Deppe said. "Most of us just don't think about it. With further development, it will only become more commonplace."

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Hackers tackle secure ID tokens

Hackers tackle secure ID tokens

  9:02:00 AM    Science Lover

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Hackers have stolen data about the security tokens used by millions of people to protect access to bank accounts and corporate networks.

The SecurID tokens are widely used to grant access to sensitive information

RSA Security told customers about the "extremely sophisticated cyber attack" in an open letter posted online.

The company is providing "immediate remediation" advice to customers to limit the impact of the theft

It also recommended customers take steps, such as hardening password policies, to help protect themselves.

Proof positive

In the open letter, written by RSA boss Art Coviello, the company said that the data stolen would not help a "direct" attack on the the SecurID tokens.

It did not disclose exactly what had been purloined and only said that the information "specifically related to RSA's SecurID two-factor authentication products".

RSA's SecurID tokens are used by millions of people alongside passwords to beef up security.

As its name suggests, two-factor authentication involves improving security using two methods of identifying a user. The first factor is usually the traditional login ID and password combination.

The second factor can be a SecurID token that is paired with back-end software that generates a new six digit number every minute.

A token paired with this software generates the same numbers so only the holder will be able to type in the right digits and get access.

RSA said the information stolen could reduce the effectiveness of this two-factor authentication system if a company came under a broader attack by malicious hackers.

This could potentially put a lot of people at risk as RSA claims to have millions of people using its security technology to secure online accounts and access to corporate systems.

RSA recommended that firms monitor social network sites to spot if hackers were trying to capitalise on what they now know about RSA's systems.

This could be because hackers have got information about who has which token and might try to exploit that to trick employees into giving them access.

RSA also recommended reminding users about the dangers of responding to suspicious e-mails, to limit who can access critical infrastructure systems and to reinforce all policies surrounding SecurID token use.

There could be "tremendous repercussions" if criminals piggy-backed on what they know to stealthily get at corporate and other critical systems, said Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at security firm IT-Harvest.

"You'd never have a sign that you've been breached," he said.

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Masked Fears: Are Fears That Are Seemingly Overcome Only Hidden?

Masked Fears: Are Fears That Are Seemingly Overcome Only Hidden?

  8:34:00 AM    Science Lover

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Fear is a natural part of our emotional life and acts as a necessary protection mechanism. However, fears sometimes grow beyond proportions and become difficult to shed. Scientists from Freiburg, Basel and Bordeaux have used computer simulations to understand the processes within the brain during the formation and extinction of fears.

One group of nerve cells in the brain controls the fear 
behaviour (right). This can be suppressed by a second 
group of nerve cells (left) -- but the fear is only masked, 
and has not disappeared completely. (Credit: Carlos 
Toledo/Bernstein Center Freiburg)

In the current issue of the scientific journal PLoS Computational Biology, Ioannis Vlachos from the Bernstein Center Freiburg and colleagues propose for the first time an explanation for how fears that were seemingly overcome are in reality only hidden.

The reason for the persistency of fears is that, literally, their roots run deep: Far below the cerebral cortex lies the "amygdala," which plays a crucial role in fear processes. Fear is commonly investigated in mice by exposing them simultaneously to a neutral stimulus -- a certain sound, for example -- and an unpleasant one. This leads to the animals being frightened of the sound as well. Context plays an important role in this case: If the scaring sound is played repeatedly in a new context without anything bad happening, the mice shed their fear again. It returns immediately, however, if the sound is presented in the original, or even a completely novel context. Had the mice not unlearned to be frightened after all?

The fact that fears can be "masked" has been known for some time. Recently, two co-authors of the present study discovered that two groups of nerve cells within the amygdala are involved in this process. By creating a model of the amygdala's neuronal network, Ioannis Vlachos and colleagues were now able to find an explanation for how such a masking of fears is implemented in the brain: One group of cells is responsible for the fear response, the second for its suppression. Activity of the latter inhibits the former and, thus, prevents fear signals to be transmitted to other parts of the brain. Nevertheless, the change in their connections that resulted in an increased activity in the fear-coding neurons in the first place, is still present. As soon as the masking by the fear-suppressing neurons disappears, for example by changing the context, these connections come into action again -- the fear returns.

According to the scientists, these insights can be transferred to us humans, helping to treat fears more successfully in the future.

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Quantum Pen for Single Atoms Is a Big Step Toward Large-Scale Quantum Computing

Quantum Pen for Single Atoms Is a Big Step Toward Large-Scale Quantum Computing

  9:38:00 AM    Science Lover

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Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics succeeded in manipulating atoms individually in a lattice of light and in arranging them in arbitrary patterns. These results are an important step towards large scale quantum computing and for the simulation of condensed matter systems.

With the help of a laser beam, the scientists could address single atoms in the lattice of light and change their spin state. In this way they succeeded in having total control over the single atoms and in "writing" arbitrary two-dimensional patterns. (Credit: Image courtesy of Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics)

Physicists around the world are searching for the best way to realize a quantum computer. Now scientists of the team around Stefan Kuhr and Immanuel Bloch at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching/Munich) took a decisive step in this direction. They can now address and change the spin of single atoms with laser light and arrange them in arbitrary patterns. In this way, the physicists strung the atoms along a line and could directly observe their tunneling dynamics in a “racing duel” of the atoms. A register of hundreds of addressable quantum particles could serve for storing and processing of quantum information in a quantum computer.

In the present experiment, the scientists loaded laser-cooled rubidium atoms into an artificial crystal of light. These so-called optical lattices are generated by superimposing several laser beams. The atoms are kept in the lattice of light in a way similar to marbles being contained in the hollows of an egg carton.

A few months ago, the team of Stefan Kuhr and Immanuel Bloch showed that each site of the optical lattice can be filled with exactly one atom. With the help of a microscope, the scientists visualized the array atom by atom and thereby verified the shell-like structure of this “Mott insulator.” Now the scientists succeeded in individually addressing the atoms in the lattice and in changing their respective energy state. Using the microscope, they focused a laser beam down to a diameter of about 600 nanometers, which is just above the lattice spacing, and directed it at individual atoms with high precision.

The laser beam slightly deforms the electron shell of the addressed (targeted) atom and thereby changes the energy difference between its two spin states. Atoms with a spin – i.e. an intrinsic angular momentum – behave like little magnetic needles that can align in two opposite directions. If the atoms are irradiated with microwaves that are in resonance with the modified spin transition, only the addressed atoms absorb a microwave photon, which causes their spin to flip. All other atoms in the lattice remain unaffected by the microwave field.

The scientists demonstrated the high fidelity of this addressing scheme in a series of experiments. For this purpose, the spins of all atoms along a line were flipped one after the other, by moving the addressing laser from lattice site to lattice site. After removing all atoms with a flipped spin from the trap, the addressed atoms are visible as holes, which can easily be counted. In this way, the physicists deduced that the addressing worked in 95% of the cases. Atoms at the neighboring sites are not influenced by the addressing laser. The method provides the possibility to generate arbitrary distributions of atoms in the lattice.

Starting from an arrangement of 16 atoms that were strung together on neighboring lattice sites like a necklace of beads, the scientists studied what happens when the height of the lattice is ramped down so far that the particles are allowed to “tunnel” according to the rules of quantum mechanics. They move from one lattice site to the other, even if their energy is not sufficient to cross the barrier between the lattice wells. “As soon as the height of the lattice has reached the point where tunneling is possible, the particles start running as if they took part in a horse-race”, doctoral candidate Christof Weitenberg describes. “By taking snapshots of the atoms in the lattice at different times after the "starting signal", we could directly observe the quantum mechanical tunneling-effect of single massive particles in an optical lattice for the first time.”

The new addressing technique allows many interesting studies of the dynamics of collective quantum states, as they appear in solid state systems. It also opens new perspectives in quantum information processing. “A Mott isolator with exactly one atom per lattice site acts as a natural quantum register with a few hundred quantum bits, the ideal starting point for scalable quantum information processing,” as Stefan Kuhr explains. “We have shown that we can individually address single atoms. In order for the atom to suit as a quantum bit, we need to generate coherent superpositions of its two spin states. A further step is to realize elementary logical operations between two selected atoms in the lattice, so-called quantum gates.”

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Depression Drugs-SSRIs-May Reorganize Brain Plasticity, New Research Suggests

Depression Drugs-SSRIs-May Reorganize Brain Plasticity, New Research Suggests

  9:19:00 AM    Science Lover

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Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) such as Prozac are regularly used to treat severe anxiety and depression. They work by immediately increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain and by causing long term changes in brain function. However it can take weeks of treatment before a patient feels any effect and both beneficial effects and side effects can persist after treatment is stopped.

New research investigates physiological changes within the brain that may be caused by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)

New research published by BioMed Central's open access journal Molecular Brain investigates physiological changes within the brain that may be caused by SSRI treatment.

The hippocampus is an area of the brain involved in long term memory and spatial awareness, and is involved in symptoms afflicting people with Alzheimer's disease, such as loss of memory and disorientation. Neuronal cells in the hippocampus can change their activity and strength of connections throughout life, a process known as plasticity, which thought to be one of the ways new memories are formed. Altered plasticity is often associated with depression and stress.

Researchers from the Department of Pharmacology, Nippon Medical School, showed that chronic treatment of adult mice with fluoxetine (Prozac) caused changes to granule cells, one of the main types of neuronal cells inside the hippocampus, and to their connections with other neuronal cells. The granule cells appeared to undergo serotonin-dependent 'dematuration', which increased their activity and reversed adult-type plasticity into an immature state. These changes to the cell's plasticity were associated with increased anxiety and in alternating between periods of hyper or hypo activity.

Katsunori Kobayashi explained, "Some of the side effects associated with Prozac in humans, such as anxiety and behavioral switching patterns, may be due to excessive dematuration of granule cells in the hippocampus."

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Sexual Plant Reproduction: Male and Female Parts 'Talk' in the Same Way as Do Cells in Your Brain

Sexual Plant Reproduction: Male and Female Parts 'Talk' in the Same Way as Do Cells in Your Brain

  9:38:00 AM    Science Lover

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A team of researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in the nervous system of animals. This study not only reveals a new mechanism which underlies reproduction in plants, but also opens an exciting new avenue in the study of how cell-cell communication is conserved between animals and plants.

This is a microscope image of the pollen grains germinating 
at the stigma of the weed Arabidopsis Thaliana. 
(Credit: Jose Feijo / Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia)

 

The research was recently published in Science Express of the journal Science.

For many years biologist have observed regular oscillations in several parameters that control growth of pollen tubes, such as pH (concentration of proton ions) and calcium ions, but the actual molecular channels that control these oscillations and their physiological output have remained elusive. Led by José Feijó, group leader at the IGC and Professor at Lisbon University, this international team have now discovered that the oscillations of calcium ions in the growing pollen tubes of tobacco and the Arabidopsis plant are facilitated by channels called Glutamate receptors-like (GLRs), and that these channels are opened by, amongst other components, a rare aminoacid, D-serine (D-Ser). Both D-Ser and GLRs are key molecular players in cell-cell communication in the animal central nervous systems, at various levels: they play a central role in memory and learning processes in the brain, and have been implicated in a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer, Huntington's disease and others. And now, surprisingly, they also have a role in reproduction of plants.

Working in the IGC laboratories, the team used an extensive combination of genetic, pharmacologic and electrophysiological techniques to reveal the role of glutamate receptor-like (GLRs) genes and D-serine in pollen grains, and their physiological impact on plant reproduction. In proving that GLRs are calcium channels, the team also solved two long-standing riddles in plant biology: the molecular nature of calcium channels in the outer membrane of plant cells, a central question in plant physiology elusive for more than 20 years, and what are the functions of GLRs genes in plants, a fact that has puzzled biologists ever since the first genome of the model plant Arabidopsis was sequenced.

Plant reproduction is a complex and highly coordinated process. Pollen grains, which contain the plants' male gametes (sperm cells), are carried from the male organ of the flower (the stamen) to the female organ (the pistil). Here the pollen germinates and grows a pollen tube, which extends and is guided to the ovary, where it releases the sperm. The sperm fuse with the egg cells, giving rise to an embryo, part of the seed.

In this study, the researchers showed that impairing the GLR functions in male gametes leads to partial male sterility: fewer seeds are produced by the plant, and the pollen tubes are abnormal. Furthermore, D-serine activates the GLRs on the tips of pollen tubes, allowing calcium ions to flow into the tube. They took their research a step further demonstrating that D-serine is indeed produced in the female sexual organs, and that absence of D-serine in these organs also leads to deformed pollen tubes. Together, these findings strongly suggest that D-serine, produced in the female sexual organs may have a role in guiding pollen tubes to their final target.

José Feijó says, "Pollen tubes are a model system for cellular tip-growth, a process common to fission yeast, filamentous fungi, the root hairs of plants and nerve cells. Our findings, implicating analogous genes in growth processes in both plants and animals, underscores how evolution re-uses successful mechanisms, over and over again. We feel that our research, performed in Arabidopsis and tobacco, now opens doors for the study of conserved cell-cell communication processes, across plant and animals species."

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Bilinguals See the World in a Different Way, Study Suggests

Bilinguals See the World in a Different Way, Study Suggests

  10:22:00 AM    Science Lover

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Learning a foreign language literally changes the way we see the world, according to new research. Panos Athanasopoulos, of Newcastle University, has found that bilingual speakers think differently to those who only use one language.

Colour perception is an ideal way of testing bilingual 
concepts because there is a huge variation between 
where different languages place boundaries on the 
colour spectrum. (Credit: iStockphoto)

 

And you don't need to be fluent in the language to feel the effects -- his research showed that it is language use, not proficiency, which makes the difference.

Working with both Japanese and English speakers, he looked at their language use and proficiency, along with the length of time they had been in the country, and matched this against how they perceived the colour blue.

Colour perception is an ideal way of testing bilingual concepts because there is a huge variation between where different languages place boundaries on the colour spectrum.

In Japanese, for example, there are additional basic terms for light blue (mizuiro) and dark blue (ao) which are not found in English.

Previous research has shown that people are more likely to rate two colours to be more similar if they belong to the same linguistic category.

"We found that people who only speak Japanese distinguished more between light and dark blue than English speakers," said Dr Athanasopoulos, whose research is published in the current edition of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. "The degree to which Japanese-English bilinguals resembled either norm depended on which of their two languages they used more frequently."

Most people tend to focus on how to do things such as order food or use public transport when they learn another language to help them get by, but this research has shown that there is a much deeper connection going on.

"As well as learning vocabulary and grammar you're also unconsciously learning a whole new way of seeing the world," said Dr Athanasopoulos. "There's an inextricable link between language, culture and cognition.

"If you're learning language in a classroom you are trying to achieve something specific, but when you're immersed in the culture and speaking it, you're thinking in a completely different way."

He added that learning a second language gives businesses a unique insight into the people they are trading with, suggesting that EU relations could be dramatically improved if we all took the time to learn a little of each other's language rather than relying on English as the lingua-franca.

"If anyone needs to be motivated to learn a new language they should consider the international factor," he said. "The benefits you gain are not just being able to converse in their language -- it also gives you a valuable insight into their culture and how they think, which gives you a distinct business advantage.

"It can also enable you to understand your own language better and gives you the opportunity to reflect on your own culture, added Dr Athanasopoulos, who speaks both Greek and English.

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Breakthrough in Nanocomposite for High-Capacity Hydrogen Storage

Breakthrough in Nanocomposite for High-Capacity Hydrogen Storage

  9:50:00 AM    Science Lover

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Since the 1970s, hydrogen has been touted as a promising alternative to fossil fuels due to its clean combustion -- unlike hydrocarbon-based fuels, which spew greenhouse gases and harmful pollutants, hydrogen's only combustion by-product is water. Compared to gasoline, hydrogen is lightweight, can provide a higher energy density and is readily available. But there's a reason we're not already living in a hydrogen economy: to replace gasoline as a fuel, hydrogen must be safely and densely stored, yet easily accessed. Limited by materials unable to leap these conflicting hurdles, hydrogen storage technology has lagged behind other clean energy candidates.

This schematic shows high-capacity magnesium nanocrystals encapsulated in a gas-barrier polymer matrix to create a new and revolutionary hydrogen storage composite material. (Credit: Image from Jeff Urban)

 

In recent years, researchers have attempted to tackle both issues by locking hydrogen into solids, packing larger quantities into smaller volumes with low reactivity -- a necessity in keeping this volatile gas stable. However, most of these solids can only absorb a small amount of hydrogen and require extreme heating or cooling to boost their overall energy efficiency.

Now, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed a new composite material for hydrogen storage consisting of nanoparticles of magnesium metal sprinkled through a matrix of polymethyl methacrylate, a polymer related to Plexiglas. This pliable nanocomposite rapidly absorbs and releases hydrogen at modest temperatures without oxidizing the metal after cycling -- a major breakthrough in materials design for hydrogen storage, batteries and fuel cells.

"This work showcases our ability to design composite nanoscale materials that overcome fundamental thermodynamic and kinetic barriers to realize a materials combination that has been very elusive historically," says Jeff Urban, Deputy Director of the Inorganic Nanostructures Facility at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science nanoscience center and national user facility located at Berkeley Lab. "Moreover, we are able to productively leverage the unique properties of both the polymer and nanoparticle in this new composite material, which may have broad applicability to related problems in other areas of energy research."

Urban, along with coauthors Ki-Joon Jeon and Christian Kisielowski used the TEAM 0.5 microscope at the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), another DOE Office of Science national user facility housed at Berkeley Lab, to observe individual magnesium nanocrystals dispersed throughout the polymer. With the high-resolution imaging capabilities of TEAM 0.5, the world's most powerful electron microscope, the researchers were also able to track defects -- atomic vacancies in an otherwise-ordered crystalline framework -- providing unprecedented insight into the behavior of hydrogen within this new class of storage materials.

"Discovering new materials that could help us find a more sustainable energy solution is at the core of the Department of Energy's mission. Our lab provides outstanding experiments to support this mission with great success," says Kisielowski. "We confirmed the presence of hydrogen in this material through time-dependent spectroscopic investigations with the TEAM 0.5 microscope. This investigation suggests that even direct imaging of hydrogen columns in such materials can be attempted using the TEAM microscope."

"The unique nature of Berkeley Lab encourages cross-division collaborations without any limitations," said Jeon, now at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, whose postdoctoral work with Urban led to this publication.

To investigate the uptake and release of hydrogen in their nanocomposite material, the team turned to Berkeley Lab's Energy and Environmental Technologies Division (EETD), whose research is aimed at developing more environmentally friendly technologies for generating and storing energy, including hydrogen storage.

"Here at EETD, we have been working closely with industry to maintain a hydrogen storage facility as well as develop hydrogen storage property testing protocols," says Samuel Mao, director of the Clean Energy Laboratory at Berkeley Lab and an adjunct engineering faculty member at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. "We very much enjoy this collaboration with Jeff and his team in the Materials Sciences Division, where they developed and synthesized this new material, and were then able to use our facility for their hydrogen storage research."

Adds Urban, "This ambitious science is uniquely well-positioned to be pursued within the strong collaborative ethos here at Berkeley Lab. The successes we achieve depend critically upon close ties between cutting-edge microscopy at NCEM, tools and expertise from EETD, and the characterization and materials know-how from MSD."

This research is reported in a paper titled, "Air-stable magnesium nanocomposites provide rapid and high-capacity hydrogen storage without heavy metal catalysts," appearing in the journal Nature Materials. Co-authoring the paper with Urban, Kisielowski and Jeon were Hoi Ri Moon, Anne M. Ruminski, Bin Jiang and Rizia Bardhan.

This work was supported by DOE's Office of Science.

The Molecular Foundry is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers (NSRCs), premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE's Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit http://nano.energy.gov.

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