It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single researcher in possession of a good finding, must be in want of a way to publicize it. So why not use a good Jane Austen quote?
Not the one above, shamelessly tweaked from Pride & Prejudice, but instead a group from the University of Texas at Austin (of course) turned to a lesser-known work, Mansfield Park, to show off how it could embed information in a polymer.
The molecular data-storage technique from UT encoded the quote by using polymers called oligourethanes, which researchers said are “highly accessible and encode information with greater density than DNA-based approaches, which rely on nucleic acids.”
“This work is another step toward the long-term goal of using synthetic, sequence-defined polymers for information storage,” Eric Anslyn, a chemistry professor and author of the study, said in a news release from the university. “It sets the stage and hopefully inspires further work towards the practical use of molecules to usefully store information.”
The Mansfield Park quote was chosen by the team as being “uplifting” without requiring someone to know the entire book, researchers said.
The quote? “If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: We find comfort somewhere.”
Can sharks help cargo planes fly more efficiently?
No, this isn’t a riff on Sharknado, but rather Germany’s Lufthansa Cargo using a sharkskin-inspired aerodynamic film from BASF SE to reduce the drag on its planes and use less fuel on flights.
Sustainable Plastics has this story on AeroShark, a joint project by Lufthansa and BASF, to cover the entire lower half of a cargo plane’s fuselage with a film embedded with a surface that replicates the pattern on a shark’s skin.
In tests, the technology was able to reduce emissions by 0.8 percent in long-haul flights.
The AeroShark film will be rolled out for use on Lufthansa Cargo’s entire 777 freighter fleet beginning in 2022.
On this May the Fourth, let me take the opportunity to remind you of some plastics content from a galaxy far, far away. (Actually a museum exhibit in Seattle.)
Back in 2015, former PN reporter (and big Star Wars fan) Kerri Jansen reported on how the creators of the film series used plastics for key props throughout the film series.
Starting with the first film, the creators used vacuum forming of ABS to make stormtrooper helmets. Glass-reinforced plastics went into making C-3PO and fiberglass was used for Darth Vader’s iconic mask and helmet.
Click through and check out more about the materials here.
This post appeared first on Plastics News.
