Strong New Aluminum Alloy

Aluminum is The New Steel: Scientists Made it Stronger than Ever Before

By National University of Science and Technology (MISIS)

Moscow – May 24, 2019 -- Aluminum is one of the most promising materials for aeronautics and automobile industry. Scientists from the National University of Science and Technology “MISIS” found a simple and efficient way of strengthening aluminum-based composite materials. Doping aluminum melt with nickel and lanthanum, scientists managed to create a material combining benefits of both composite materials and standard alloys: flexibility, strength, lightness. The article on the research is published in Materials Letters.

Lighter and faster aircraft and vehicles require lighter materials. One of the most promising materials is aluminum, or rather, aluminum-based composites.

Scientists from NUST MISIS scientific school “Phase Transitions and Development of Non-Ferrous Alloys” created a new strong Al-Ni-La composite for aircraft and automobile industry. Doping elements were added to aluminum melt, forming special chemical compounds that further formed strong reinforcing structure.

“Our research group, led by Professor Nikolai Belov, has worked on the creation of aluminum-based composites for many years. Al-Ni-La composite is one of such projects, aimed at creation of ‘natural’ aluminum-based composite material with more than 15% vol. of doping elements. A feature of the new development is the high reinforcing ability of the chemical compounds with ultrafine structure: the diameter of the reinforcing elements does not exceed several tens of nanometers. Previously, researchers were limited to the study of systems in which it is obviously impossible to obtain an effective reinforcing structure. Or they manufactured composite materials by labor-intensive powder metallurgy methods (sintering of powders), or liquid-phase technologies of kneading nanoparticles in the melt”

     -- Torgom Akopyan, one of the authors, researcher at NUST MISIS Department of Metal Forming

Today, aluminum is reinforced mainly with the help of nanopowders, but this is an extremely expensive and time-consuming process, where the result does not always justify the means spent. For example, with an increase in strength by only 5-20%, such an indicator as plasticity, on the contrary, can decrease by tens of percent or even several times. In addition, the particles themselves are too large — from 100 nanometers to 1-2 micrometers, and their % vol. is low.

Development of NUST MISIS scientist solves the problem of non-uniform reinforcement and low density of “powder” composites: if melting technique is used, after Al-Ni-La crystallization the diameter of doping particle does not exceed 30-70 nanometers. Thanks to “natural” crystallization, particles are distributed uniformly, forming a reinforcing structure. Hence, the composite becomes more strong and flexible than its “powder” analogues.

“Our composite already demonstrates better characteristics than its analogues, including foreign ones. However, we are not going to stop here, and in the future we plan to continue working on the creation of more advanced, complex (3-, 4 — and more phase) and cheap composites, the production cycle of which will include the use of aluminum of technical purity and cheaper alloying components

     --Torgom

According to scientists, the proposed material can be used primarily in aeronautics and automobile industry, as well as for the design of modern robotics, including copters, where reducing the weight of the drone is critical. Due to the peculiarities of the structure formation, the proposed material can be used for the manufacture of complex parts via 3D printing. In addition, new developments may be of strategic importance from an economic point of view. At the moment, the main share of profit in the aluminum industry in Russia is the export of primary aluminum. The creation of new high-tech developments with increased added value will increase profits by expanding domestic and foreign markets for aluminum consumption.

                         https://en.misis.ru/university/news/misc/2019-05/6154/

Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever

Ebola virus disease (EVD), also known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) or simply Ebola, is a viral hemorrhagic fever of humans and other primates caused by ebolaviruses. Signs and symptoms typically start between two days and three weeks after contracting the virus with a fever, sore throat, muscular pain, and headaches. Vomiting, diarrhea and rash usually follow, along with decreased function of the liver and kidneys. At this time, some people begin to bleed both internally and externally. The disease has a high risk of death, killing between 25 and 90 percent of those infected, with an average of about 50 percent. This is often due to low blood pressure from fluid loss, and typically follows six to sixteen days after symptoms appear.

The virus spreads through direct contact with body fluids, such as blood from infected humans or other animals. Spread may also occur from contact with items recently contaminated with bodily fluids. Spread of the disease through the air between primates, including humans, has not been documented in either laboratory or natural conditions. Semen or breast milk of a person after recovery from EVD may carry the virus for several weeks to months. Fruit bats are believed to be the normal carrier in nature, able to spread the virus without being affected by it. Other diseases such as malaria, cholera, typhoid fever, meningitis and other viral hemorrhagic fevers may resemble EVD. Blood samples are tested for viral RNA, viral antibodies or for the virus itself to confirm the diagnosis.

Control of outbreaks requires coordinated medical services and community engagement. This includes rapid detection, contact tracing of those who have been exposed, quick access to laboratory services, care for those infected, and proper disposal of the dead through cremation or burial. Samples of body fluids and tissues from people with the disease should be handled with special caution. Prevention includes limiting the spread of disease from infected animals to humans by handling potentially infected bushmeat only while wearing protective clothing, and by thoroughly cooking bushmeat before eating it. It also includes wearing proper protective clothing and washing hands when around a person with the disease. An Ebola vaccine has been studied in Africa with promising results. No specific treatment is available, although a number of potential treatments are being studied. Supportive efforts, however, improve outcomes. This includes either oral rehydration therapy (drinking slightly sweetened and salty water) or giving intravenous fluids as well as treating symptoms.

The disease was first identified in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks: one in Nzara (a town in South Sudan) and the other in Yambuku (Democratic Republic of the Congo), a village near the Ebola River from which the disease takes its name. EVD outbreaks occur intermittently in tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1976 and 2013, the World Health Organization reports a total of 24 outbreaks involving 1,716 cases. The largest outbreak to date was the epidemic in West Africa, which occurred from December 2013 to January 2016 with 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths. It was declared no longer an emergency on 29 March 2016. Other outbreaks in Africa began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May 2017, and 2018.

Ebola Vaccines

Many Ebola vaccine candidates had been developed in the decade prior to 2014, but as of November 2014, none had been approved for use in humans in the United States. In December 2016, Ebola was found to be 70–100% prevented by rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, making it the first proven vaccine against the disease. More than 100,000 people have been vaccinated against Ebola as of 2019.

                         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease#Vaccines

Computing with Light

McMaster researchers have developed a simple and highly novel form of computing by shining patterned bands of light and shadow through different facets of a polymer cube and reading the combined results that emerge.

May 24, 2019 -- The material in the cube reads and reacts intuitively to the light in much the same way a plant would turn to the sun, or a cuttlefish would change the color of its skin.

The researchers are graduate students in chemistry supervised by Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology whose lab focuses on ideas inspired by natural biological systems.

The researchers were able to use their new process to perform simple addition and subtraction questions.

"These are autonomous materials that respond to stimuli and do intelligent operations," says Saravanamuttu. "We're very excited to be able to do addition and subtraction this way, and we are thinking of ways to do other computational functions."

The researchers' work, published today in the journal Nature Communications, represents a completely new form of computing, one they say holds the promise of complex and useful functions yet to be imagined, possibly organized along the structures of neural networks.

The form of computing is highly localized, needs no power source and operates completely within the visible spectrum.

The technology is part of a branch of chemistry called nonlinear dynamics, and uses materials designed and manufactured to produce specific reactions to light.

A researcher shines layered stripes of light through the top and sides of a tiny, glass case holding the amber-coloured polymer, itself roughly the size of a die used in a board game. The polymer starts as a liquid and transforms to a gel in reaction to the light.

A neutral carrier beam passes through the cube from the back, toward a camera that reads the results, as refracted by the material in the cube, whose components form spontaneously into thousands of filaments that react to the patterns of light to produce a new three-dimensional pattern that expresses the outcome.

"We don't want to compete with existing computing technologies," says co-author Fariha Mahmood, a master's student in chemistry. "We're trying to build materials with more intelligent, sophisticated responses."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190524081640.htm
Story Source:

Materials provided by McMaster University [in Hamilton, Ontario]. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

Alexander D. Hudson, Matthew R. Ponte, Fariha Mahmood, Thomas Pena Ventura, Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu. A soft photopolymer cuboid that computes with binary strings of white light. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10166-4

Synthetic Oil Types and Performance

Synthetic oil is a lubricant consisting of chemical compounds that are artificially made. Synthetic lubricants can be manufactured using chemically modified petroleum components rather than whole crude oil, but can also be synthesized from other raw materials. The base material, however, is still overwhelmingly crude oil that is distilled and then modified physically and chemically. The actual synthesis process and composition of additives is generally a commercial trade secret and will vary among producers.

Synthetic oil is used as a substitute for petroleum-refined oils when operating in extreme temperature. Aircraft jet engines, for example, require the use of synthetic oils, whereas aircraft piston engines do not. Synthetic oils are also used in metal stamping to provide environmental and other benefits when compared to conventional petroleum and animal-fat based products. These products are also referred to as "non-oil" or "oil free".

Types of Synthetic Oil

Full

Some "synthetic" oil is made from Group III base stock, some from Group IV. Some from a blend of the two. Mobil sued Castrol and Castrol prevailed in showing that their Group III base stock oil was changed enough that it qualified as full synthetic. Since then API [American Petroleum Institute] has removed all references to Synthetic in their documentation regarding standards. "Full synthetic" is a marketing term and is not a measurable quality.

Group IV: PAO

Poly-alpha-olefin (poly-α-olefin, PAO) is a polymer made by polymerizing an alpha-olefin. They are designated at API Group IV and are a 100% synthetic chemical compound. It is a specific type of olefin (organic) that is used as a base stock in the production of some synthetic lubricants. An alpha-olefin (or α-olefin) is an alkene where the carbon-carbon double bond starts at the α-carbon atom, i.e. the double bond is between the #1 and #2 carbons in the molecule.

Group V: Other Synthetics

Group V base oils are defined by API as any other type of oil other than mineral oils or PAO lubricants.

Esters are the most famous synthetics in Group V, which are 100% synthetic chemical compounds consisting of a carbonyl adjacent to an ether linkage. They are derived by reacting an oxoacid with a hydroxyl compound such as an alcohol or phenol. Esters are usually derived from an inorganic acid or organic acid in which at least one -OH (hydroxyl) group is replaced by an -O-alkyl (alkoxy) group, most commonly from carboxylic acids and alcohols. That is to say, esters are formed by condensing an acid with an alcohol.

Many chemically different "esters" due to their usually excellent lubricity are used for various reasons as either "additives" or "base stocks" for lubricants.

Semi-synthetic oil

Semi-synthetic oils (also called "synthetic blends") are a mixture of mineral oil and synthetic oil, which are engineered to have many of the benefits of full synthetic oil without the cost. Motul introduced the first semi-synthetic motor oil in 1966.

Lubricants that have synthetic base stocks even lower than 30% but with high-performance additives consisting of esters can also be considered synthetic lubricants. In general, the ratio of the synthetic base stock is used to define commodity codes among the customs declarations of tax purposes.

Other base stocks help semi-synthetic lubricants

API Group II- and API Group III-type base stocks help to formulate more economic-type semi-synthetic lubricants. API Group I-, II-, II+-, and III-type mineral-base oil stocks are widely used in combination with additive packages, performance packages, and ester and/or API Group IV poly-alpha-olefins in order to formulate semi-synthetic-based lubricants. API Group III base oils are sometimes considered Fully synthetic, but they are still classified as highest-top-level mineral-base stocks. A Synthetic or Synthesized material is one that is produced by combining or building individual units into a unified entry. Synthetic base stocks as described above are man-made and tailored to have a controlled molecular structure with predictable properties, unlike mineral base oils, which are complex mixtures of naturally occurring hydrocarbons and paraffins.

Performance

The advantages of using synthetic motor oils include:

• Better low- and high-temperature viscosity performance at service temperature extremes
• Better (higher) Viscosity Index (VI)
• Better chemical and shear stability
• Decreased evaporative loss
• Resistance to oxidation, thermal breakdown, and oil sludge problems
• Extended drain intervals, with the environmental benefit of less used oil waste generated
• Better lubrication during extreme cold weather starts
• Possibly a longer engine life
• Superior protection against "ash" and other deposit formation in engine hot spots (in particular in turbochargers and superchargers) for less oil burnoff and reduced chances of damaging oil passageway clogging.
• Net increase in horsepower and torque due to less internal drag on engine
• Improved fuel efficiency - from 1.8% to up to 5% has been documented in fleet tests
• Research based study demonstrated that synthetics performed about 47% better than regular oil

However, synthetic motor oils are substantially more expensive (per volume) than mineral oils and have potential decomposition problems in certain chemical environments (predominantly in industrial use).

Oil needs to be changed because it gets contaminated with combustion by-products that accumulate at about the same rate regardless of oil type. Some vehicles require synthetic; therefore, check your vehicle's owner manual to see what is recommended.

                              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_oil

UK Prime Minister Theresa May

Theresa Mary May (nee Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician serving as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since 2016. She was first elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidenhead at the 1997 general election, and served as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016. Ideologically, she identifies herself as a one-nation conservative.

                                                   Theresa May with husband, June 2017

May grew up in Oxfordshire and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford. After graduating in 1977, she worked for the Bank of England. She also served as a councillor for Durnsford in Merton. After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she was elected as the MP for Maidenhead in 1997. From 1999 to 2010, May held a number of roles in Shadow Cabinets. She was also Chairwoman of the Conservative Party from 2002 to 2003.

When the coalition government was formed after the 2010 general election, May was appointed Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, but gave up the latter role in 2012. She continued to serve as home secretary after the Conservative victory in the 2015 general election, and became the longest-serving home secretary in over 60 years. During her tenure she pursued reform of the Police Federation, implemented a harder line on drugs policy including the banning of khat, oversaw the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners, the deportation of Abu Qatada, and the creation of the National Crime Agency, and brought in additional restrictions on immigration. She is to date, the only woman to hold two of the great offices of state.

In July 2016, after David Cameron resigned, May was elected as Conservative Party Leader, becoming Britain's second female Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher. As Prime Minister, May began the process of withdrawing the UK from the European Union, triggering Article 50 in March 2017. The following month, she announced a snap general election, with the aims of strengthening her hand in Brexit negotiations and highlighting her "strong and stable" leadership. This resulted in a hung parliament, in which the number of Conservative seats fell from 330 to 317, despite the party winning its highest vote share since 1983. The loss of an overall majority prompted her to enter a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to support a minority government. Since forming a second ministry on 11 June 2017, May has faced a significant number of ministerial resignations.

May survived a vote of no confidence from her own MPs in December 2018 and a Parliamentary vote of no confidence in January 2019. She said that she would not lead her party in the next general election scheduled for 2022 under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, but did not rule out leading it into a snap election. She carried out the Brexit negotiations with the European Union, adhering to the Chequers Agreement, which resulted in the draft Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and the EU. This agreement was defeated by Parliament in January 2019 in the largest majority against a British government in history. She later announced a revised deal, but this was defeated in Parliament by 391 votes to 242. In March 2019, May committed to stepping down as Prime Minister if Parliament passed her Brexit deal, to make way for a new leader in the second phase of Brexit; however, the Withdrawal Agreement was rejected for a third time. On 24 May 2019, she announced that her resignation as party leader would take effect on 7 June. She stated that she would remain in office as prime minister until a successor is chosen in a Conservative Party leadership election.

                                 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_May

2019 Election in India

The 2019 Indian general election was held in seven phases from 11 April to 19 May 2019 to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. The counting of votes took place on 23 May, and on the same day the results were declared. About 900 million Indian citizens were eligible to vote in one of the seven phases depending on the region. The 2019 elections attracted a turnout of over 67 per cent – the highest ever in the history of Indian general elections, as well the highest recorded participation in Indian elections by women.

According to the preliminary official results released by the Election Commission of India for 542 of the 543 constituencies after the first 24 hours of counting, the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 299 seats and retained its lead in another 4 constituencies, defying expectations and actually increasing its seat count to 303. Meanwhile the Indian National Congress party had won 52. The alliance partners of these two main parties and other un-aligned parties had won or were in the lead in 187. In order to become the official opposition party in the Lok Sabha, a party must win 10 per cent of the total number of seats, or 55 seats. The largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, once again failed to attain this number. Thus, India remains without an official opposition party. Modi declared victory, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi conceded defeat on count day.

Legislative Assembly elections in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim were held simultaneously with the general election.

Electoral System

All 543 elected MPs will be elected from single-member constituencies using first-past-the-post voting. The President of India nominates an additional two members from the Anglo-Indian community if he believes the community is under-represented.

Eligible voters must be Indian citizens, 18 or older, an ordinary resident of the polling area of the constituency and possess a valid voter identification card issued by the Election Commission of India. Some people convicted of electoral or other offences are barred from voting.

The elections are being held on schedule and per the constitution of India that mandates parliamentary elections once every five years. The details of the elections were announced by Election Commission of India (ECI) on 10 March 2019, after which Model Code of Conduct regulations for the elections came into immediate effect.

Voting

According to the Election Commission of India, 900 million people were eligible to vote, with an increase of 84.3 million voters since the last general election in 2014, making this the largest-ever election in the world. 15 million voters in the age group of 18–19 years are eligible to exercise their right to vote for the first time while 38,325 transgender individuals will be able to vote for the first time as members of the third-sex and not as male or female. 71,735 overseas voters have been enrolled in the electoral rolls for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In 2015, an India-Bangladesh boundary agreement was signed, in which the two countries exchanged their enclaves that were entirely surrounded by the other's boundaries. As a result, it will be the first time in which residents of these former enclaves vote in an Indian general election.

Electronic Voting Machines

As in recent elections, the 2019 voting has relied on EVM – electronic voting machines. The Election Commission of India deployed a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system which enables electronic voting machines to record each vote cast by generating the EVM slip. Tried in previous elections on a sample basis, VVPAT system is being used in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies for the 2019 election.

The electronic voting machines were tested immediately prior to the election day, where a sample number of votes for each political party nominee was entered into each machine, in the presence of polling agents. At the end of this sample trial run, the votes counted and matched with the entered sample votes, to ensure that the machine is operating reliably and that there were no hidden votes pre-recorded in each machine. Machines that yielded a faulty result were replaced. For example, in South Goa, the Election Commission's office found during a mock poll run in April 2019 that while each candidate was given 9 test votes in the machines, the EVM in a particular polling booth recorded 17 votes for the Congress party and less for the other political parties. The faulty EVM were replaced.

The Election Commission officials deployed a total of 1.74 million VVPAT units and 3.96 million electronic voting machines in 1,035,918 polling stations across India during the 2019 elections. Approximately 270,000 paramilitary and 2 million state police personnel provided organizational support and security at various polling booths over the seven-phased elections. On 9 April 2019, Supreme Court of India ordered the Election Commission of India to increase VVPAT slips vote count to five randomly selected EVMs per assembly constituency, which means Election Commission of India has to count VVPAT slips of 20,625 EVMs before it certifies the final election results.

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election#Voting

Highest Temperature Superconductor

Experiment produces new material that can conduct electricity perfectly

University of Chicago – May 23, 2019 -- University of Chicago scientists are part of an international research team that has discovered superconductivity—the ability to conduct electricity perfectly—at the highest temperatures ever recorded.

Using advanced technology at UChicago-affiliated Argonne National Laboratory, the team studied a class of materials in which they observed superconductivity at temperatures of about minus-23 degrees Celsius (minus-9 degrees Fahrenheit)—a jump of about 50 degrees compared to the previous confirmed record.

Though the superconductivity happened under extremely high pressure, the result still represents a big step toward creating superconductivity at room temperature—the ultimate goal for scientists to be able to use this phenomenon for advanced technologies. The results were published May 22 in the journal Nature; Vitali Prakapenka, a research professor at the University of Chicago, and Eran Greenberg, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago, are co-authors of the research.

Just as a copper wire conducts electricity better than a rubber tube, certain kinds of materials are better at becoming superconductive, a state defined by two main properties: The material offers zero resistance to electrical current and cannot be penetrated by magnetic fields. The potential uses for this are as vast as they are exciting: electrical wires without diminishing currents, extremely fast supercomputers and efficient magnetic levitation trains.

But scientists have previously only been able to create superconducting materials when they are cooled to extremely cold temperatures—initially, minus-240 degrees Celsius and more recently about minus-73 degrees Celsius. Since such cooling is expensive, it has limited their applications in the world at large.

Recent theoretical predictions have shown that a new class of materials of superconducting hydrides could pave the way for higher-temperature superconductivity. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany teamed up with University of Chicago researchers to create one of these materials, called lanthanum superhydrides, test its superconductivity, and determine its structure and composition.

The only catch was that the material needed to be placed under extremely high pressure—between 150 and 170 gigapascals, more than one-and-a-half-million times the pressure at sea level. Only under these high-pressure conditions did the material—a tiny sample only a few microns across—exhibit superconductivity at the new record temperature.

In fact, the material showed three of the four characteristics needed to prove superconductivity: It dropped its electrical resistance, decreased its critical temperature under an external magnetic field and showed a temperature change when some elements were replaced with different isotopes. The fourth characteristic, called the Meissner effect, in which the material expels any magnetic field, was not detected. That’s because the material is so small that this effect could not be observed, researchers said.

They used the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, which provides ultra-bright, high-energy X-ray beams that have enabled breakthroughs in everything from better batteries to understanding the Earth’s deep interior, to analyze the material. In the experiment, researchers within University of Chicago’s Center for Advanced Radiation Sources squeezed a tiny sample of the material between two tiny diamonds to exert the pressure needed, then used the beamline’s X-rays to probe its structure and composition.

Because the temperatures used to conduct the experiment is within the normal range of many places in the world, that makes the ultimate goal of room temperature—or at least 0 degrees Celsius—seem within reach.

The team is already continuing to collaborate to find new materials that can create superconductivity under more reasonable conditions.

“Our next goal is to reduce the pressure needed to synthesize samples, to bring the critical temperature closer to ambient, and perhaps even create samples that could be synthesized at high pressures, but still superconduct at normal pressures,” Prakapenka said. “We are continuing to search for new and interesting compounds that will bring us new, and often unexpected, discoveries.”

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/scientists-break-record-highest-temperature-superconductor