Despite decades of innovation in fabrics with high-tech thermal properties that keep marathon runners cool or alpine hikers warm, there has never been a material that changes its insulating properties in response to the environment. Until now. University of Maryland researchers have created a fabric that can automatically regulate the amount of heat that passes through it.…
New 3D Nanoprinting Strategy Opens Door to Revolution in Medicine, Robotics
Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have created the first 3D-printed fluid circuit element so tiny that 10 could rest on the width of a human hair. The diode ensures fluids move in only a single direction — a critical feature for products like implantable devices that release therapies directly into the body. The…
A New Dimension for Batteries
Engineers at the University of Maryland have created a thin battery, made of a few million carefully constructed “microbatteries” in a square inch. Each microbattery is shaped like a very tall, round room, providing much surface area – like wall space – on which nano-thin battery layers are assembled. The thin layers together with large…
Satellite Study Finds Major Shifts In Global Freshwater
A new global, satellite-based study of Earth’s freshwater distribution found that Earth’s wet areas are getting wetter, while dry areas are getting drier. The data suggest that this pattern is due to a variety of factors, including human water management practices, human-caused climate change and natural climate cycles. The NASA-led research team, which included Hiroko…
Super Wood Could Replace Steel
Engineers at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) have found a way to make wood more than 10 times times stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than many titanium alloys. “This new way to treat wood makes it 12 times stronger than natural wood and 10 times tougher,”…
Newly Proposed Reference Datasets Improve Weather Satellite Data Quality
“Traffic and weather, together on the hour!” blasts your local radio station, while your smartphone knows the weather halfway across the world. A network of satellites whizzing around Earth collecting mountains of data makes such constant and wide-ranging access to accurate weather forecasts possible. Just one satellite, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s…
New Model Explains The Moon’s Weird Orbit
The moon, Earth’s closest neighbor, is among the strangest planetary bodies in the solar system. Its orbit lies unusually far away from Earth, with a surprisingly large orbital tilt. Planetary scientists have struggled to piece together a scenario that accounts for these and other related characteristics of the Earth-moon system. A new research paper, based…
Study Shows Wood Windows are Cooler than Glass
Engineers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD) demonstrate in a new study that windows made of transparent wood could provide more even and consistent natural lighting and better energy efficiency than glass. In a paper just published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Energy Materials, the team, headed…
Researchers Advance Groundbreaking ‘Water-in-Salt’ Lithium Ion Battery Tech
A team of researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD), U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and colleagues have developed a battery that is at once safer, cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and more powerful—by adding a pinch of salt. Advancing UMD research on groundbreaking “water-in-salt” lithium ion battery technology, the researchers found that adding a second salt…