A new kind of polymer membrane created by researchers at Georgia Tech could reshape how refineries process crude oil, dramatically reducing the energy and water required while extracting even more useful materials.The so-called DUCKY polymers — more on the unusual name in a minute — are reported Oct. 16 in Nature Materials. And they’re just the…
How do you explain the physical prowess of video gamers? In mainstream sports, such as soccer or basketball, people can see the physical feats: the arc of a jump shot or the speed of the ball through a goalie's fingertips. However, at major esports competitions, viewers see the video game characters on screen rather than the player controlling…
Sean Castillo is in the win-win business. As an industrial hygienist in the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), his job is to ensure that employees are safe in their workspaces, and when he does that, he simultaneously improves a company’s performance. That’s been a theme for Castillo and his colleagues in the Safety, Health,…
This is part four of the student experiences series. William Berkey, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry shares his experience from the 2023 RBI Spring Workshop on "Innovations in Packaging and Circular Economy." Tell us about yourself.My name is William Berkey. I got my undergraduate degree in chemistry from Davidson College in North…
Charles Darwin said that evolution was constantly happening, causing animals to adapt for survival. But many of his contemporaries disagreed. If evolution is always causing things to change, they asked, then how is it that two fossils from the same species, found in the same location, can look identical despite being 50 million years apart in age?…
Kartik Ramachandruni knew he would need to find a unique approach to a populated research field.With a handful of students and researchers at Georgia Tech looking to make breakthroughs in home robotics and object rearrangement, Ramachandruni searched for what others had overlooked.“To an extent it was challenging, but it was also an opportunity to…
Clouds of tiny structures that are lighter than feathers – and whose properties can be remotely controlled by radio frequency (RF) signals – could one day give U.S. warfighters and their allies the ability to observe their adversaries while reducing how well they themselves can be seen. Using miniaturized electronics and advanced…
Using ultraviolet light instead of extremely high temperatures, a team of Georgia Tech researchers has developed a new approach for 3D printing small glass lenses and other structures that would be useful for medical devices and research applications.Their process reduces the heat required to convert printed polymer resin to silica glass from 1,…
This asynchronous beating comes from how the flight muscles interact with the physics of the insect’s springy exoskeleton. This decoupling of neural commands and muscle contractions is common in only four distinct insect groups. For years, scientists assumed these four groups evolved these ultrafast wingbeats separately, but research from the…
Along coastal shorelines, tiny drops of sea spray are flung everywhere – sometimes reaching the atmosphere, where they’re transported around the world. And within these sea spray aerosols are particles, chemicals, and even microbes.“Sea spray aerosols are very important here on Earth,” explains Amanda Stockton, an associate professor in the School…
