Cavendish torsion balance and Cavendish Signature image via Wikimedia Commons. Composite image by Lalena Lancaster

By: Marsha Lewis, Inside Science

(Inside Science TV) – They may look flimsy, but the materials printed with 3-D printing technology are one-of-a-kind, light-weight and super-strong.

Materials engineers at LLNL have created a material with a special 3-D printer that mixes hard metal, tough ceramics and flexible plastics.

“It can hold more than 100,000-times its own weight. In fact, even more than that," said Chris Spadaccini, a materials engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

“One of the benefits of this methodology is the ability to work with a wide range of materials," said Josh Kuntz, a materials engineer at LLNL.

By:
Leigh Cooper,  Inside Science

(Inside Science) – Despite their agility in flight, birds often find themselves unable to escape vehicles – a conundrum that puzzles scientists.

To solve the mystery, a new study brought brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) into a homemade, bird-sized movie theater where they watched videos of an approaching truck. The cowbirds eyeballed the gap between themselves and the car to evaluate the danger of the approaching vehicle, but they did not take into account how fast the truck closed that distance.

Tony Angelotti stunt doubling Johnny Depp in the first ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie. Image credit: Courtesy of Tony Angelotti

By:
Emilie Lorditch, Inside Science 

By Marsha Lewis, Inside Science

(Inside Science TV) – Everything from food, to air to water runs the risk of becoming contaminated. Now, chemists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have developed a technology that can detect and track dangerous particles in food and in the air.

“The DNA in the material can be used to identify those particles," said George Farquar, a chemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

With the technology, called DNA Trax, researchers create tiny sugar-based particles and label them with a unique DNA signature. The particles can be sprayed onto food or released into the air to track the source of contaminants.

Image: Jeff Kubina via flickr, CC BY 

BY Jyoti Madhusoodanan, Inside Science 

(Inside Science) -- Showers fall to Earth’s surface as rain, snow, sleet or hail. But high in the clouds, water molecules often begin to come together as tiny ice crystals that form around miniscule particles of dust. The microscopic crystals are big players in creating rain and lightning, and also heat and cool the planet by bouncing sunlight off clouds.