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	<title>Junior Science Reporter &#187; Materials and their properties</title>
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	<description>Science news for children aged 7-11</description>
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		<title>Spinning spider silk</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=420</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=420#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:23:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals including humans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[golden orb-weaver]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kevlar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[protein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[silk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spider]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spiders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[steel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thread]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=420</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, are working out how to make artificial spider silk. Spiders build their webs out of lightweight, incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk. It is stronger than steel and tougher than kevlar, which is used to make puncture-proof bicycle inner tubes. The building blocks of the silk are particular types of a substance called protein. (Different kinds of proteins are found in your hair and in foods such as meat and eggs). Jan Rainey and his coworkers have worked out exactly which proteins make up the spider silk and how they are joined to each other. The difficult part, though, is spinning the proteins into long strands. The researchers are still working on that. Spiders make up to seven different types of silk, with slightly different properties. For instance, the toughest sort is used to wrap up prey caught in the spider&#8217;s web. Normal silk comes from silk threads spun by silk worms when they are making a cocoon. Groups of silk worms are fairly easy to look after and their cocoons can be unwound into lengths of silk thread. However, spiders are more difficult to look after and in groups may begin [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Superdry</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=330</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=330#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2015 09:51:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Materials and their properties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[laser]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[metals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-cleaning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[superhydrophobic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water-hating]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=330</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Scientists at the University of Rochester in the USA have treated metals so that they keep dry even when splashed with water. Chunlei Guo, professor of optics at the University of Rochester in the USA explains that these &#8216;super-hydrophobic&#8217; (water-hating) materials are useful, for example, for preventing ice from forming on aircraft wings, or to keep surfaces clean and dry and free of bacteria (germs). Most current hydrophobic materials rely on chemical coatings, but these can rub off. Professor Guo used lasers to make tiny patterns on the surface of the metals. The patterns make the metals repel water. As water bounces off the super-hydrophobic surfaces, it also collects dust particles and takes them along for the ride. To test this self-cleaning property, Professor Guo and his team took ordinary dust from a vacuum cleaner and dumped it onto the treated surface. Roughly half of the dust particles were removed with just three drops of water. It took only a dozen drops to leave the surface spotless. Better yet, it remains completely dry.]]></description>
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		<title>Keeping cool with tiny beads</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=354</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=354#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2015 10:23:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Materials and their properties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[baking powder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[capsules]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carbon capture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carbon dioxide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[climate change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CO2]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global warning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[microcapsules]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sodium carbonate]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=354</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers in the USA have found a simple way to remove carbon dioxide &#8211; a gas, or a special type of air &#8211; out of the air around us. Carbon dioxide is also known as CO2. Too much CO2 in the air is a bad thing because it traps heat from the sun and makes the earth hotter. The scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with colleagues at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have developed tiny beads that can absorb CO2 from the air. The shell of the beads lets carbon dioxide through, and inside there&#8217;s a liquid (sodium carbonate solution) that reacts with and absorbs CO2 to form sodium bicarbonate, which you&#8217;ve probably used to bake cakes and biscuits to make them fluffy. Heating the beads releases the CO2 so the beads can be used again. Humans are putting more and more CO2 into the air by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, and gas for heating, generating electricity, driving and cooking. The CO2 can make weather problems, such as too little rain falling where farmers want to grow crops and too much falling where it&#8217;s not wanted and making floods. Read more: https://www.llnl.gov/news/microcapsules-capture-carbon-safely &#160;]]></description>
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		<title>Nappies and microscopes?</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=316</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=316#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:00:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Materials and their properties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diapers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[light]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nappies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=316</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Scientists have worked out a way to take better pictures of tiny parts of our bodies called cells, using disposable nappies. Professor Boyden and his colleagues found that with a special preparation based on the chemical in nappies that absorbs lots of liquid, they could make brain cells taken from rats swell to four and a half times their usual size. Our bodies are built from lots of different cells, in the same way models can be built from LEGO blocks. Usually, scientists use microscopes to see more details of tiny things. Microscopes make what you are looking at much much bigger, so you can look at an ant, for example, through a microscope and see lots of things you would otherwise miss. The trouble is that if you want to look at something really really small, like a cell taken from a dead rat&#8217;s brain, you need a much more powerful &#8211; and expensive &#8211; microscope. &#8216;We decided to try something different, and physically magnify the cells themselves,&#8217; said Edward Boyden, associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the USA. That helped the researchers to use ordinary microscopes to see more detail, such as the structures that [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Morning Glory</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=194</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=194#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Jan 2015 12:54:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Materials and their properties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rocks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[colours]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[geothermal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[light]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rocks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[springs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=194</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers at Montana State University (USA) and Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) have come up with an explanation for the beautiful colours of hot springs in Yellowstone National Park in the USA. They created a simple way to calculate the colours that can even visually recreate how the pools appeared years ago, before tourists began to drop coins into the pools while making wishes. (The metals in the coins affect the appearance.) &#8220;What we were able to show is that you really don&#8217;t have to get terribly complex &#8211; you can explain some very beautiful things with relatively simple models,&#8221; said Joseph Shaw, a professor at Montana State University and one of the researchers. The team calculated how each pool absorbs, scatters and reflects the light, taking the microbes (tiny organisms made up of just single cells) in the pools and the weather conditions into account. Shaw said that the researchers might collaborate with biologists in the future, as the colours may provide a way to monitor the pool microbes.]]></description>
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		<title>Superstrong and lightweight</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=186</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=186#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Jan 2015 10:15:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Materials and their properties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[alloy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aluminium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ceramic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lightweight]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lithium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[magnesium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[metal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strong]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[titanium]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=186</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers from North Carolina State University in the USA and Qatar University have developed a super-strong mixture of metals that is stronger for its weight than any other. So-called `high-entropy alloys&#8217; are mixtures of five or more metals in approximately equal amounts. The research team combined lithium, magnesium, titanium, aluminium and scandium. “The density is comparable to aluminum, but it is stronger than titanium alloys,” says Dr Carl Koch, Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. “The strength-to-weight ratio is comparable to some ceramics, but we think it’s tougher – less brittle – than ceramics,” Dr Koch continued. Strong, lightweight materials can be used to make cars, bicycles and artificial limbs that are strong but light, so need less energy to move around. The main problem is that the new alloy is made of 20 per cent scandium, which is extremely expensive. The researchers are planning to see whether they can make a similar alloy without scandium that is just as strong or stronger.]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>Turning sawdust into petrol</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=127</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=127#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Materials and their properties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[petrol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sawdust]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=127</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You probably know that there&#8217;s a problem with petrol. It&#8217;s made from crude oil dug out of the ground, and at some point in the future, supplies will run out. So researchers are busy looking at ways to make petrol cheaply from other sources that won&#8217;t run out. Now researchers in the Netherlands have used sawdust to make chemicals similar to petrol.  Petrol is made up of hydrocarbon chains – that&#8217;s long molecules of chains of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms joined on at the side. They can be added to petrol or used to make plastics. The researchers realised that cellulose – found in all non-edible plant parts of wood, straw, grass, cotton and old paper – contains carbon chains. My colleague Beau Op de Beeck developed a new method to derive these hydrocarbon chains from cellulose,” explains Professor Bert Sels of the Catholic University of Leuven. “We have also built a chemical reactor in our lab: we feed sawdust collected from a sawmill into the reactor and add a catalyst – a substance that sets off and speeds the chemical reaction. With the right temperature and pressure, it takes about half a day to convert the cellulose in the wood shavings [...]]]></description>
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