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Electrically Conductive Cement
zero_offset writes "The Tokyo Institute of Technology has announced a process for creating an inexpensive, nearly transparent, electrically conductive alumina cement. The conductivity is comparable to metal, and the transparency should be adequate for use in display panels. The process relies upon commonplace and inexpensive metals compared to the rare metals such as iridium currently used in display panels."
Hazards of sans-serif fonts at small pitches, I guess.
A stadium where the entire surface of the building blinks and scrolls ads at you.
That, or extra-heavy monitors.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Cement = anything used to glue things together
Concrete = a building material composed of aggregates and cement
Concrete is used for buildings, roads, sidewalks, etc. The aggregate in that case is usually rocks. The cement is usually Portland cement. It's not correct to call it "cement", though people will usually understand what you mean.
But judging from the comments so far, not in this case. This isn't a replacement for Portland cement, and they're not talking about building materials. This is the kind of cement used to glue bits of LCD screens to each other.
Not that I'm normally this deep or anything...
:)
The nice thing about progress is that everything is a small step toward that.
It's the period between then and now that you have to worry about. Star Trek had 2 more World Wars before Cochrine developed the warp drive.
When I read this, I was thinking of Fab@Home with the idea that perhaps you could use this process to help build crude home-built ICs out of simple and cheap materials.
Unfortunately, it seems as though the process is a bit more complicated, and I don't know how you can get a nozzle heated to 1100 degrees C in a reduced oxygen environment (presumably why it is in a sealed glass tube to work) that would also be something you would want on your kitchen table.
While of interest to a materials science guy, this really isn't that spectacular of a deal here. It does have the potential of improving LCD screen luminance values, reducing power requirements for laptops (the screen sucks quite a bit of power in the overall system), and helping in other ways. But it isn't something that simply can be poured out of a nozzle.
no wars (except with Klingons and such, of course).
Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, so for us to have no morewars here on Earth, the most likely catalyst would be war with an alien species. Keep in mind that with that competent government, there was complete global control, and we have only ever seen that government through the eyes of it's military officers.
We are all just people.
From TFA: "the cement would make an environmentally-friendly alternative because its ingredients are more readily available". That doesn't make it environmentally friendly, it just makes it less environmentally damaging. There's a BIG difference.
Also, is 30kg grip strength pretty low for an adult male? I'm pretty sure it is...
Urine streams do not conduct electricity because they separate into droplets.
The author of the actual paper is Hideo Hosono, not "Hideo Hono". The paper, available here, was not published in the April 11 issue of Nano Letters. Rather, it was published on-line on March 22.
Yah, Mythbusters busted that one.
True, but it would have to be a really good hoax. Otherwise it's not likely we'd have a prayer against aggressive aliens. As Sagan and many others would point out, a space-faring civilization is going to be much older and more technologically advanced than us. Reminds me of that old saying, "don't bring a knife to an phaser fight."
Ask me about my sig!
Uh, I don't know about yours, but my 9V LEGOs (such as in the monorail) weren't electrically conductive themselves; they just used regular plastic blocks with metal bits embedded in them. For example, see the pictures on this site.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
heh and for the record, I was laughing just as hard 4 years ago when people said that about Iraq.
I mean seriously, how do people have their head so deep in the sand that they actually think things like that? Why is modern warfare so poorly understood? (Ok, admittedly the media makes no attempt at all at explaining it)
Yah, if everyone in iraq were well... a moron. If they hadn't studied a bit, if nobody paid attention to the past 50 fucking years... then yes, their army would have met ours on the battlefield. We would have said "Oh look, a massive troop formation", pressed a button, and the war would be over in 6 weeks.
They didn't do that cuz anyone with half a brain knows you can't fight like that against an army like the US unless you have an army like...well... like china, or the US. Major air force, major navy, cruise missles, all that good stuff.
Unless you have an army like the US or china, you just can't fight us like that. You have to play to your own strengths. You hide in civilian clothes, in civilian houses... cuz its what works. History always vindicates the victor. Does it matter whether you are a war criminal or not?
All I had to do to realise this was a decade or longer conflict.... BEFORE IT STARTED.... was to imagine the US army gets instantly wiped out and china invades the US. Whats gonna happen? Are we going to welcome our liberators?
No... people will smile by day. And whenever able bodied americans meet, one may say "come to my house, we have a meeting tonight". And guess what... people will come to those meetings... and people will fight. They will fight until either they are gone and new generations have risen up accepting chineese rule... or until the foriegn fighters leave.
We either stay until the next generation of Iraqi accept us, or we leave them to fight it out to fill the power vaccuume.
Course, I realise your making fun of the people who thought that but seriously... I find living in a country where people go around not just saying that shit but believing it to be downright embarassing.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"