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Chewing gum dissolved in water…..hmmm…..I wonder if it is safe for long term basis, especially when one chews gum very often every day….. 
The article doesn’t mention the name of the polymer added to the gum. It will be useful to know.
Gum splattered streets could soon be no more thanks to a virtually non-stick chewing gum that has been invented by UK scientists.
If it passes European health and safety tests, it could be in our shops by next year, the chemical company developing the gum says.
Revolymer claims its product is easier to remove from pavements, shoes and carpets than gums currently on sale.
Its research was presented at the BA Festival of Science, in York.
Chewing gum clean-up costs can be extremely high.
London’s Westminster Council recently released figures showing that it had spent more than £100,000 a year to remove chewing gum from its streets; in Oxford the total was £45,000.
For years, scientists have been working on ways to solve the problem.
Now Revolymer, a Bristol University spin-out company, claims that it has created a new material which can be added to gum that makes it much easier to remove from surfaces.
The material is formed from long chains of molecules, called polymers, which have both water-loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic), and therefore oil-loving, properties.
The polymer’s affinity for oil means that it can be easily mixed into the rest of the ingredients needed to create chewing gum; but it is its attraction to water that gives it its non-stick abilities.
Chief Scientific Officer of Revolymer, Professor Terence Cosgrove, said: “The hydrophilic coating means that you always get a film of water around the gum and that is one of the reasons it is easy to remove - and, in some cases, doesn’t stick at all.”
Degrades in water
The researchers have been testing the gum - a working name is Rev7 - on a number of surfaces.
Recent tests on four different types of paving stones showed that the gum vanished from the surfaces within 24 hours - possibly removed by rain from the UK’s very wet summer or street cleaning - while other gums remained stuck for several days.
For some types of shoe, the gum could be pulled straight off immediately; other shoe types needed water to wash it off; while leather soles needed water and a detergent to detach the gum. Commercial gums remained stuck fast.
Preliminary results suggested the gum with added polymer eventually dissolves in water.
Professor Cosgrove said: “If a piece of chewing gum has been washed off and has gone down a sewer somewhere, obviously you want it to degrade.”
The team also tested the gum on one of the most tricky surfaces - hair. Using the company CEO’s daughter - who said she was due a haircut - as a volunteer, they attached commercial gum to one side of her hair and Rev7 to the other.
The commercial gum eventually had to be cut out, but Rev7 could be mostly removed using water, shampoo and a comb.
Read more: bbc.co.uk
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Oh, well, originally I was thinking about buying a rubik’s cube and solving it by following this instruction video. Now that supercomputer can solve it in less than 26 moves, what’s the point of solving it myself? 
The ultimate solution to the Rubik’s cube has come closer thanks to hours of number crunching on a supercomputer.
The research has proved that a Rubik’s cube can be returned to its original state in no more than 26 moves.
The supercomputer took 63 hours to crank out the proof which goes one better than the previous best solution.
The two computer scientists behind the research project believe that with more work they could push the move count even lower.
Cube crunching
It took some smart thinking by graduate student Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman from Northeastern University in Boston to come up with the proof because cranking through the 43 billion billion possible Rubik’s cube positions would take too long even for a supercomputer.
Instead, the scientists used a two-step technique in their calculations.
Initially, they programmed the supercomputer to arrive at one of 15,000 half-solved solutions. They knew they could fully solve any of these 15,000 cubes with a few extra moves.
The results showed that any disordered cube could be fully solved in a maximum of 29 moves, but that most cubes took 26 moves or fewer.
The researchers then focused on the small number of “problem” configurations that required more than 26 moves.
Because there were so few “problem” configurations, the researchers could use the supercomputer to search for the best way to fully solve these cubes.
As it turned out the supercomputer was able to fully solve all of these special cases in fewer than 26 moves.
Read more: bbc.co.uk
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Ever wonder why nerves don’t break when your body stretches? Traditional research model proposes “neurofilaments” provide the strength and flexibility for nerve cells.
But scientists have discovered a new protein that explains why a long nerve doesn’t break upon stretching.
Nerve cell stretchiness uncovered
US scientists may have discovered why long nerve cells do not break when you move or stretch your limbs.
Experiments in worms showed that when a protein called beta spectrin is missing, nerve cells are brittle and break, leading to paralysis.The finding may help to explain why people with a condition called spinocerebellar ataxia progressively lose co-ordination and movement.
The University of Utah study is in the Journal of Cell Biology.
Humans have four genes responsible for the production of beta spectrin protein.
Recent studies have shown that people with a condition called spinocerebellar ataxia type 5, a neurodegenerative disease that develops between the ages of 10 and 68, have a mutation in one of the genes.
It was previously thought that the mutation in this protein meant cells could not communicate properly because the necessary proteins would not be anchored in place.
But research by Professor Michael Bastiani and colleagues at the University of Utah suggests that a mutation in or absence of the protein causes long nerve fibres (axons) to lose their flexibility and break.
When nematode worms were bred without beta spectrin their nerve axons died over time and caused paralysis.
In worm embryos only 3% of nerve cells were broken or defective but that grew to 60% by the time the worms were a day old, suggesting the protein is not responsible for initial growth of nerve cells but for preventing breakage later on.
Nerve function
Professor Bastiani said the team found it “incredible” that the one protein was responsible for preventing nerves breaking in your whole body.
“The entire functioning of the nervous system depends on these wire-like axons between nerve cells,” he said.
He added that when the worms were paralysed by a second mutation the nerve axons did not break because the worms were not moving around.
“What was surprising was in the past, it’s always been embedded in the literature that the thing that provides the strength and flexibility was the neurofilaments.
“We’re proposing a completely different model.”
Read more: bbc.co.uk
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Whoa, cool. I wonder how long a piece of black paper battery will last. If the paper is rechargeable, that will be even more awesome. Then my laptop, camera, cell phone will be much lighter.
I noticed in the picture that the paper battery is held by hands in gloves. What if the paper is held by bare hands? Will you get a minor electrocution?
Paper battery offers future power
Flexible paper batteries could meet the energy demands of the next generation of gadgets, says a team of researchers.
They have produced a sample slightly larger than a postage stamp that can release about 2.3 volts, enough to illuminate a small light
But the ambition is to produce reams of paper that could one day power a car.
Professor Robert Linhardt, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said the paper battery was a glimpse into the future of power storage.
The team behind the versatile paper, which stores energy like a conventional battery, says it can also double as a capacitor capable of releasing sudden energy bursts for high-power applications.
While a conventional battery contains a number of separate components, the paper battery integrates all of the battery components in a single structure, making it more energy efficient.
Integrated devices
The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Think of all the disadvantages of an old TV set with tubes,” said Professor Linhardt, from the New York-based institute, who co-authored a report into the technology.
“The warm up time, power loss, component malfunction; you don’t get those problems with integrated devices. When you transfer power from one component to another you lose energy. But you lose less energy in an integrated device.”
The battery contains carbon nanotubes, each about one millionth of a centimetre thick, which act as an electrode. The nanotubes are embedded in a sheet of paper soaked in ionic liquid electrolytes, which conduct the electricity.
The flexible battery can function even if it is rolled up, folded or cut.
Although the power output is currently modest, Professor Linhardt said that increasing the output should be easy.
“If we stack 500 sheets together in a ream, that’s 500 times the voltage. If we rip the paper in half we cut power by 50%. So we can control the power and voltage issue.”
Because the battery consists mainly of paper and carbon, it could be used to power pacemakers within the body where conventional batteries pose a toxic threat.
Read more: bbc.co.uk
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