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A key passage from President Obama’s address

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

Of course, this echoes the plan he outlined Jan. 8:

• double the production of alternative energy in the next three years;
• modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes;
• put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced – jobs building solar panels and wind turbines;
• construct fuel-efficient cars and buildings;
• develop the new energy technologies;
• improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost;
• computerize all of America’s medical records in five years;
• equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries;
• eliminating the backlog of well-planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects;
• build a smart electric grid;
• expand broadband lines across America; and
• invest in the science, research, and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries, and entire new industries.

There is more information on the new administration’s energy and environment goals here.

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Several research teams are actively pursuing cloaking/invisibility concepts. One of the prominent groups is at Duke University and the other is at University of California, Berkeley.

The Berkeley team uses a crafted nano-prism of metamaterial atoms that has a negative refractive index for light of near-infrared wavelengths.

The Duke team is also uses metamaterials, but their approach is to use layers of circuits built into fiberglass that allow certain frequencies of electromagnetic energy to pass around object. They were able to demonstrate a prototype in 2006 that worked with a narrow range of microwaves and announced in the past view days that they had been able to refine their approach and apply it to a wider range of frequencies.

This video allows both teams to explain their approaches. Please note that the Duke video is from 2006 and therefore doesn’t contain any demonstrations of their new discoveries.

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Aldo Boccaccini

Just learned that ACerS member and Imperial College (U.K.) professor Aldo R. Boccaccini, has been appointed to be the scientific international advisor to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina (his homeland). He will advise in topics of international scientific cooperation between Argentina and the European Union. Boccaccini is an expert in materials science and engineering worked extensively to represent Argentinean scientists and technologists abroad.

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The newest cloak (left) is 20" × 4" x< 1" made of 10,000+ individual pieces (6,000 are unique) in parallel rows. Original prototype is on the right.

Back when “Ceramic Tech Weekly” was still just a newsletter (waaay back in mid-2008), I wrote several stories (see here and here) about the emerging technologies related to what is often referred to as “invisibility,” a.k.a., “cloaking” (hello Trekkies). Of course, there is a certain tendency to treat this as something of a novelty. But the fact remains that consistent progress is being made in this area.

First, some clarification: The idea of using advanced materials to “cloak” an object is not so exotic, especially once one is reminded that this ability has been around for decades, i.e., “Stealth” aircraft and ships. Objects that use Stealth technology are simultaneously visible and invisible: They are visible in the wavelengths detected by the human eye, but invisible in the the spectrum used for radar.

So, one way to think about the developments in the last view years is that researchers are applying similar approaches to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, moving wavelength by wavelength. Another way to intellectually grasp what is happening in this field is to consider the common mirage drivers often see hovering off in the distance above hot roadways: We take it for granted that the road is there, afar, even though it appears to have disappeared and replaced with the image of a body of water.

The point is that the idea of “invisibility” isn’t so far fetched.

Having noted that, a recent report has come out of Duke University about new advances by a team being led by David Smith. This team has been making progress since at least 2006, when they unveiled their first prototype made of fiberglass that guided electromagnetic waves around an object.

One of the big points in the latest announcement is that whereas the 2006 version of their technology worked with a specific wavelength, the latest iteration works with a broader range of frequencies. Says Smith:

“The difference between the original device and the latest model is like night and day. The new device can cloak a much wider spectrum of waves – nearly limitless – and will scale far more easily to infrared and visible light. The approach we used should help us expand and improve our abilities to cloak different types of waves.”

Besides being applicable to a wider spectrum, the team had made breakthroughs in customizing designs and improving fabrication speed.

The applications for this technology aren’t limited to the obvious. The same approaches could be used to eliminate disruptive effects of obstructions (to improve, for example, wireless communications), develop advanced acoustic shields to block harmful vibrations and build improved light-focusing lenses.

The results of this work is  Jan. 16 in the journal Science; first authors of the paper were Liu and Chunlin Li.

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The American Ceramic Society is seeking proposals from experts with the ability to develop and teach two-day (or more) short courses that focus on foundational topics in ceramic materials engineering and business. Proposals for a short course should be prepared with a target of professionals working with ceramic materials and technologies in the corporate sector, along with other interested members and prospective members. ACerS is also seeking proposals from volunteers who are interested in conducting ceramic materials webinars. These 90-minute webinars allow participants to engage with experts on topics of critical importance to the ceramic materials community without ever leaving their desks. These webinars use phone lines for the audio portion of the presentation and the Internet for PowerPoint presentations, audience Q&A, audience polling and demonstration videos, if appropriate.  ACerS expects to approve and offer six to 12 webinars in 2009. For more information, contact Mark Mecklenborg at  or visit the ACerS pages on short courses and web seminars.

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