UK company Concrete Canvas created Concrete Cloth, a concrete-impregnated material that's flexible and becomes hard only when wet. The fabric can be molded into various shapes, letting people erect a sturdy building with little more time and effort than they would a tent. In addition to fulfilling your end-of-the world needs, the Concrete Cloth has current military and humanitarian uses as barracks, emergency shelters, and food storage.

Concrete Cloth won the Material of the Year Award from Material ConneXion, which supports innovation in materials science. But there were plenty of impressive runners up, including a superstrong biofiber made from carrots, a sponge that soaks up oil but not water, a 3D printer that can print objects made from multiple materials, and a lightweight fiber that can stop bullets.

Fishing Rods From Carrot Sticks and Canvas Made of Concrete?! Seven Amazing Materials [Fast Company via Neatorama]

Here you can see one of the team's bricks, created using volcanic ash instead of lunar regolith - the ash is the closest approximation to moon rocks on Earth. Once the powderized aluminum goes in, the wires fuse everything together into a substance that's as hard as concrete and can withstand the wear caused by low-gravity on the Moon. (Those letters burning into the brick, by the way, stand for National Institute of Aerospace, which helped sponsor the research. I'm guessing the letters underneath are VT for Virginia Tech? Either that, or it's the Van Halen logo.)

For their successful design, the students won the In-Situ Lunar Resource Utilization materials and construction category award from the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) .

According to X-Journal:

During initial experiments, the simulated regolith and aluminum powder were mixed and placed inside a shallow aluminum foil crucible. A wire was inserted into the mixture, which was then heated to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit triggering a reaction called self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS), Logan said. The reaction caused the material to form a solid brick. A ceramic crucible was used in later experiments to form complex curved surfaces.

Once the student team had created a brick, they found that it was almost as strong as concrete under various pressure tests. Faierson said one-square inch of the brick could withstand the gradual application of 2,450 pounds, nearly the weight of a Ford Focus. This strength would enable it to withstand an environment where gravity is a fraction of the pull on Earth. The more than yearlong ongoing research has included studying the bricks reaction to solar radiation and their effectiveness as a construction material for lunar applications.

SOURCE: X-Journals

According to SciDev.net:

Lesley Cornish, from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and AMSEN's academic director, says much of the money will be spent on bursaries and travel expenses for students to visit tutors at participating universities — including the University of Botswana, the University of Nairobi in Kenya and the Federal University of Technology in Nigeria.

AMSEN will provide students with a pool of research mentors and facilities in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa, Cornish told SciDev.Net.

She adds that, aside from purchasing equipment, "an amount has also been earmarked to retain staff and researchers so that they can help build up their universities".

This could be the first stage in moving away from a post-colonial era in Africa to an era where the lingering effects of colonialism are no longer felt at all. Image via Platinum Today.


African Science on the Rise [SciDev]

These "sunflowers" are actually nanowires arranged in a naturally-occurring pattern.

Wired's Aaron Rowe writes:

When S.K. Hark, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, looked at some [nanowires] under a scanning electron microscope, he saw flowers. Unlike plants, their fertilizers were gallium and gold catalysts — which allowed them to grow to several microns in length while maintaining a roughly 10-nanometer diameter.

According to a release from the National Science Foundation, which partially funded the research:

Zhong Lin Wang and collaborators Xudong Wang and Yong Qin have made more than 200 of the fiber nanogenerators. Each is tested on an apparatus that uses a spring and wheel to move one fiber against the other. The fibers are rubbed together for up to 30 minutes to test their durability and power production.

The researchers have measured current of about four nanoamperes and output voltage of about four millivolts from a nanogenerator that included two fibers that were each one centimeter long. With a much improved design, Wang estimates that a square meter of fabric made from the special fibers could theoretically generate as much as 80 milliwatts of power.

So far, there is only one wrinkle in the fabric, so to speak - washing it. Zinc oxide is sensitive to moisture, so in real shirts or jackets, the nanowires would have to be protected from the effects of the washing machine.

Nanowire Shirt [NSF]

It also means you can probably get a faux fur coat made to look like Sulley from Monsters, Inc. Images by Lama Concept

Lama Collection via Transmaterial

Genetic engineers could create a way for humans to absorb water through their skin, so we could drink fog. That would be a more efficient way to use the water available on Earth.

National Geographic has a terrific photo feature on "biomemetics" which includes this lizard, as well as several other life forms whose features engineers hope to emulate.

This magnified image of a sharkskin reveals why sharks can move so quickly through the water. Their skin is made of interlaced scales that channel water rapidly, allowing them to move much more quickly than they would if their skin had a different texture. Scientists want to recreate sharkskin in materials that would allow seaborne ships or people to move rapidly through water.

Sign me up for gills, sharkskin, and foot drinking. I mean, if it's reversible. Top photo by Robert Clark/National Geographic and bottom photo by Eye of Science/Photo Researchers.

Biomimetics [National Geographic] (Thanks, Marilyn!)

You can use different colors to create the glow, with many different patterns.

Some prefer to use them as emergency arrows for people in industrial settings or on cruise ships.

Luminescent Gravel [Transmaterial]