Michał Słupski

nyu.edu

Narcissistic behaviours like self-congratulation on social media (ie flexing, for the cool kids) have always perplexed researchers, and this study sheds new light.
Being a narcissist seems to be a defense mechanism for coping with insecurities, a way to cover up your low self-worth - unfortunately it makes others like us less.
The study is limited though, because it was just a test on a computer taken by 300 participants.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 26, 2021

They dissolve in water in 24 hours, and could be used to pack fruit, vegetables, poultry, meat, and seafood.
Researchers created 3 types of food films based on sodium alginate, a natural biopolymer from seaweeds.
Sodium alginate is mixed with a natural acid that makes the films strong, and has antioxidant components that can prolong food’s shelf life.
It’s possible to enrich the films with natural antiviral substances like garlic, turmeric or ginger in order to extend food’s life even more.
Making these films requires no special equipment, it could be made in food or film factories.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 26, 2021

New copper-based, reusable metal foam has near 100% air filtration efficiency for particles sized the size of COVID-19.
The foam starts with ultra-thin copper nanowires, and metal is deposited on them through electric currents.
Current filtration materials, such as those used in N95 masks, are easy to destroy, and not easily reusable.
Whereas the copper foam is a sustainable, reusable alternative that can be produced at scale for a very low cost, approximately $2 per filter.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 26, 2021

phys.org

Tensegrity is a century old design principle combining a flexible mesh with isolated rigid bars in order to delocalize deformations.
Thanks to this, the material can’t get destroyed in a chain reaction of locally confined damage (like when ceramics break from an initial small crack).
This is the first ever physical demonstration of tensegrity metamaterials.
It shows a 25 times improvement in deformability, and orders-of-magnitude improvement in energy absorption compared to state-of-the-art materials.
The material could have a wide array of potential engineering applications.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 12, 2021

An analysis of 28,000 gut microbiome samples from all around the world has yielded a database of 140,000 virus species - the Gut Phage Database.
Scientists used metagenomics, a DNA-sequencing method, to isolate the different viruses from their samples.
The resulting database will be an incredible resource for scientists studying bacteriophages, and how they influence our guts and overall health.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on March 12, 2021

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