The new substance is the result of a feat thought to be impossible: polymerizing a material in two dimensions.

Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities.

The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.

Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges or other structures, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.

A scientific breakthrough may enable paralysed people to walk again as researchers have created human spinal cord implants in a world first.

The 3D implants, made using human cells, had an 80% success rate in restoring the ability to walk in paralysed mice in the laboratory, researchers said.

Tissue samples from patients are transformed into functioning spinal cord implants through a process that mimics the development of the spinal cord in human embryos.

The findings are published in Advanced Science.

A staple on any engineer’s workbench, duct tape is a quick and dependable fix for cracks and tears in many structural materials. MIT engineers have now developed a kind of surgical duct tape — a strong, flexible, and biocompatible sticky patch that can be easily and quickly applied to biological tissues and organs to help seal tears and wounds.

Like duct tape, the new patch is sticky on one side and smooth on the other. In its current formulation, the adhesive is targeted to seal defects in the gastrointestinal tract, which the engineers describe as the body’s own biological ductwork.

In numerous experiments, the team has shown the patch can be quickly stuck to large tears and punctures in the colon, stomach, and intestines of various animal models. The adhesive binds strongly to tissues within several seconds and holds for over a month. It is also flexible, able to expand and contract with a functioning organ as it heals. Once an injury is fully healed, the patch gradually degrades without causing inflammation or sticking to surrounding tissues.

Researchers use tiny magnetic swirls to generate true random numbers

Whether for use in cybersecurity, gaming or scientific simulation, the world needs true random numbers, but generating them is harder than one might think. But a group of Brown University physicists has developed a technique that can potentially generate millions of random digits per second by harnessing the behavior of skyrmions—tiny magnetic anomalies that arise in certain two-dimensional materials.

Their research, published in Nature Communications, reveals previously unexplored dynamics of single skyrmions, the researchers say. Discovered around a half-decade ago, skyrmions have sparked interest in physics as a path toward next-generation computing devices that take advantage of the magnetic properties of particles—a field known as spintronics.

"There has been a lot of research into the global dynamics of skyrmions, using their movements as a basis for performing computations," said Gang Xiao, chair of the Department of Physics at Brown and senior author of the research. "But in this work, we show that purely random fluctuations in the size of skyrmions can be useful as well. In this case, we show that we can use those fluctuations to generate random numbers, potentially as many as 10 million digits per second."

Most random numbers produced by computers aren't random in the strictest sense. Computers use an algorithm to generate random numbers based on an initial starting place, a seed number. But because the algorithm used to generate the number is deterministic, the numbers aren't truly random. With enough information about the algorithm or its output, it could be possible for someone to find patterns in the numbers that the algorithm produces. While pseudorandom numbers are sufficient in many settings, applications like data security—which uses numbers that can't be guessed by an outside party—require true random numbers.

No recovery plan for the Australian marsupial was in place despite it being identified as a requirement nine years ago