Category: Research

John A. Jaszczak (Physics) was invited to write a Viewpoint about a new paper published in Physical Review Letters about important experimental work on the growth of quasicrystals. His article, “Viewpoint: Watching Quasicrystals Grow,” discusses exciting new work that images–at the atomic scale–the growth of an alloy that exhibits crytsallographically forbidden symmetry, but whose structure can be modeled using the famous, non-periodic Penrose tilings. Viewpoints are editor-invited commentaries written by experts in their field about research articles published in American Physical Society journals, and appear in the online-only news site Physics.

From Tech Today, by John Jaszczak.

Professor Yoke Khin Yap (Physics) was interviewed by the Columbus Dispatch to comment about a recent work reported by Ohio State University researchers. The recent work on water/oil separation filters was first pioneered by Yap in collaboration with Jaroslaw Drelich in 2011. The Columbus Dispatch is a daily newspaper based in Columbus, Ohio.

From Tech Today.

Ohio State researchers develop mesh that captures oil

Other scientists have explored how small particles could help deal with oil spills.

For example, a team of MIT engineers in 2012 devised a way to pull clean water and reusable oil from spills using nanoparticles. And two Michigan Tech University professors published research in 2011 about a fine mesh they coated with nanotubes to attract oil and repel water. Nanotubes are slightly larger than nanoparticles.

Yoke Khin Yap, a physics professor at Michigan Tech who co-wrote that study, said Bhushan and Brown’s findings could improve water-purification methods.

To work on large oil spills, though, the OSU mesh would have to be capable of performing on a much larger scale, Yap said. “We’re not talking about filtering 100 milliliters of liquid — we’re talking about a big volume for an oil spill in the oceans. So it really depends on the speed of this kind of separation process.”

Read more at The Columbus Dispatch, by Laura Arenschield.

Professor Yoke Khin Yap served the Department of Energy (DOE) as an onsite reviewer for the triennial review of the research program supported by the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering (DMSE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Tuesday thru Thursday, April 28-30, 2015.

All research projects supported by BES undergo regular peer review and merit evaluation. For the DOE national laboratory programs, onsite reviews with a panel of external reviewers are required every three years.

The reviews were attended by the division director and program managers from the DOE, BES, DMSE, as well as reviewers from national laboratories and universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, and Yale.

The review schedule included oral presentations, poster presentations, and a facility tour.