WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has announced a new strategic direction for its NIKE laser-target facility to align its world-class capabilities with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) nuclear strategic priorities.

A new technique maintains structural integrity by essentially hiding openings in materials from surrounding forces. Rather than reinforcing an opening, such as a hole or a window, to protect against a few select forces, the new approach reorganizes nearly any set of forces that could affect the surrounding material to avoid the opening.

A new paper published in Chemistry of Materials puts artificial intelligence and machine learning on the task of finding new, powerful electrolytes for designing next-generation batteries for electric vehicles, phones, laptops and grid-scale energy storage. The paper from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering outlines a new framework for finding molecules that maximize three components that make an ideal battery electrolyte – ionic conductivity, oxidative stability and Coulombic efficiency.

A new shortcut can help engineers design leak-proof magnetic confinement systems for fusion reactors 10 times as fast as the gold standard method, without sacrificing accuracy. While several other big challenges remain for all magnetic fusion designs, this advance addresses the biggest challenge that’s specific to a type of fusion reactor first proposed in the 1950s, called a stellarator.

What if there were a fabric that, like Superman, could take a bullet and self-heal? Such a super-dynamic, action-powered polymer might actually help protect real-life flyers in space. Material scientists at Texas A&M University have developed just such a polymer with a unique self-healing property never before seen at any scale. When struck by a projectile, this material stretches so much that when the projectile manages to pass through, it takes only a small amount of the polymer with it. As a result, the hole left behind is much smaller than the projectile itself.