Caras, e Carbono

Uma Firma Japonesa oferece-vos...

As vossas caras!

Japanese company offers disturbingly-lifelike masks of clients' own faces


By Pawel Piejko

t appears that there's a number of customers willing to pay a lot to be in possession of a lifelike replica of their face or even their whole head ... or at least, REAL-f hopes so. The Japanese company offers extremely realistic 3D models of human faces and heads made using vinyl chloride resin, based on its own technique called 3DPFs (3 Dimension Photo Forms).

In order to create the mask, REAL-f takes a number of pictures of the person's face (or head) from various angles and imprints them on a vinyl chloride resin spread over a mold. The modeling technique reportedly allows for a very high level of realism, including detailed mapping of irises, blood vessels and pores, while the lifelike mask is also water-resistant and colorfast. It's possible to order just a mask, or a 3D mannequin-like human head.

http://www.gizmag.com/3d-lifelike-masks-real-f/20134/

Uma nova forma, barata, de Carbono super-duro, que aguenta o que só o Diamante antes aguentava!

Scientists discover new form of superhard carbon

By Darren Quick

Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and comes in a wide variety of forms, called allotropes, including graphite, graphene, and the hardest natural material known to man, diamonds. Now scientists have discovered a new form of carbon that is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses previously only observed in diamond. Unlike crystalline forms of carbon such as diamonds, whose hardness is highly dependent upon the direction in which the crystal is formed, the new form of carbon is amorphous meaning it could be equally strong in all directions.

A team including scientists from Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science started with a form of carbon called glassy carbon. Glassy carbon was first synthesized in the 1950s and was found to combine glassy and ceramic properties with those of graphite, including high temperature resistance, hardness, low density, low electrical resistance, low friction and low thermal resistance. To create the new carbon allotrope, the team compressed glassy carbon to above 400,000 times normal atmospheric pressure.

http://www.gizmag.com/new-superhard-form-of-carbon/