Liangliang Hao Wins Innovation Award for Research into Lung Disease

Assistant Professor Liangliang Hao (BME) received the Innovation Award from the American Lung Association for her research project titled Developing Innovative Early Detection Test for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a serious lung disease that is relatively understudied.
The ALA’s Innovation Award is intended to support highly promising investigators with stellar track records of accomplishment, who have the potential to advance the field of lung disease science.

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A Polymer That Defies Nature: The First Molecularly Impermeable Plastic

For decades, scientists believed all plastics shared one unavoidable weakness: no matter how dense or strong, gases could always slip through. Even the toughest polymers, from bulletproof Kevlar to everyday food packaging, may look solid, but at the molecular level, tiny gas molecules can still sneak through. That’s why potato chips go stale and packaged food loses its crispness.  
Now, a collaboration between researchers at Boston University’s College of Engineering, MIT, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Massachusetts and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has overturned that assumption. In a study published today in Nature, the team reports the discovery of the first polymer that is molecularly impermeable; a man-made material that acts as a perfect barrier to gas molecules.

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