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Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented the first mechanical metamaterials that easily transfer motion effortlessly in one direction while blocking it in the other, as described in a paper published on Feb. 13 in Nature. The material can be thought of as a mechanical one-way shield that blocks energy from coming in but easily transmits it going out the other side.

Prof. Al Bovik, holder of a Cockrell Family Regents Chair in the Wireless Networking and Communication Group (WNCG) and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a $600,000 grant over five years from the National Institute for Standards and Technologies (NIST) to develop methodologies for testing the perceptual quality of images delivered by microwave, submillimeter wave, millimeter-wave, x-ray, infra-red, and optical imaging devices commonly deployed in security applications.