A research team at MIT has developed a possible means of using nanofibers to clean up oil spills, according to a New Scientist article. Though it's not necessarily heard about so much these days, estimates indicate that almost 200,000 tons of oil has been spilled in the ocean since the year 2000. Using "membranes of tangled manganese oxide nanowires around 50 micrometers thick" the researchers have found them strongly water repellent while being capable of absorbing oil-based liquids, a benefit over other similar materials which absorb water as well as oil.
As with all such findings, there's still a lot of work that needs done. For one thing, manganese oxide can be toxic, so the goal is to use these findings as a blueprint for similar materials made of non-toxic substances.
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