A research group coordinated by Barbara Mazzolai at the IIT—Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) has created the first ever prototype of a soft, biodegradable and soluble velcro inspired by ...
The snapping of a finger was first depicted in ancient Greek art around 300 B.C. Today, that same snap initiates evil forces for the villain Thanos in Marvel's latest Avengers movie. Both media inspired a group of researchers ...
A pair of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an artificial material that emulates the way that plants use fluids to defy gravity. In their paper published in the CellPress journal Matter, ...
For some, the mere mention of liquid metal might conjure visions of T-1000: the shapeshifting, nigh-invincible villain that turns up the heat on humanity's future savior in "Terminator 2."
Blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) are distant relatives of rainworms, measuring up to 10 cm long. They live in shallow marshes, ponds, and swamps in Europe and North America, where they feed on microorganisms and debris. ...
Polymer science has made possible rubber tires, Teflon and Kevlar, plastic water bottles, nylon jackets among many other ubiquitous features of daily life. Elastic polymers, known as elastomers, can be stretched and released ...
For the first time, researchers have been able capture images providing unprecedented details of how particles behave in a liquid suspension when the phenomenon known as shear thickening takes place. The work allows us to ...
Space exploration requires all kinds of interesting solutions to complex problems. There is a branch of NASA designed to support the innovators trying to solve those problems—the Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). ...
Researchers have developed a highly accurate way to assemble multiple micron-scale optical devices extremely close together on a single chip. The new approach could one day allow high-volume manufacturing of chip-based optical ...
Medical sensing technology has taken great strides in recent years, with the development of wearable devices that can track pulse, brain function, biomarkers in sweat and more. However, there is one big problem with existing ...
