Unofficial 'Spider-Man' follows nature's lead

Eden Steven, a physicist at Florida State University's MagLab facility, discovered that simple methods can result in surprising and environmentally friendly high-tech outcomes during his experiments with spider silk and carbon ...

Artificial muscle contracts and expands with changes in humidity

(Phys.org) —A small plastic strip can do "weight training" to effortlessly lifts many times its own weight, driven by cyclic changes in the humidity of the surrounding air. This strong "artificial arm" is based on the interaction ...

Unusual material expands dramatically under pressure

If you squeeze a normal object in all directions, it shrinks in all directions. But a few strange materials will actually grow in one dimension when compressed. A team of chemists has now discovered a structure that takes ...

A folding ceramic

(Phys.org) —A sophisticated nanostructure renders a wafer-thin paper made of electrically conductive vanadium pentoxide fibres both tough and pliable.

The material that's like an octopus

(Phys.org)—The atomic structure of a zinc-based material has a surprising amount in common with the tentacles of an octopus, Oxford University researchers have found.

Assembly of nano-machines mimics human muscle

For the first time, an assembly of thousands of nano-machines capable of producing a coordinated contraction movement extending up to around ten micrometers, like the movements of muscular fibers, has been synthesized by ...

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