Buckle up: A new class of materials is here

Usually, the two characterizations of a material are mutually exclusive: something is either stiff, or it can absorb vibrations well—but rarely both. However, if we could make materials that are both stiff and good at absorbing ...

Can synthetic polymers replace the body's natural proteins?

Most life on Earth is based on polymers of 20 amino acids that have evolved into hundreds of thousands of different, highly specialized proteins. They catalyze reactions, form backbone and muscle and even generate movement.

Researchers create a sea of nano-sized gold stars

Researchers from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the University of Washington (UW) have successfully designed a bio-inspired molecule that can direct gold atoms to form perfect ...

Blueprint for a robust quantum future

Claiming that something has a defect normally suggests an undesirable feature. That's not the case in solid-state systems, such as the semiconductors at the heart of modern classical electronic devices. They work because ...

Pore-like proteins designed from scratch

In a milestone for biomolecular design, a team of scientists has succeeded in creating new proteins that adopt one of the most complex folds known to molecular biology. These designer proteins were shown in the lab to spontaneously ...

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