The science of knitting, unpicked

Dating back more than 3,000 years, knitting is an ancient form of manufacturing, but Elisabetta Matsumoto of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta believes that understanding how stitch types govern shape and stretchiness ...

A robot that runs like a cat (w/ Video)

Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, EPFL's 4-legged 'cheetah-cub robot' has the same advantages as its model: It is small, light and fast.

Researchers unravel mysteries of spider silk

(Phys.org)—Scientists at Arizona State University are celebrating their recent success on the path to understanding what makes the fiber that spiders spin – weight for weight - at least five times as strong as piano wire. ...

A new way of looking at the Earth's interior

Current understanding is that the chemical composition of the Earth's mantle is relatively homogeneous. But experiments conducted by ETH researchers now show that this view is too simplistic. Their results solve a key problem ...

Industrial bread dough kneaders could use physics-based redesign

Bakers have been crafting bread for more than 6,000 years with four simple ingredients: flour, salt, water and yeast. Apart from using high-quality ingredients, the kneading process and amount of time the dough is given to ...

Bending diamond is possible, at the nanoscale

Diamond is prized by scientists and jewelers alike, largely for a range of extraordinary properties including exceptional hardness. Now a team of Australian scientists has discovered diamond can be bent and deformed, at the ...

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