Why are the lightweight silk threads of web spiders tougher than most other materials? Scientists from the Universities of Würzburg and Mainz teamed up to find answers to this question. They were able to show that the natural ...
Biochemistry
Sep 26, 2019
0
12
Did you know that female spiders can weave seven different types of silk? And that, by mimicking spiders, humans have learned to make a silken material that is almost as strong as spiderweb?
Biotechnology
Sep 18, 2019
0
7
Achieving strength and extensibility at the same time has so far been a great challenge in material engineering: increasing strength has meant losing extensibility and vice versa. Now Aalto University and VTT researchers ...
Materials Science
Sep 16, 2019
0
31
With two pairs of fine-tipped tweezers and the hands of a surgeon, Cheryl Hayashi began dissecting the body of a silver garden spider under her microscope.
Materials Science
Aug 14, 2019
0
8
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and Slovenia has found a previously unknown protein in the strongest known spider web material. In their paper published in the journal Communications ...
UMBC postdoctoral fellow Sarah Stellwagen and co-author Rebecca Renberg at the Army Research Lab have published the first-ever complete sequences of two genes that allow spiders to produce glue—a sticky, modified version ...
Biotechnology
Jun 05, 2019
0
727
Nature has evolved protein-based substances with mechanical properties that rival even the best synthetic materials. For example, pound for pound, spider silk is stronger and tougher than steel. But unlike steel, the natural ...
Materials Science
Apr 02, 2019
0
149
A team of biologists and physicists, led by the University of Bristol, have uncovered new insights into how antlions—one of the fiercest and most terrifying predators in the insect kingdom—build their deadly pit traps.
Plants & Animals
Mar 26, 2019
1
262
Spider silk is a self-assembling biopolymer with hydrogen bonds underlying its chemical structure, yet despite weak chemical bonding it outperforms most materials relative to mechanical performance. The biopolymer is produced ...
Spider silk, already known as one of the strongest materials for its weight, turns out to have another unusual property that might lead to new kinds of artificial muscles or robotic actuators, researchers have found.
Materials Science
Mar 01, 2019
10
1147
