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All Articles Tagged As: silk
 | A study that combines experimental observations of spider webs with complex computer simulations has shown that web durability depends not only on silk strength, but on how overall web design compensates for damage and the response of individual strands to continuously varying stresses. ...> Full Article |
Human existence has always depended on harvesting from nature for food and shelter, but we now increasingly look to nature for technological ideas. Next week, spider silk expert Cheryl Hayashi will give a free public lecture at UC Riverside about technologies that borrow ideas from nature - those that feature in our lives today and what’s envisioned in the future. As a case study, Hayashi will talk about spiders and the efforts to replicate their silks.
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 | Imagine a material that is tougher than Kelvar or steel, yet remarkably flexible. It's something you can easily find in your attic or a lingerie store. It's as instantly recognizable today as it was to our early ancestors, yet we still aren't sure exactly how it's made. ...> Full Article |
Scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the University of Bayreuth have unraveled a decisive step in nature's way of producing spider silk; with industrial partners, they are working toward biomimetic production of synthetic fibers with comparable strength and elasticity. In Nature, they explain how spider silk proteins can be stored in high concentrations without clumping and then drawn at a moment's notice into fibers with five times the tensile strength of steel.
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 | Since its development in China thousands of years ago, silk from silkworms, spiders and other insects has been used for high-end, luxury fabrics as well as for parachutes and medical sutures. Now, National Science Foundation-supported researchers are untangling some of its most closely guarded secrets, and explaining why silk is so super strong.
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 | Spiders and silkworms are masters of materials science, but scientists are finally catching up. Silks are among the toughest materials known, stronger and less brittle, pound for pound, than steel. Now scientists at MIT have unraveled some of their deepest secrets in research that could lead the way to the creation of synthetic materials that duplicate, or even exceed, the extraordinary properties of natural silk. ...> Full Article |
 | CSIRO scientist Dr. Tara Sutherland and her team have achieved another important milestone in the international quest to artificially produce insect silk. ...> Full Article |
 | Like silkworm moths, butterflies and spiders, caddisfly larvae spin silk, but they do so underwater instead on dry land. Now, University of Utah researchers have discovered why the fly's silk is sticky when wet and how that may make it valuable as an adhesive tape during surgery. ...> Full Article |
 | If you want to spin silk like a spider then you need to rethink your starting material, Oxford University scientists have discovered. ...> Full Article |
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