Home / Tags
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. In just a few minutes, she found what she was seeking: hundreds of silk glands, the organs spiders use to make their webs. Some looked like mashed potatoes, others
A team of Imperial alumni and postdocs are combining silk with graphene to produce next generation armor for people, vehicles and buildings. “If you were shot by a handgun, Kevlar body armor will save you.” said Dr Gareth Tear, postgraduate researcher in shock physics, and one of the leads on the project. “But the armor
Envisioning a device the U.S. Navy is developing with Utah State University synthetic spider silk conjures images you’d expect in a James Bond thriller. Think strong, stretchy fibers wrapping relentlessly around a boat propeller and effectively foiling nefarious efforts by smugglers, pirates or terrorists. That’s what nonlethal Maritime Vessel Stopping Occlusion Technologies or ‘MVSOT,’ the