Collaborate Disseminate
The old saying “like water off a duck’s back” is well-earned – the water-loving birds have specialized feathers that keep them from getting too wet. Now, engineers at Virginia Tech have investigated the physics behind how they work and developed synthe… Continue reading Synthetic duck feathers could help ships glide through the water
Last year, we heard how scientists had created eco-friendly soft gel particles from hard grains of pollen. Now, they’ve used those particles to create sponges that could soak up oil spills, then biodegrade once used up.Continue ReadingCategory: Environ… Continue reading Biodegradable plant-pollen sponges could soak up oil spills
Researchers in the US and UK have found a new way to improve paints and coatings, by adding “two-faced” nanoparticles. With one face that attracts water and another that repels it, the particles arranged themselves into a flat layer on a painted surfac… Continue reading Two-faced nanoparticles help make stickier, more water-repellent paint
Among other things, hydrophobic (water-repelling) surfaces can be used to keep medical devices germ-free, to help airplane wings shed ice, and to keep solar panels clean. A new process could soon make those surfaces much more durable, allowing them to … Continue reading Water-repellent “armor” stands up to cuts and abrasions
The “sea skater” is one of the few insects that lives full-time in a marine environment. Scientists are now taking a closer look at how the animal repels water, with an eye towards the development of more hydrodynamic ship hulls.Continue ReadingCategor… Continue reading Discovery of ocean insect’s secret could lead to slipperier ships
As if it’s not enough that fresh produce may sometimes be tainted with harmful bacteria, those microbes can get transferred onto other fruits and veggies, contaminating them too. A new coating, however, has been designed to keep the latter from happeni… Continue reading Dual-action coating made to protect produce from cross-contamination
As many a fancy-refrigerator-owner will know, fingerprints tend to be highly visible on stainless steel. A new transparent coating could help, however, as it goes about reducing the appearance of prints in three ways…
Continue Reading Nano… Continue reading Nano-coating keeps fingerprints from showing up on stainless steel
We’ve already heard about water-repellant materials that copy the structure of the lotus leaf. Now, however, scientists have created a flexible optical plastic that wards off liquids even better, and it was inspired by something else – the hu… Continue reading Mushroom-inspired material gives liquids the slip
See those blue and green dots in the GIF? Those aren’t pixels on an LCD display. Those are actual drops of liquid moving across a special PCB. The fact that the droplets are being manipulated to play a microfluidics game of “Frogger” only makes OpenDrop v 2.0 even cooler.
Lab biology is mainly an exercise in liquid handling – transferring a little of solution X into some of solution Y with a pipette. Manual pipetting is tedious, error prone, and very low throughput, but automated liquid handling workstations run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This makes [Urs Gaudenz]’s …read more
Continue reading Microfluidics “Frogger” is a Game Changer for DIY Biology