No longer in fanciful coats or button-down shirts with neckties, Olympians compete in uniforms specially designed and engineered for maximum performance.
Bio-inspiration takes cues from natural structures that do certain things very effectively. One example: the strong but flexible fibers that sea sponges use to anchor themselves to the ocean floor.
Research on molecular machines won last year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry. Now scientists have figured out a way to get these tiny molecules to join forces and collaborate on real work on a macro scale.
Coating paper with an inexpensive thin film can allow users to print and erase a physical page as many as 80 times. That reduces both the cost and the environmental effects of paper use.
Alexis Noel, Georgia Institute of Technology and David Hu, Georgia Institute of Technology
How do a frog’s tongue and saliva work together to be sticky enough to lift 1.4 times the animal’s body weight? Painstaking lab work found their spit switches between two distinct phases to nab prey.
Our civilisation is built on chemistry, and the science has a bright future, with the launch of a new Decadal Plan that will steer the science into the future.