If you’ve ever burned your hands on a car steering wheel, you know how hot the inside of a car can get on a summer day. But a new fabric could one day help cars and other objects stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Researchers created a prototype of the fabric, […]
A vegan leather made of dormant fungi can repair itself
Imagine if a ripped leather jacket could repair itself instead of needing to be replaced. This could one day be a reality, if the jacket is fashioned from fungus, researchers report April 11 in Advanced Functional Materials. The team made a self-healing leather from mushrooms’ threadlike structures called mycelium, building on past iterations of the […]
These shape-shifting devices melt and re-form thanks to magnetic fields
These shape-shifting devices melt and re-form thanks to magnetic fields
Want a ‘Shrinky Dinks’ approach to nano-sized devices? Try hydrogels
High-tech shrink art may be the key to making tiny electronics, 3-D nanostructures or even holograms for hiding secret messages. A new approach to making tiny structures relies on shrinking them down after building them, rather than making them small to begin with, researchers report in the Dec. 23 Science. The key is spongelike hydrogel […]