Spiders’ unspun silk flows easier the faster it is sheared

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Nephila Senegalensis (Golden orb weaving spider).Credit: Oxford Silk Group
Nephila Senegalensis (Golden orb weaving spider).Credit: Oxford Silk Group

Oxford researchers have discovered that spiders and silkworms spin their fibres using methods that are not all that different from commercial spinning.


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All News summaries for November 01, 2006

The Lightness of Electrons in a Twisting Metal Crystal

7 hours ago | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers at Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center has observed electrons moving through a crystal of bismuth metal behaving like light.

Proposed Particle Help Explains Odd Galactic Photons

Jul 25, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
In 2002, a satellite called INTEGRAL was launched by the European Space Agency with an instrument on board to detect and measure gamma rays from space. Four years later, it yielded some intriguing data: An unusually high ...

Electron microscopy enters the picometer scale

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Jülich scientists have succeeded in precisely measuring atomic spacings down to a few picometres using new methods in ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy. This makes it possible to find out decisive parameters ...

Revolutionary materials reflect ancient forms

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
(PhysOrg.com) -- Although order is pleasing to the eye, it can quickly become boring. In Islamic architecture therefore, decoration often follows a strict yet aperiodic pattern. Similar structures also form ...

Shielding for ambitious neutron experiment

Jul 24, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
In science fiction stories it is either the inexhaustible energy source of the future or a superweapon of galactic magnitude: antimaterial. In fact, antimaterial can neither be found on Earth nor in space, is extremely complex ...
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