spider silk
sporte | July 31, 2014What’s the first you think about when you see a spider? Running away? Danger? Fairies? Spiderman?Do you wonder if spider silk is really strong enough to stop a train, like they showed in Spiderman 2?
Whatever your thoughts, you’re probably not thinking about 3D printing in space. Yet, the time might be near when astronauts will be using 3D printers filled with spider silk to make replacement parts in space. I learned about this idea in a presentation from Dr. Ron Sims, Utah State University, at the Bioman conference at Salt Lake Community College a couple of weeks ago.
Spider silk, as I…
neurophilosophy | March 7, 2011EVERY year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from paralyzed limbs as a result of peripheral nerve injury. Recently, implantation of artificial nerve grafts has become the method of choice for repairing damaged peripheral nerves. Grafts can lead to some degree of functional recovery when a short segment of nerve is damaged. But they are of little use when it comes to regenerating nerves over distances greater than a few millimeters, and such injuries therefore often lead to permanent paralysis.
Now though, surgeons from Germany have made what could be a significant advance in nerve…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2009tags: spider silk, Madagascar, tapestry, textile art, AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, streaming video
A spectacular and extremely rare textile, woven from golden-colored silk thread produced by more than one million spiders in Madagascar is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in the Grand Gallery.
Drawing on the legacy of a French missionary, Jacob Paul Camboué, this contemporary textile measures 11 feet by 4 feet and took four years to make using a painstaking technique.
Hear from Dr. Ian Tattersall, Curator, Division of Anthropology at AMNH, as well as…