Paul Lazarro has one of the weirdest gigs I’ve ever heard of: he milks black widow spiders for their silk. Yeap! The venomous, red dotted, eight-legged, creature-killing black widow is knocked out and then handled for its super strong silk. All in the name of dangerous research. More »
I’ll admit that it looks a bit like your grandparents’ bath towels, but this is actually the largest piece of clothing ever made purely from spider silk. More »
When the Kindle Fire arrived, the Amazon Silk web browser received much hype for its ability to use the cloud for processing and rendering power, thus making the web experience smoother on the $US200 device. But apparently it can run on more than just Amazon’s tablet. More »
Despite a modern spider’s impressive offensive arsenal of venoms and trapping silks, defensive, predator-evading “dragline” silk is perhaps its most valuable asset. In this week’s excerpt, authors Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig discuss the incredible silk’s evolution and ingenious implementation. More »
It makes me nervous too. I’m not so keen on the idea of circuits enveloped in a silk substrate, which melts into your body leaving just nanometres-thick layers of electronics. But it’s for the best, trust me on this one. More »
