ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Engineers are catching rainbows: Material that slows light opens new possibilities in solar energy, other fields
• Highly flexible organic semiconductors: Research paves way for thin-sheet plastic displays or wearable electronics
• Shifting sands: Force is the key to granular state-shifting
• 'Bionic proteins': Nano-machines recreate protein activities
• Brain prostheses create a sense of touch: Infrared signaling could create sense of touch in artificial limbs

Engineers are catching rainbows: Material that slows light opens new possibilities in solar energy, other fields Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:52 AM PST Engineers have created a more efficient way to catch rainbows, an advancement in photonics that could lead to technological breakthroughs in solar energy, stealth technology and other areas of research.

Highly flexible organic semiconductors: Research paves way for thin-sheet plastic displays or wearable electronics Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:52 AM PST Physicists have demonstrated extremely flexible organic semiconductors that withstood multiple bending cycles in which the devices were rolled to a radius as small as 200 micrometers. The technology holds promise for making low-cost flexible electronics -- conceivably video displays that bend like book pages or roll and unroll like posters, or wearable circuitry sewn into uniforms or athletic wear.

Shifting sands: Force is the key to granular state-shifting Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:50 AM PST Ever wonder why sand can both run through an hourglass like a liquid and be solid enough to support buildings? It's because granular materials -- like sand or dirt -- can change their behavior, or state. Researchers have found that the forces individual grains exert on one another are what most affect that transition.

'Bionic proteins': Nano-machines recreate protein activities Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:49 AM PST Physicists have developed nano-machines which recreate principal activities of proteins. They present the first versatile and modular example of a fully artificial protein-mimetic model system. These "bionic proteins" could play an important role in innovating pharmaceutical research.

Brain prostheses create a sense of touch: Infrared signaling could create sense of touch in artificial limbs Posted: 17 Feb 2013 05:41 AM PST Infrared sensing might be built into a whole-body prosthesis for paraplegics so patients wearing the "exoskeleton" could have sensory information about where their limbs are and how objects feel when they touch them.

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