Alfred Crosby and PhD alumnus Michael Bartlett, both from Polymer Science and Engineering, introduce Green Geckskin using natural rubber impregnated into stiff natural fiber fabrics such as cotton, hemp and jute. This new product, described in a recent issue of Advanced Materials, has the same extraordinary capabilities as the original: An index-card sized piece can hold 700 pounds on a smooth surface, be easily released, and leaves no residue. Geckskin website, News release
Peter Chien, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is featured in a Research Next video about the protein misfolding research he does in the Models to Medicine (M2M) Center, a part of the UMass Amherst Institute for Applied Life Sciences.
Elizabeth Dumont, Biology, and mechanical engineer Ian Grosse and others introduce a new engineering model that can be morphed into different shapes in order to examine biomechanical function in very diverse organisms and reconstruct skull shapes in long-extinct ancestral species, as reported in Evolution, Research Next
Joseph Elkinton, Environmental Conservation, says that when temperatures drop to 15 degrees below zero, it's cold enough to kill most of the wooly adelgid, a insect that kills hemlock trees. Telegram & Gazette, The Atlantic Cities
Suzanne M. Cox, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology doctoral candidate, and others have designed a robot that imitates the striking force of the mantis shrimp, which is able to strike and break open mollusk shells. Phys.org
