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Jul. 30, 2010
Silk
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| It's smooth, slippery, and strong -- but despite the efforts of many researchers, spiders and caterpillars do it best. Efforts to create silk matching that produced by silkworms and spiders have fallen short, in part because researchers aren't entirely sure how the spinners of the animal kingdom manage the chemistry going on in their bodies. We'll talk about what's known about silk, what researchers still need to figure out, and about potential applications for the fibers in everything from medical implants to electronic devices. |
Produced by Charles Bergquist, Director and Contributing Producer
Guests
-
David Kaplan
Stern Family Professor of Engineering
Professor and Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Tufts University
Boston, Massachusetts
FEATURED READING
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
by Annalee Newitz
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