Materials/​Biomaterials

Top executives from plastics resin producers gathered during the 2013 K Fair, in DuŸsseldorf, Germany, the world's largest plastics industry exhibition, and agreed to launch the World Plastics Council, to be the voice of global plastics manufacturers and to facilitate a united approach to address global...

A team of engineers at the University of Colorado at Boulder say that they have successfully added a fourth dimension to their printing technology, opening up exciting possibilities for the creation and use of adaptive, composite materials in manufacturing, packaging, and biomedical applications.

While sutures have evolved over millennia, and catgut gave way to synthetics for stitching up injuries and surgical wounds, the basic process of suturing tissue remains the same. However, the method may finally have become outdated, say a team of researchers at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY.

Researchers at Kiel University, Kiel, Germany, have been studying the role of adhesion in nature, which allows insects and lizards to climb walls, plants to twine up structures, and even bacteria cling to surfaces. During evolution, many of these develop mushroom-shaped adhesive structures and organs,...

The silk of the venomous brown recluse spider could be the key to creating new super-sticky films and wafer-thin electronics and sensors for medical implants that are highly compatible with the human body. So says a team of scientists from Oxford University, UK, and The College of William and Mary,...

Engineers in the School of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, are developing a new family of replacement heart valves made from synthetic materials that, they say, will be superior to current mechanical and tissue-based...