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sciencehabit writes In their quest to make ultrastrong yet ultrasmall fibers, the polymer industry may soon take a lesson from Uloborus spiders. Uloborids are cribellate spiders, meaning that instead of spinning wet, sticky webs to catch their prey, they produce a fluffy, charged, wool-like silk. A paper published online today in Biology Letters details the process for the first time. It all starts with the silk-producing cribellar gland. In contrast with other spiders, whose silk comes out of the gland intact, scientists were surprised to discover that uloborids' silk is in a liquid state when it surfaces. As the spider yanks the silk from the duct, it solidifies into nanoscale filaments. This "violent hackling" has the effect of stretching and freezing the fibers into shape. It may even be responsible for increasing their strength, because filaments on the nanoscale become stronger as they are stretched. In order to endow the fibers with an electrostatic charge, the spider pulls them over a comblike plate located on its hind legs. The technique is not unlike the so-called hackling of flax stems over a metal brush in order to soften and prepare them for thread-spinning, but in the spider's case it also gives them a charge. The electrostatic fibers are thought to attract prey to the web in the same way a towel pulled from the dryer is able to attract stray socks.

Tx-0 writes "Quantum physicists from the University of Innsbruck have set another world record: They have achieved controlled entanglement of 14 quantum bits (qubits) and, thus, realized the largest quantum register that has ever been produced. With this experiment the scientists have not only come closer to the realization of a quantum computer but they also show surprising results for the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement. By now the Innsbruck experimental physicists have succeeded in confining up to 64 particles in an ion trap. 'We are not able to entangle this high number of ions yet,' says Thomas Monz. 'However, our current findings provide us with a better understanding about the behavior of many entangled particles.' And this knowledge may soon enable them to entangle even more atoms."

valiko75 writes "Hidden fingerprints can now be revealed quickly and reliably thanks to two developments in nanotechnology. The thing is that they have invented an easier way to reveal hidden fingerprints, but the explanation is rather vague. The main point is that the experiments are not very stable at the moment, but with its development this technology will probably help in discovering many criminal mysteries."

hakaii writes to tell us that the shells of tiny sea creatures may help to lay the foundation for new electronic devices including an improved pollution detector. "Using a chemical process that converts the shells' original silica (silicon dioxide, SiO2) into the semiconductor material silicon, researchers have created a new class of gas sensors based on the unique and intricate three-dimensional (3-D) shells produced by microscopic creatures known as diatoms. The converted shells, which retain the 3-D shape and nanoscale detail of the originals, could also be useful as battery electrodes, chemical purifiers - and in other applications requiring complex shapes that nature can produce better than humans."

According to NanoWerk, UC Riverside researchers have come up with a memory device based on telescoping multi-walled carbon nanotubes. According to one of the researchers, 'This finding leads to a promising potential to build ultrafast high-density nonvolatile memory, up to 100 gigahertz or into the terahertz range" and a prototype could be demonstrated "in the next two to three years.' Similar devices from UCLA and Caltech based on bistable rotaxanes are farther along in being integrated into actual memory circuits, but tend to break after a fairly small number of position changes. Carbon nanotubes may promise more durable switches.