Valheru
14 May 2009, 12:35 PM
Biological emulation has just taken another baby step forward, and ID has just been given another bitch-slap:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/05/sensing-the-stretch-and-compression-of-polymers.ars
Sensing the stretch and compression of polymers
We can sense the pressure from a tap on the shoulder or a pat on the back because we have mechanoreceptors that undergo conformational changes when we experience touch. They allow us to register and get away from a bruising grip before it causes injury. So far, this ability to detect differences in mechanical stress is unique to biological tissues—synthetic materials generally lack the ability to report the degree of stress they're under before getting damaged.
A mechanoresponsive material would have many applications beyond being a simple force sensor. One can imagine a polymer that provides structural reinforcement once it experiences too much stress, or a material that can release a drug when it suffers a certain level of pressure. Before these applications become reality, quite a few advancements are necessary in the field. Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led by Nancy Sottos, made a key development—a mechanoresponsive polymer—and published a description of it in yesterday’s issue of Nature.
Click on the link for the rest of it.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/05/sensing-the-stretch-and-compression-of-polymers.ars
Sensing the stretch and compression of polymers
We can sense the pressure from a tap on the shoulder or a pat on the back because we have mechanoreceptors that undergo conformational changes when we experience touch. They allow us to register and get away from a bruising grip before it causes injury. So far, this ability to detect differences in mechanical stress is unique to biological tissues—synthetic materials generally lack the ability to report the degree of stress they're under before getting damaged.
A mechanoresponsive material would have many applications beyond being a simple force sensor. One can imagine a polymer that provides structural reinforcement once it experiences too much stress, or a material that can release a drug when it suffers a certain level of pressure. Before these applications become reality, quite a few advancements are necessary in the field. Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led by Nancy Sottos, made a key development—a mechanoresponsive polymer—and published a description of it in yesterday’s issue of Nature.
Click on the link for the rest of it.