Author: Glenn Hauman

Scientists make super-strong metallic spider silk

LONDON (Reuters) – Spider silk isalready tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made itthree times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.

The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles andhigh-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons.

“It could make very strong thread for surgical operations,” researcher Seung-Mo Lee of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, said in a telephone interview.

Lee and colleagues, who published their findings in the journalScience, found that adding zinc, titanium or aluminum to a length ofspider silk made it more resistant to breaking or deforming.

They used a process called atomic layer deposition,which not only coated spider dragline silks with metal but also causedsome metal ions to penetrate the fibers and react with their proteinstructure.

Lee said he next wanted to try adding other materials, including artificial polymers like Teflon.

The idea was inspired by studies showing traces of metals in thetoughest parts of some insect body parts. The jaws of leaf-cutter antsand locusts, for example, both contain high levels of zinc, making themparticularly stiff and hard.

Yeah, sure. We know where they really got inspired– Web of Spider-Man #100.

Dave Mack has been pushing this lately, and I can’t blame him: Want To Save Your Favorite TV Show? Stop watching it on television.

The number of viewers that is reported in the press—the 24.4 million people who watch American Idol, say—is extrapolated from the readings from those Nielsen boxes. The “save our show” campaigns are ill-advised because they fail to take into account this all-important gap between the sample size and the size of the sampled audience.The alternative is to drive people where they can actually be counted—and these days that’s online. The Internet offers metrics everywhere you turn. The networks can analyze the number of streams, number of ad impressions, number of page views, number of visits, number of visitors, number of comments, etc. It’s a democratic space where the eyes and participation of fans can actually be seen by the network bosses making the decisions. Unlike with analog TV, online fans can actually speak directly to power. So whether it’s through iTunes, Hulu, or one of the networks’ proprietary streams, the smart way to campaign for a show’s renewal is to stream it after the fact.

You hear that, Sarah Connor fans? Get clicking!

Of course, no one will ask what happens if you click on the viewer, and then go to work while it plays to an empty room. Because that would be wrong.

I’m not sure what’s harder to believe: that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have just hit their 25th anniversary, or that the Empire State Building will be lit up green tonight to honor that fact. But there it is. So take a look tonight as they light the Turtle-Signal. Or something.

Me, I’m going to break out my stash of TMNT Pudding Pies. You can’t tell if they’ve gone bad because the insides are already green.

It’s true! Look at him! That photo just says, "Guilty! Take me away, ladies!"

Sigh.

No, it’s just Hugh Jackman cementing his place in Hollywood history by putting his hand and foot prints into cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Personally, I was hoping he’d put claw marks into the cement as well, but you can’t have everything.

You’ve probably heard that Hugh will be in the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine opening May 1st, right? Okay. Go forth and see it and make this thing gross $80 million in its opening weekend.

• My wife made me write that headline. She’s been kibbitzing the entire time I’ve been writing this. "He’s going to Love Jail, isn’t he? Best. Post. EVAH."

It’s a good thing she hasn’t seen this picture, I shudder to think what she’d say…