14-01-23 Two years ago, researchers from Iowa State University (USA) published a study which concluded that spider silk conducts heat as well as metals. Now, a team from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) has repeated the experiment and the results...

13-09-26 A recent paper published in the open access journal Zookeys provides a first-time glimpse in the natural history of the enigmatic（神秘的） spider species Progradungula otwayensis. Lurking in the hollows of old myrtle（桃金娘） beech（山毛榉） trees...

12-03-06 Xinwei Wang had a hunch that（总感到，总怀疑） spider webs were worth a much closer look. So he ordered eight spiders -- Nephila clavipes, golden silk orbweavers -- and put them to work eating crickets and spinning webs in the cages he set up in an...

12-02-07 All rare and costly materials had certainly a great fascination for him, and in his eagerness to procure them he had sent away many merchants, some to traffic for amber with the rough fisher-folk of the north seas, some to Egypt to look for that cur...

12-01-09 Research was published this week showing that silk produced by transgenically-engineered silkworms（蚕） in the laboratory of Malcolm Fraser Jr., professor of biological sciences at University of Notre Dame, exhibits the highly sought-after strength...

11-08-11 Genetically engineered spider silk could help overcome a major barrier to the use of gene therapy in everyday medicine, according to a new study that reported development and successful initial laboratory tests of such a material. It appears in ACS'...

11-05-17 Climbing is possibly one of the riskiest things an adult tarantula（狼蛛） can do. Weighing in at anything up to 50gm, the dry attachment systems that keep daintier spiders firmly anchored are on the verge of failure in these colossal（巨大的，异常...

10-07-30 Tougher than a bullet-proof vest yet synonymous with（与同义） beauty and luxury, silk fibers are a masterpiece of nature whose remarkable properties have yet to be fully replicated in the laboratory. Thanks to their amazing mechanical properties as...

10-04-29 People in India wore mostly cotton clothing. India was the first place where cotton was grown, even as early as 2500 BC in the Harappan（哈拉帕的） period. By the Aryan period, women wore one very long piece of cloth called a sari（卷布，纱丽） , th...

10-03-04 CSIRO scientist Dr Tara Sutherland and her team have achieved another important milestone in the international quest（追求，寻找） to artificially produce insect silk. They have hand-drawn fine threads of honeybee silk from a 'soup' of silk proteins...