Cognitive textiles
Our collaborator Patricia Flanagan has created a YouTube post to promote the ‘Cognitive Textiles’ project, which the SSRL is really enthusiastic about being involved with.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTE6fAVXWV0
Boiling Point Podcast- Spider Silk Research special, with Sean Blamires
New podcast is out: Spider silk special!Spider silk is one of the toughest materials on earth – it’s super light, durable and sustainable. Is spider silk the raw material for clothes and protective gear of the future? Cat chats to Dr Sean Blamires whose research explores ways to harness the spider silk’s special features for…
DetailsBiomimetics research re-examined
Biomimetics (the transfer of functional principals from living systems into designs) is a rapidly growing field of research. Nevertheless, gauging how useful it has been as a tool for developing new products and technologies is difficult, as the field is currently ill defined and real, tangible outputs have so far been few. Moreover, it is…
DetailsAustralian Geographic interview Sean Blamires & Marie Herberstein
“Spiders customise webs based on diet”, Australian Geographic, March 19, 2015. Read the Australian Geographic article here. ‘The findings indicate that spiders adjust the type of webs they spin to adapt to what food source is around. If there are more flies, for example, spiders don’t seem to waste the extra energy needed to build…
DetailsAustralasian Science Magazine: new article
Sean Blamires has published an article on the influences of environmental variability on spider web and silk properties entitled “You are What You Weave” in the October edition of Australasian Science Magazine. See http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/issue-october-2015/you-are-what-you-weave.html
Article featured in “Inside JEB”
Our recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology (Blamires, S.J., Martens, P.J. & Kasumovic, M.M. 2018. Fitness consequences of extended phenotypic plasticity. Journal of Experimental Biology. 221: jeb167288) was featured in ‘Inside JEB’ on the inside cover of the February 20 issue of the journal. Inside JEB Feb2018