Chemists have found the physical basis for the rose’s ability to grip water droplets in place, even when the flower is upside down.
In a study scheduled for the April 21 issue of ACS’ Langmuir, a bi-weekly journal, this newly described “petal effect“ could lead to unique new adhesive materials, coatings and fabrics, Phydorg reported.
The study of biological microstructures has been a lively area of research, particularly in the design of biomimetic materials. But before the petal effect could be replicated in synthetic materials, an in-depth understanding of the rose’s surface was needed.

Researchers provide the first description of the microscale surface of roses, composed of arrays of tiny, fleshy projections called micropapillae.

Lin Feng and colleagues in China provide the first description of the microscale surface of roses, composed of arrays of tiny, fleshy projections called micropapillae. The micropapillae form a seal with water droplets, allowing them to cling to the surface of the rose petal. Using these new insights, Feng was able to create a synthetic rose petal surface with same properties.
“The simple duplication of petal surface provides us not only a theoretical explanation of the phenomenon but also an inspiration for the preparation of biomimetic polymer films, which should be of great biological and technological importance,“ says Feng.

We’ve all heard about the space missions that are DOA (dead on arrival) when NASA engineers lose touch with the spacecraft or lander. In other cases, some critical system fails and the mission is compromised.
Both are maddening scenarios because the spacecraft probably could be easily fixed if engineers could just get their hands on the hardware for a few minutes, Physorg wrote.
Ali Akoglu and his students at The University of Arizona are working on hybrid hardware/software systems that one day might use machine intelligence to allow the spacecraft to heal themselves.
Akoglu, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, is using Field Programmable Gate Arrays, or FPGA, to build these self-healing systems. FPGAs combine software and hardware to produce flexible systems that can be reconfigured at the chip level.
Because some of the hardware functions are carried out at the chip level, the software can be set up to mimic hardware. In this way, the FPGA ’firmware’ can be reconfigured to emulate different kinds of hardware.
Akoglu explains it this way: There are general-purpose systems, like your desktop computer, which can run a variety of applications. Unfortunately, even with 3 GHz, dual-core processors, they’re extremely slow compared with hardwired systems.

Every year, more than 30 billion water bottles are added to America’s landfills, creating a mountainous environmental problem. But if research at Missouri University of Science and Technology is successful, the plastic bottles of the future could literally disappear within four months of being discarded.
The Missouri S&T research team is constructing new breeds of biodegradable and bioavailable plastics in an effort to reduce the tons of plastic waste that ends up in the nation’s landfills each year.
Bioavailable plastics contain substances that can be absorbed by living systems during their normal physiological functions, ScienceDaily reported.
By combining and modifying a variety of bio-based, oil-based and natural polymers, the team seeks to create optimal blends that can be used to make agricultural films, bottles, biomedical and drug delivery devices, and more.
The team is working under the direction of Dr. K.B. Lee, professor of chemical engineering at Missouri S&T, to improve the properties of the biodegradable plastics for real-life products. Although companies already sell biodegradable polymers, the products are often expensive, of poor quality or developed for specific applications.
That’s why the team is investigating how bio-based fillers, such as starch and fibers, can be included to reduce the cost in a variety of commercial applications.