In a research lab at the University of Tokyo, scientists have developed a new kind of glue. It's incredibly strong and highly stretchable, yet it washes away completely with a little alcohol.

Researchers in Thailand have developed a prototype high-performance bicycle tire that replaces conventional nylon fabric reinforcement with natural silk. The team combined laboratory-scale material testing with pilot-scale tire manufacturing. Natural rubber composites were produced by placing a layer of silk or nylon fabric between rubber sheets and bonding the layers using a resorcinol-formaldehyde-latex coating. The selected composite formulation was then used to manufacture full bicycle tires.

A recent study examined a transparent material used in high-impact applications such as helicopter windshields at the molecular level to measure its toughness. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, Irvine, followed a crack along a grain boundary in magnesium aluminate spinel, or transparent aluminum, adding new data about this unique crystal-structured material. Their paper is published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.