A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a way to create electrically heated cloth. Materials scientist Trisha Andrew explains they took a plain pair of cotton gloves and used a vapor deposition method for nano-coating fabric to coat the fingers in a polymer known as poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), or PEDOT. A coin battery weighing 1.8 grams (0.0039 lbs.) provides power to the gloves, but not enough power to pass...

Benjamin Aufill is Sustainability Communications Manager at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a bustling campus that serves 22,000 undergraduates each year and provides housing for 12,500 of them. The university has recently committed to installing 5.5 MC (DC) of solar on various locations around its sprawling 1,450-acre campus. "I'm pretty sure there will be solar on top of everything eventually," said Aufill in an interview in late ...

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report in the current issue of Small that they have genetically designed a strain of bacteria that spins out extremely thin and highly conductive wires made up of solely of non-toxic, natural amino acids. Researchers led by microbiologist Derek Lovely say the wires, which rival the thinnest wires known to man, are produced from renewable, inexpensive feedstocks and avoid the harsh chemical pro...

Chemists and polymer scientists collaborating at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that they have for the first time identified an unexpected property in an organic semiconductor molecule that could lead to more efficient and cost-effective materials for use in cell phone and laptop displays, for example, and in opto-electronic devices such as lasers, light-emitting diodes and fiber optic communications.

When University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Duncan J. Irschick was working with sharks in Florida last spring to better understand their body shapes, he longed for a simple, quick tool for creating 3D models of them, which would allow him to compare complex shark body shapes among different species. He soon realised that such a device would be useful for creating 3D models of the living geckos he studies, as well.