Word: silk
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...cobweb glistening with dew seems as fragile as it is lovely. But one day soon, predicts University of Wyoming biologist Randy Lewis, man-made analogues of spider silk will be put to an astonishing variety of heavy-duty uses, from reinforcing fibers in aircraft doors to body-hugging suits for downhill skiers. Over the past four years, Lewis has played the attentive host to dozens of fist-size spiders called golden orb weavers, housing them in Plexiglas condominiums, feeding them a daily diet of flies and, every now and then, flipping them on their backs to unravel yards of gossamer...
What gives spider silk its impressive array of qualities? What, for that matter, lends crack resistance to horses' hooves and adhesiveness to the secretions of mussels and barnacles? What makes rats' teeth sharp and insect cuticle hard? By answering such questions, Lewis and other researchers hope to usher in an exciting new era in materials science, one based not on petroleum products like nylon and plastic but on proteins synthesized by living, growing things. "Why go to an organic chemist for new materials," asks University of Mississippi biochemist Steven Case, "when nature has already produced some beauties...
Fine-tuned by 4 billion years of evolution, protein chemistry has a lot to recommend it. To produce Kevlar, for instance, requires vats of concentrated sulfuric acid that must be maintained at high pressure. But spiders produce silk in the open air using water as a solvent. "I am absolutely fascinated," says University of Washington materials scientist Christopher Viney, "that such an incredible material starts out as a solution in water, and all the spider does is squirt it out through a small hole. In the process, proteins that were soluble turn into insoluble fibers. Now, isn't that amazing...
...course, no car of the future will be made of rhino horn, just as no silk spun by spiders is likely be woven into designer clothes. For starters, it would take 500 to 1,000 spiders to spin out enough silk for one necktie. "And you probably wouldn't want to wear a necktie made of spider silk anyway," laughs zoologist John Gosline of the University of British Columbia. Reason: when wet, spider silk contracts 50%, a property that, in a necktie at least, might prove decidedly unpleasant on damp days. Armed with the tools of molecular biology, however, scientists...
...love. Almost every poem ends with a phrase describing a healing, embattled love: "but the night was dark/ and love was a burning fence/ about my house," she writes at the end of "Gemini." "Quiet love hangs/ in the door of my house/ a sheet of brick-caught silk/ rent in the sun" concludes "Echo", also written in the 1950s. But "Dreams Bite", written in 1968, ends "I shall love/ again/ when I am obsolete...