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I'm not sure what's new here; space and fashion collide violently every day at the ACT...

Science aficionados have odd and surprising interests By Mark Fischetti | November 16, 2011 | People who are intrigued with physics are somewhat intrigued with computer science, too, but they are crazy about fashion. Who knew? Hilary Mason did.

Funny article .... Reminds me a bit of Luzi :-) And look at this phrase: am I in good or bad company ? "Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, rarely leaves home without his Vibram FiveFingers nylon shoes." In the article it is mentioned as a sign of particularly bad taste :-)

But there should be a second article on sandals! And finally one on the synthesis: socks with sandals... :-)

funny how "basic physics" can still be fashionable

bit confused about what they actually have achieved so far but sounds like it might turn out to be interesting. "The scientists first infiltrated the leaves of Anemone vitifolia -- a plant native to China -- with titanium dioxide in a two-step process. Using advanced spectroscopic techniques, the scientists were then able to confirm that the structural features in the leaf favorable for light harvesting were replicated in the new TiO2 structure. Excitingly, the AIL are eight times more active for hydrogen production than TiO2 that has not been "biotemplated" in that fashion. AILs also are more than three times as active as commercial photo-catalysts. Next, the scientists embedded nanoparticles of platinum into the leaf surface. Platinum, along with the nitrogen found naturally in the leaf, helps increase the activity of the artificial leaves by an additional factor of ten."

Several new components for biological circuits have been developed by researchers. These components are key building blocks for constructing precisely functioning and programmable bio-computers. "The ability to combine biological components at will in a modular, plug-and-play fashion means that we now approach the stage when the concept of programming as we know it from software engineering can be applied to biological computers.