Hard or Soft? The new MetaMaterials.

Scientists have now developed a material that can be hard or soft, depending on the force, impact, or stress applied to the object. It reminds me of that Mythbuster episode that looked into mixtures that had a very high surface tension.

In any case, this sort of material would be very useful in safety measures and other similar applications.

Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170123214734.htm

Hydrogels: Medical Marvel and Android building block?

Hydrogels can be one's artificial skin, a medical drug patch system, or even flexible circuitry, sensors, and "skinning" for androids and robots. We're getting ever closer to the science fiction future.

It actually reminds me of whenever Data from ST:TNG is injured, or perhaps the scalp-like thing that was seen in Westworld.

Graphene: Supermaterial

It used to be that the big thing limiting development was, in part, the lack of supermaterials - heck, super robots like the ones we see in movies are probably not at all ppossible, unless we can come up with the right materials with the right properties to make fast-moving megastructures.

And then, of course, graphene came in...

http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2017/01/12-2.htm