Superhydrophobic surfaces have already been applied in anti-fouling, water-oil separation, liquid transportation, etc. Surfaces can be defined as superhydrophobic once they support a water droplet with its spherical shape maintained and accompanied by an apparent contact angle larger than 150° rolling-off below 10°. Such repellent property is achieved the synergetic action of hierarchical struc...

Sarkar and Seshadri have presented an interesting paper in this issue on the ethical approach that a physician should take when faced with requests for faith healing (1). The paper describes four approaches that the physician can take. These are rejecting the request, keeping oneself detached from the issue, endorsing the request and trying to understand the practices concerned so as to make a ...

The self-healing capability of bituminous materials has been known for many years. Researches were mostly focused on the self healing behaviour during load repetitions. The tests are either time consuming and/or complex. In this paper, a simple self healing test procedure is presented combining the fracture-healing-re-fracture test (FHR) with morphological observations. A fast displacement spee...

A self-healing fiber-reinforced structural polymer matrix composite material is demonstrated. In the composite, a microencapsulated healing agent and a solid chemical catalyst are dispersed within the polymer matrix phase. Healing is triggered by crack propagation through the microcapsules, which then release the healing agent into the crack plane. Subsequent exposure of the healing agent to th...

Given increasing environmental and energy issues, mimicking nature to confer synthetic materials with self-healing property to expand their lifespan is highly desirable. Just like human skin recovers itself upon damage with the aid of nutrient-laden blood vascularization, designing smart materials with microvascular network to accelerate self-healing is workable but continues to be a challenge....

Application of peritoneal macrophages to experimentally induced cutaneous wounds of old mice accelerates healing to levels almost comparable to those of untreated young animals. Slightly greater acceleration is observed when macrophages are obtained from young as opposed to old donors. These findings are consistent with a defect in macrophage function as a cause of impaired wound healing in sen...