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Auxetic materials deform in an unusual way when stretched or compressed; they are flexible and adaptable, and, if made from responsive materials, can react to their environment. This Comment explores the opportunities they offer for innovative applications in fashion, design and architecture.
Wood has great potential as a building material, because it is strong and lightweight, environmentally friendly and can be used in prefabricated buildings. However, only changes in building codes will make wood competitive with steel and concrete.
The first race involving molecular ‘cars’ stimulated technical advances in scanning tunnelling microscopy and provided insights in surface science and synthetic chemistry — it also attracted wide interest from the public.
Multiferroics can be used to address fundamental questions on the nature of the universe, providing a platform to test concepts in cosmology and high-energy physics, such as the formation of cosmic strings and the existence of an electron electric dipole moment.
