The newspaper shop -- Monday edition

[multi]

Small jolts move artificial muscle
Electroactive polymers are plastics that expand or contract in the presence of an electric field. Cycle through these shape changes and the materials become actuators or motors that work much like biological muscles. Pump electrons into these polymers, and they can store this electricity. There are a couple of drawbacks to today's electroactive polymers, however. They require a considerable amount of voltage to change shape. And although some polymers store a useful amount of electricity, finding others that store more would mean being able to make smaller gel-type batteries. The key is finding materials that have a high dielectric constant, or ability to resist the flow of electric charge. Current practical electroactive polymers like those used in batteries have dialectic constants of around five. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have increased the number more than two orders of magnitude with a new composite electroactive polymer that boasts a dielectric constant as high as 1,000.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2002/...cle_100202.html

Engineered organisms could make toxic clean-ups safer and speedier
Researchers have created a plant that safely takes up the toxic element arsenic, and hope to use it to restore soils that are too contaminated for human use. Genetic techniques could also produce new biological tools to absorb other chemical pollutants, they say. Although using poison-absorbing plants to mop up polluted soils - a technique called phytoremediation - is not new, naturally occurring plants that thrive in toxic sites are few and far between. By inserting two bacterial genes into thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana, researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens have created a plant that not only tolerates arsenic-contaminated soils, but sucks up the toxin and stores it in its leaves. The genes, from the bacteria Escherichia coli, make enzymes that digest arsenic compounds so they can be absorbed.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/021001/021001-14.html if they could work these ideas together
they might make a polymer that will even absorb
radioactive materials....maybe even converting it back into some sort of reusable material

good news!