Regulus had a remarkable knowledge of the secret corridors and passageways hidden away in the castle. It took them no time at all to make it down to the entrance hall, all without getting attacked by the many giant snails crawling around the place.
Regulus paused and reached into James’s pocket, retrieving the map, and copied James’s early movements.
“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” James watched him scan it for a moment, and then he took off again, dragging James behind him.
The entrance hall floor was like something out of a nightmare, clearly the epicentre of snailagedon. The entire area of stone was covered in a thick layer of slime. There was so much it almost looked like a pool. Regulus craned his neck up to the spot Sirius, Remus and Peter were hiding and raised his wand. “Incarcerous,” he spat and James watched as three long ropes shot out of the end of Regulus’s wand and up into the shadowy ledge the rest of the marauders were hiding on.
“What the?!”
“Hey!”
“Aghhhh!!!” His friends shouted out in alarm before their protests became muffled.
Regulus pulled his wand back and the three well-bound Gryffindors tumbled to the ground.
The idea that you can ‘manifest’ your soulmate by ‘raising your vibration’, once the domain of New Age spirituality, is common among gen Z social media users. Juliana Piskorz wonders whether to give it a go
No!!!! ur soulmate is coming, you just need to write your list and raise your vibration.
She wasn’t referring to my ringtone or propensity to fidget.
In the rhetoric of New Age spirituality, every person, object or emotion has its own unique “frequency” and in order to manifest something you must alter your own frequency to match the thing you want.
Two years ago, this kind of jargon was limited to the eccentric colleague who, after undergoing a toad venom cleanse in Ibiza, decided to retrain as a yoga instructor, grow a rat-tail and extol the anti-ageing properties of snail slime. But since the pandemic, I would be hard pushed to find a friend who doesn’t check their vibrations
The final piece from my Star-Wars-universe concept class earlier this year! The creature design! It's a large, ancient snail that hates my character and wants to kill her while she's stranded on Felucia.
I'm most proud of this part of the 4 designs I made so that's why it gets it's own post. Was 3D modelled in Zbrush, then rendered with photocomping and digital painting. It's supposed to look gross and drippy and slimey and I'm really happy with how the textures came out !
Inspired by snail slime, scientists have created the first super-strong adhesive that can be easily become unstuck, when necessary.
This is one in a series presenting news on technology and innovation, made possible with generous support from the Lemelson Foundation.
Makers like to combine unusual items to create new things. To do so, they need super-strong adhesives — tapes and glues — to hold it all together. But sometimes they want to be able to take the items apart again. That’s been a problem, because reversible adhesives usually are not very strong. Sticky stuff can be super-strong and permanent — like superglue. Or it can be less sticky but easily removed — think of a sticky note. Now, though, researchers have created an adhesive that’s both reusable and super-strong.
Shu Yang works at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her team described their new superglue July 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As a materials scientist, Yang uses physics, chemistry and engineering to create new types of items. In her work, Yang often finds inspiration for new materials based on structures that exist in nature.
For years, she has been working to create an adhesive that not only holds well but also can be undone and reused. Earlier work mimicked the tiny hairs on gecko feet. Although the material came unstuck easily, it didn’t have a strong grip. So the scientists in Yang’s lab kept searching for something better.
Explainer: What are polymers?
One day, a student in her lab was playing with a substance known as a hydrogel. A polymer, it’s made up of repeating chains of smaller chemicals. This particular gel turns soft when wet — in fact, it’s what makes contact lenses so flexible. Yang’s lab had been using it to make various structures for about 10 years. The student, Gaoxiang Wu, made patterns with it on a glass slide and then left it there.
When Wu returned, the hydrogel had hardened and was seriously stuck. He pulled, pried and scraped, but nothing separated the gel from the glass slide. Then he added water — and it came right off.
That finding made Yang and her team curious. Why had this dried gel been so hard to remove? They also wondered whether anything in nature might also work that way. And before long they discovered that snails make a similarly sticky goo.
During the heat of the day, snails are at risk of drying out. To prevent this, a snail finds a good spot near the ground with plenty of moisture. There, it pumps lots of mucus through the opening on its shell.
The mucus oozes over the ground, filling in any gaps. As it dries, the mucus hardens. This creates a structure that is both protective and adhesive. Called an epiphragm (EP-ih-fram), it seals the moist snail inside its shell, protecting it from predators that would readily munch on it if they could get to the meat inside. When temperatures fall in the evening and humidity rises, the mucus loosens. Now free to move, the snail continues on its way.
A sticky situation
Yang and her team reached out to Anand Jagota. He is a bioengineer at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. Jagota specializes in soft materials and their adhesive properties. Together, the researchers studied the hydrogel and found that it worked the same way as a snail’s slime. When the gel was wet, it oozed into every little nook and cranny, just like snail mucus. When it dried, the material turned hard and glassy. Now it was almost impossible to pull off.
The key, Yang says, is that the gel is very soft when wet. It’s a lot like those squishy splat balls that stick to the wall, she says. Almost every surface has tiny imperfections, she observes. So with just a small bit of pressure, the gel can squeeze into all of those the tiny pores and spaces on the surface it’s sticking to.
For most adhesives, that surface roughness is a problem. It reduces the amount of contact between the adhesive and surface, she notes. That makes the adhesive less sticky. But the hydrogel fills in those itty-bitty gaps, forming a tight connection.
What’s more, the gel doesn’t shrink much as it dries. So it doesn’t pull away from those rough patches. Instead, it holds its shape as it turns glassy. In fact, that’s key to why it sticks so well — it’s locked on to the tiny cavities. “We couldn’t separate the gel from the substrate,” Yang says. No matter what tool they tried.
