Self-healing materials

The Week (New York, Oct. 20) -- Researchers at Illinois, funded by the Air Force, created a gel that can automatically fill and repair holes within 20 minutes, getting the original material back to normal function in three hours. "What we had done is essentially mimic the blood clotting feature you see in humans and other biological systems so that now the fluids don't just bleed out of the hole anymore, they're actually retained in place and we grow on top of them until we completely seal up the damage itself," explains Scott R. White, professor of aerospace engineering at Illinois.