This weekend thirty-one colleges will compete in Nashville for the 11th annual ChemE Car Competition, where teams of undergraduates design small vehicles powered by a variety of different chemical reactions. Check out some of last year’s competitors after the jump.

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Thanks to a special surface coating created at Cambridge University, we may have a new weapon against those creepy crawlies that occasionally appear in our kitchens. Says Popular Science:

“Insects naturally secrete a fluid that’s an emulsion of oily and watery liquids that helps them stick to almost any surface. The scientists’ polyimide coating absorbs the watery part, cutting bugs’ friction on vertical surfaces by about 40 percent.”

Video after the jump

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Tags: Chemical

Learn more about the periodic table with this cute video for “Meet the Elements”, a song by They Might Be Giants.

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Tags: Chemical, Music

Thanks to iRobot, the company behind the Roomba, robots may now be able to ooze and squeeze themselves through small spaces in a blob-like fashion. The ChemBot is a soft, flexible (and in some people’s opinion, very creepy) robot that can grow and shrink itself through a process called “jamming.” [CNET]

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Maurizio Seracini, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, may soon be on his way to uncovering a long-lost mural by Leonardo DaVinci. Seracini believes the painting is hidden beneath another fresco in ceremonial hall of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. With permission from Italian government, he will soon be able to proceed with his search and use specially developed devices (including one that bombards the fresco with neutrons) to look for traces of DaVinci’s hand. [NYT]

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Tags: Art, Chemical, Museums, Nuclear