Combining high strength and elasticity, spider silks are exceptionally hard, that is they are able to absorb massive kinetic energy before breaking. Spider silk is therefore a model polymer for development of high performance biomimetic fibers. There are over 41.000 described species of spiders, most spinning multiple types of silk. Thus we have available some 200.000+ unique silks that may cover an amazing breadth of material properties.
Such bioprospecting of silks promises to reveal new fibers that have different combinations of material properties. However, blindly fishing for such silks by picking species at random, or systematically sampling all silks of all species are both inefficient. The impact factor of journal provides quantitative assessment tool for grading, evaluating, sorting and comparing journals of similar kind. It reflects the average number of citations to recent articles published in science and social science journals in a particular year or period, and is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field. It is first devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information. The impact factor of a journal is evaluated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years.
Last date updated on April, 2024