Paint

Large rock-face murals scattered across the desert represent one of the most ambitious – and perilous – creative feats of ancient humans, with researchers arguing the massive carvings acted as visual beacons, guiding people to crucial water sources.

It's never a good thing when harmful bacteria are present on surfaces in hospitals, as they can cause life-threatening infections in patients. A new paint could help keep that from happening, by quickly killing any microbes that land on it.

Researchers have created a paint containing living cyanobacteria that produces oxygen and can capture carbon dioxide. The bacteria’s ability to withstand extreme environments means the paint could even be used in outer space.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have refined a process that can detect modern fakes of paintings by measuring excessive levels of the isotope carbon-14 released into the atmosphere through nuclear testing in the 20th century.

​If these walls could talk. A new treatment that smartens up walls might not be about to give your bedroom a voice, but it could give it the ability to track your movements and your use of electronics, thanks to a special electrode-laden coating that turns them into interactive surfaces.

A team from the University of Cambridge and a Dutch company called Hoekmine BV has outlined how we might one day grow new organic paints and coatings out of vibrantly-colored bacteria colonies.

​​While it may be worthwhile programming robots to paint many identical objects, the painting of smaller-run items is still done manually. That could be about to change, however. Scientists are developing a system which will allow robots to figure out how to paint individual objects.

Bird St in London has undergone something of a transformation recently, going from an underused offshoot to the "world's first Smart Street." Designed to showcase the High Street of the future, it merges pollution-busting and sustainable technology with a traffic-free shopping and dining experience.

​Hydrogen itself is seen as a key part of our clean energy future, but even better would be hydrogen produced using the power of the sun, rather than electricity from the grid. And what if you could make your house look pretty at the same time?

If the object is quite large, or if a lot of them are being made, paint can add considerably to its weight and/or production costs. With that in mind, researchers have created a new lightweight, low-cost coloring technology for both rough and smooth surfaces.

Researchers at Rice University have now developed a new type of paint infused with carbon nanotubes that could allows strain of the material it covers to be detected using a handheld infrared spectrometer.

Research by scientists from Columbia University and NASA suggests that painting rooftops white can result in peak temperature drops of over 40 degrees Fahrenheit during summer months.