In the world of neat stuff for the tech geek, we have an entry from the folks at the University of Dayton Research Institute, who have developed a technique to apply layers of ceramics to metal in the same manner as an oyster creates a pearl.

While ceramic coatings are fairly common this is a room temperature normal atmospheric pressure process, and should be effective in reducing wear and corrosion.

It appears that this was driven by a better understanding of the lowly bivalve, which does not extract CaCO₃ from seawater, but instead, “that oysters use blood cells to deposit crystals that form shell and pearl”.