Molecules/Matter & Energy

How to fold a paper bag, plus good apples and designer silk in this week’s news

Shopping bag origami
Folding a tall paper bag to lie perfectly flat is a problem that seems easy, but has only just been solved by a pair of engineers at Oxford University. Weina Wu and Zhong You’s shopping bag origami, tested in simulations and on actual physical bags, uses a special crease pattern to collapse such a container in a T shape that folds flat.