imagine replacing silicon with materials generated from waste chicken feathers to make microchips. Think it is impossible? No says Richard Wool. He and his colleagues from the Newark-based University of Delaware have developed chips of computer processors made from chicken feathers. The chip consists of soybean resin and feathers crafted into a composite material that looks and feels like silicon. The researchers used chicken feathers because they have shafts that are hollow but strong, and made mostly of air, which is a good conductor of electricity.

During preliminary tests, electrical signals moved twice as quickly through the feather chip as through a conventional silicon chip. "The first time, Wool's response was