Racing sails are generally made from Dacron, an ultra-lightweight cloth that differs greatly from some of the more the conventional materials artists use, such as canvas.

CNN: , for

The most conventional of these unconventional materials is being developed by Cargill Dow, a collaboration between one of the world's largest agricultural businesses and one of its largest chemical firms.

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All engineering mumbo-jumbo aside, the resulting nanocone-tipped cells converted light-to-power with efficiency of 3.2% compared to 1.8% efficiency of conventional planar structure of the same materials.

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He changed materials, switching in 1996 from conventional to organic cotton despite the fact that it initially tripled his supply costs because it was less harmful to the environment.

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