A lick of paint could help make brick houses earthquake resistant . The paint is made with glass fibres and improves the strength of a building, as well as its flex during shakes.

Brick structures are cheap to build, but often aren’t very resistant to earthquakes. So Kenjiro Yamamoto at the University of Tokyo and colleagues created a coating to improve their resilience, consisting of standard acrylic-silicone paint resin and glass fibres.

The paint enhances the building’s overall strength, as well as its ability to dissipate energy by …