A research team at RIKEN has developed a gel material that can deform in only one direction. The gel responds to external forces with different reactions in the left and right directions, with a difference of up to 67 times. This property has been demonstrated to move matter, energy, and organisms in one direction. In particular, the gel was shown to have the ability to resist entropy increase, which could lead to a wide range of applications such as separation of materials, energy recovery, and behavior control of organisms.