Wastewater management tends to be a big problem in rural India. In villages like Kundli, located on the outskirts of Dehli, hundreds of factories have popped up in a matter of decades, often releasing water contaminated with chemicals directly into the ground. The problem is that these factories, which manufacture items like plastics, rubber, jewelry, and polyester, typically don’t have enough space for high-tech water treatment solutions, even if they could afford them. The pollutants in turn make their way into groundwater and nearby waterways, contaminating the local bathing and drinking water.

The Indus tile system’s algae-based bioremediation process involves placing a wastewater tank on top of the building and then allowing gravity to funnel the water though “veins” in the “leaves.” The designers traveled to India and observed the production processes of textile dyers in Panipat and bangle makers in Kolkata, where various processes release different types of heavy metals into the wastewater. The team found that one particular type of algae was able to reduce cadmium levels in the water by 10 times within 45 minutes.

Fabricated in Khurja, India, which is known for its ceramics, the Indus tiles are made of clay and deeply textured to hold onto a viscous hydrogel containing the most promising pollution-busting species of algae. The vein-like channels are shaped by an algorithm to optimize their ability to absorb pollutants. As the water flows over a tile, the microscopic algae cells absorb and store the substances for energy. The hydrogel acts as a “biological scaffold” that keeps the algae alive, and it’s biodegradable. The materials required to prepare the hydrogel and algae cells can be supplied in a powdered form and reapplied to the tiles as needed.

The modular tiles fit together into a beautiful pattern using half-lap joints, so individual tiles can be replaced as necessary without disassembling the entire wall. This also makes it easy to scale the wall size up or down, tailoring it to each site. In the future, the designers hope to integrate a second phase in which the saturated hydrogel packed with heavy metals is removed and sold to high-tech companies, which can use the metals in their own manufacturing processes. The Indus tiles are set to undergo performance tests in the UK and then a pilot project in India itself.

The creators imagine adapting Indus wall tiles to different regions and needs, making them from local materials like stone or even waste materials. Different tiles could be tailored to different pollutants, infused with the particular type of algae that works best in that context. Given that the end result is so beautiful, it’s not hard to imagine the concept extending to residential applications, too. Just imagine installing a wall of these at the edge of your own roof instead of a gutter, cleaning rainwater for personal use later on.

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A collection of researchers from France’s École Polytechnique school of engineering, Germany’s Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) laboratory, and the University of Rostock attempted to simulate the conditions found on the two massive planets made from ice rocks and ice-forming molecules.

The interiors of Uranus and Neptune are composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, a combination of elements that are actually found in similar proportions in PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the polymer that makes up everyday objects like plastic water bottles and plastic packaging. Thankfully for their research, PET sheets are cheap to come by.

Even though the icy giants are the coldest planets in our solar system, with temperatures reaching lows of -373 °F, the interiors can still top 10,000°F, with an atmospheric pressure a million times greater than that on Earth. To mimic these conditions, the researchers brought their plastic bottle material to California’s National Accelerator Laboratory to make use of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), an extremely powerful, hard x-ray free electron laser.

After firing ten ultra-concentrated laser pulses per second at the plastic, the PET reached temperatures of 10,832 °F, comparable to the inner temperatures of Neptune and Uranus. The impact of the laser on the plastic bottle also created a shockwave that compressed the material at a pressure equal to those on the icy giants. The result was flashier than expected, producing an explosion of nanodiamonds.

“We discovered that this extreme pressure produced tiny diamonds,” explains Dominik Kraus, HZDR physicist and University of Rostock professor.

Kraus adds that “the nanodiamonds are indeed diamonds in terms of crystal structure. The same crystal structure as on many wedding rings, just a million times smaller. So yes, these are actual diamonds. On the short timescale of our experiments, they have not enough time to grow further. However, inside planets where we could have growth times of millions of years, the diamonds could be gigantic — kilometers or larger.”

The discovery has both terrestrial and celestial implications. Here on Earth, diamonds might now be produced to perfection. “So far, diamonds of this kind have mainly been produced by detonating explosives,” says Kraus. “With the help of laser flashes, they could be manufactured more cleanly in the future. The X-ray laser means we have a lab tool that can precisely control the diamonds’ growth.”

This could also be a new way to manufacture nanodiamonds used as “quibits” for quantum computing and sensors, or to create the tiny diamonds that are used for many industrial strength abrasives and polishing agents. In the space arena, the findings could help expand our knowledge of the most common type of planets floating around in the universe, including the fact that they may have continual sparkling diamond showers.

“Planets like Uranus and Neptune, and slightly smaller, have been found to be the most abundant planets outside our Solar System,” Kraus says. “Understanding those planets will therefore also help to get further inside where life could exist outside our Solar System.”

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MIT professor Michael Strano and his team of researchers were able to defy decades of scientific studies by coaxing polymers, the building blocks of all plastics, out of their traditional chain shape into two-dimensional sheet orientations. By layering these molecular discs, the team was able to forge an ultra-strong, lightweight material they named 2DPA-1.

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” Strano explains in an MIT press release. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

Exactly how strong is this molecular arrangement? The researchers found that its elastic modulus (the amount of force required to deform a material) was four to six times greater than that of bulletproof glass, its yield strength (the amount of force needed to break the material) was twice as strong as steel, and its density was only one-sixth that of steel.

Another novel feature of 2DPA-1 is its gas impermeability. Other plastics are composed of coiled chains of polymers with gaps that allow gases to flow through. Strano likened them to a bowl of spaghetti noodles. He said with a large bowl of noodles, it’ll be hard to see the bottom of the bowl, but sauce added on top can still seep through all the way to the bottom because of the little pockets of space in between noodles.

The 2DPA-1 material is instead configured of monomers that lock together in unbreakable hydrogen bonds like like interlocking LEGO bricks, making it impossible for gases to leak through. The applications of this discovery could be wide reaching. One possibility could include creating ultra-thin coatings for anything covered in paint. For example, a layer of 2DPA-1 could significantly extend the life of a car’s paint job as it would prevent water and gases from getting through, keeping rust and rot at bay. It could also be employed as a coating for cell phones to make them virtually indestructible.

The uber-strong plastic could also radically change the construction market. Being twice as strong as steel, 2DPA-1 could replace traditional framing materials, allowing structures like bridges and skyscrapers to last much longer. That would reduce the carbon footprint of each new building, and save valuable resources from being used up as quickly.

“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” Strano adds. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”

Having filed two patents for 2DPA-1, the MIT team is now conducting more experiments on their remarkable 2D polymer sheets to discover what other types of innovative materials can be fashioned from its groundbreaking molecular form.

The post Scientists Create New Lightweight Plastic That’s Twice as Strong as Steel first appeared on Dornob.

One potential option is a new biomass material made from an unexpected source: rice. Grown in more than a hundred countries, rice is the world’s most popular cereal crop, and its starch can be modified into a bio-based resin that behaves a lot like synthetic polyethylene plastic.

A Japanese furniture company called Meuble Co. Ltd. is developing a material they call RICEWAVE to replace the polyethylene they typically use to produce the cushions for their furniture, like the Dorothy Sofa Bed pictured below. Working with partner companies Biomass Resin Holdings and Mitsui & Co. Plastics Ltd., Meuble has spent the last five years prototyping products made with biomass materials.

Rice stood out as a strong contender because it’s grown locally to the company, within Japan. Not only does rice resin make use of inedible waste rice that normally gets thrown away, it can also be purpose-grown in abandoned agricultural areas of the country as an economic stimulant.

“Abandoned cultivated land in Japan is vast, exceeding the size of two Tokyo metropolitan areas,” the company explains, adding: “We have started making rice for rice resin in this abandoned land, which will lead to agricultural support and aim to revitalize the region.”

Using bio-based rice resin instead of petroleum-based plastic comes with another benefit: lower CO2 emissions. Mitsui & Co., which specializes in raw materials, says replacing just 30 percent of the petroleum-based plastic in a shopping bag with rice biomass can cut emissions by 30 percent.

Meuble Co. hopes RICEWAVE will ultimately replace polyethylene altogether in its core material, the petroleum-based “LITEWAVE,” which it produces using in-house patented technology. As is usually the case when attempting to switch to bio-based materials, that will require big changes to the manufacturing process. It won’t be cheap or easy, but Meuble Co. thinks it will be worth it, especially if they’re successful at proving rice-based furniture materials perform just as well as their synthetic alternatives.

Rice resin can also be used to replace at least some of the petroleum-based materials in trash bags, cutlery, toys, food packaging, and other consumer products. Currently, many so-called biodegradable packaging materials don’t fully break down in the environment because they contain small quantities of synthetic polymers like polyolefin. Replacing those polymers with rice resin or similar bio-based materials could actually make biodegradable products more durable and give them the ability to replace synthetic fiber-reinforced plastics in all kinds of products, even within the automotive industry.

Other parts of rice plants can be diverted to similarly eco-friendly uses. Though currently the standard practice is to simply let it rot, rice waste like husks, straw, and bran could be used for building materials, fertilizer, biomass fuels and more.

The post RICEWAVE: A New Eco-Friendly Furniture Material Made of Inedible Rice first appeared on Dornob.

Developed by a team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturer Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM, POWERPASTE stores hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure, keeping it chemically locked until it mixes with water. That means it can be easily transported and safely handled without requiring expensive new updates to filling stations. All drivers would have to do is change a cartridge full of this goo every now and then, and add tap water into a water tank.

Conventional hydrogen-powered vehicles keep hydrogen in a reinforced tank fueled at a pressure of 700 bar (more than 10,000 pounds of pressure per square inch), while a fuel cell converts the hydrogen into electricity, driving the electric motor. It’s too heavy and bulky as it is to adapt to smaller vehicles. The new POWERPASTE consists of magnesium powder combined with hydrogen to form magnesium hydride, with an ester and metal salt added to form its thick consistency. When the paste is fed to a scooter or motorbike’s propulsion system using a built-in plunger system and water from the onboard tank, it creates a similar reaction to a conventional hydrogen fuel cell. Crucially, the system remains safe even when vehicles are sitting in the hot sun for hours.

“POWERPASTE thus has a huge energy storage density,” says Dr. Marcus Vogt, research associate at Fraunhofer IFAM. “It is substantially higher than that of a 700 bar high-pressure tank. And compared to batteries, it has ten times the energy storage density.”

As a result, POWERPASTE offers a range comparable to or greater than gasoline, and a higher range than compressed hydrogen at a pressure of 700 bar. In addition to scooters and motorcycles, it could be useful for the kinds of tiny cars that usually operate on electricity, like meter maid trucks and urban car share fleets, as well as large drones. Fraunhofer IFAM is currently building a POWERPASTE production plant in Germany, scheduled to go into operation in 2021, which will produce up to four tons of the stuff per year.

Elon Musk may call hydrogen fuel cells “stupid,” but the hydrogen industry is projected to generate $2.5 trillion in revenue by 2050, posing stiff competition for Tesla’s electric vehicles. Some hydrogen-powered cars are already on the market, like Toyota’s Mirai, Honda’s Clarity Fuel Cell, and Hyundai’s Nexo, all “plug-free” EVs that can refuel at gas stations equipped with hydrogen fuel in less than five minutes. The 2021 Mirai gets 402 miles of range, and more than 6,500 of this model have been sold or leased in California since 2015. For now, they’re only available in the Golden State, which has 42 hydrogen fueling stations in various stages of completion.

The post Strange New Hydrogen Goo Could Cleanly Power Small Vehicles Like Scooters first appeared on Dornob.

Stronger than glass, various military and commercial applications for this remarkable material are already being tested. What was once used in the science-fiction Star Trek movies, see-through aluminum is now something that – through test mixing with rubies, sapphires and more – is now being tried out in all kinds of ways to create transparency where strength is also required.

For now, it is used in static-free transparent aluminum wrapping for computer parts and other electronics. It is also being tested in otherwise-conventional see-through soda cans and military shielding for vehicles where windows once were. At over ten dollars per square inch, however, it is still not cheap enough for mainstream everyday use – but may be someday soon.

Here are some more details from Science Daily.

“‘What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminum is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’”

“The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city. The Oxford team, along with their international colleagues, focused all this power down into a spot with a diameter less than a twentieth of the width of a human hair. At such high intensities the aluminum turned transparent.”

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Nzambi Matee, a 29-year-old entrepreneur and engineer, felt compelled to do something after years of seeing single-use bags littering the streets of Nairobi.

“I was tired of being on the sidelines,” Matee says, adding that “here in Nairobi we generate about 500 metric tons of plastic waste every single day, and only a fraction of that is recycled. Plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. The potential is enormous, but it’s afterlife can be disastrous.”

In 2017, Matee quit her job as a data analyst and started experimenting in her mom’s backyard. “I shut down my social life for a year and put all my savings into this,” she notes. “My friends were worried.”

Mixing sand and plastics, she started producing brick-like paver stones. Through trial and error over many months, she was eventually able to determine which types of plastics bound better than others.

Matee studied material science and previously worked in the Kenyan oil industry, after which she won a scholarship to a U.S. social entrepreneurship training program. This opportunity allowed her to further test her component ratios in the University of Colorado Bolder labs.

“Plastic is fibrous in nature, so therefore, the brick ends up having a stronger compression strength,” she explains. And she’s telling the truth, too. Matee’s pavers have a melting point over 662°F, and they’ve been tested to withstand twice the weight of standard concrete bricks.

Her startup company Gjenge Makers Ltd, founded in 2018, uses a mix of plastics for the pavers: high-density polyethelene, commonly found in milk and shampoo bottles; low-density polyethylene, the substance that makes up cereal and sandwich bags; and polypropylene, often used in bottle lids, packaging products, and industrial fabrics. However, they do not use polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from single-use bottles.

Gjenge Makers get most of their material from Kenyan factories. “Companies have to pay to dispose the waste, so we solved their problem. That waste essentially comes for free,” says Matee. They do have to buy some supplemental scraps from recyclers, though.

“So far we have recycled 20 metric tons, and we’re looking to push that value to 50 by the end of next financial year,” she adds. Matee and her team can currently produce roughly 1,500 brick per day, all using machines she designed herself.

The bricks are fully certified by the Kenyan Bureau of Standards and come in a variety of colors, including red, green, blue, brown, and gray. They can be very inexpensively made and priced, with a basic gray brick selling for 850 Kenyan shillings ($7.70) per square meter.

Matee and her company have earned praise from the United National Environmental Program. “We must rethink how we manufacture industrial products and deal with them at the end of their useful life,” says Soraya Smaoun, a UNEP specialist in industrial production techniques. “Nzambi Matee’s innovation in the construction sector highlights the economic and environmental opportunities when we move from a linear economy, where products, once used, are discarded, to a circular one, where products and materials continue in the system for as long as possible.”

As Matee emphasizes, “Plastic waste is not just a Kenya problem, but it’s a worldwide problem.”

The post Kenyan Woman Makes Bricks “Stronger than Concrete” from Recycled Plastic first appeared on Dornob.

What initially began as a realization that graphene, made up of a single layer of carbon atoms, had the potential to produce energy, has evolved into the successful harnessing of energy on a very small scale. Building on a theory from three years ago, a team of physicists at University of Arkansas recently published their findings in the journal Physical Review E.

The study comes as direct contrast to the previous belief that thermal motion in atoms couldn’t produce energy. The team at the University of Arkansas discovered that at room temperature, the thermal motion of graphene does in fact induce an alternating current (AC) in a circuit. This result opens the door to a number of low-voltage applications, in which the graphene could function as a replacement for a small battery, providing continual energy in a loop.

“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” says Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery.

Again relying on the work of previous scientists, the team set out to harness the current. Based on the findings of physicist Léon Brillouin in the 1950s, they knew that a single diode wouldn’t do the trick. Instead, they constructed a circuit using two diodes to convert AC current into DC current. Since a single diode funnels current in one direction, implementing two allows them to oppose each other, thereby sending it both ways. This technique provides two separate paths through the circuit, producing a pulsing DC current that performs work on a load resistor.

This pulsing power creates an increased amount of energy as well. “We also found that the on-off, switch-like behavior of the diodes actually amplifies the power delivered, rather than reducing it, as previously thought,” says Thibado. “The rate of change in resistance provided by the diodes adds an extra factor to the power.”

One notable result of the research is identifying this energy transfer without breaking the second law of thermodynamics. Although the thermal aspects perform work on the load resistor, heat doesn’t flow between the graphene and circuit because they are the same temperature. “This means that the second law of thermodynamics is not violated, nor is there any need to argue that ‘Maxwell’s Demon’ is separating hot and cold electrons,” Thibado notes.

The research could potentially open the door to incredible energy production, but there is still work to do. The team’s next goal is to find a way to store the DC energy in a capacitor where it can actually be tapped for later use — a process that currently requires millions of tiny circuits on a wafer to serve as a low-power battery replacement.

The post Could Graphene Be the Key to Limitless Clean Energy? first appeared on Dornob.

Biotech firm Loop is concerned that today’s corpse disposal techniques have been working against nature for too long, polluting air, water, and natural biodiversity along the way. “Contrary to nature’s beautiful end-of-life cycle, people are not only parasitizing during life, but even after death they leave a scar on this beautiful planet,” the company website says. “Thanks to our modern lifestyle, the average human body contains 219 chemicals that can endanger ecosystems.”

A customary burial today includes embalming fluid, which leaks noxious compounds into the ground — not to mention the fact that conventional caskets alone use up an incredible amount of resources. The Berkeley Planning Journal estimates that the amount of wood used for coffins in the US every year tears down 4 million acres of forest and could be used to create 4.5 million homes. Cremation isn’t much better, either, as it sends carbon monoxide, fine soot, sulfur dioxide, and heavy metals into the atmosphere.

“It’s as if we see ourselves as waste, while we can be a valuable part of nature,” says Loop founder Bob Hendrikx, who first got the idea for a greener burial while showcasing his living home concept at the 2019 Dutch Design Week. If an organic material could house the living, he wondered, why couldn’t it encase the dead as well?

From those musings was born the company’s eco-friendly “Living Cocoon.” Working with the Delft University of Technology and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Loop has constructed these caskets from mycelium, an “underground fungal network [that connects] the roots of plants to form ‘Nature’s Internet.’” In other words, the coffin recycles organic matter into essential elements for new plant life. The bottom is even lined with a mossy bed, and the entire space is inhabited by helpful bacteria colonies.

The caskets are lab-grown in one week by combining mycelium with an organic wood chip substrate. The mycelium then eats through the substrate, growing to fill a coffin-shaped mold. It’s a method that’s especially easy on the environment, as it requires no outside heat, light, or energy. When all’s said and done, the case goes through a drying process, after which it’s strong enough to hold up to 440 pounds.

Loop asserts that the Living Cocoon will biodegrade within 45 days, with bodies being fully composted in three years. In a traditional coffin, the process would take 10 to 20 years.

“When the Living Cocoon is in the ground you can even water it, add seeds, and decide what tree you want to become,” says Hendrikx.

Not only can humans be turned into compost faster with these mushroom-based boxes, but they can also help purify the ground where they are interred, since mycelium is an excellent destroyer of toxins. “It’s used in Chernobyl to clean up the soil there from the nuclear disaster,” Hendrikx notes, adding that “the same thing happens in our burial places, because the soil is super polluted there and mycelium really likes metals, oils, and microplastics.”

Hendrikx and his Loop team would love to see their Living Cocoon be a means of decontamination all over the planet. “We have a dream of having super-new natural funeral-based concepts in which we go to different cities and search for the dirtiest soil and start cleaning that up,” he says.

Loop’s living coffins are available for purchase in the Netherlands for around 1,500 euros each. The company has sold 10 to date, with one already having been used for an interment in the Hague.

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Shipping products from one side of the planet to the other means ensuring the merchandise will arrive undamaged. More often than not, plastic foam, or polystyrene, is the lightweight functional material selected to do that job. But IKEA recognizes the damage to the planet that polystyrene causes, mostly because it takes hundreds (if not thousands) of years to decompose in landfill. By contrast, plant-based packaging can break down in a matter of weeks. Developed by product design company Ecovative Design, the mycelium-based material is called Mushroom Packaging, or MycoComposite. The material is actually grown in a controlled environment in less than a week, providing a sustainable option for any packaging requirement that might arise.

Mycelium works in conjunction with several other plant-based materials, including hemp, husk, oat hulls, and cotton burrs. The manufacturing of the new packaging material begins at the Ecovative Design foundry based in Green Island, New York, where the company has already partnered with several local farmers. Once ground, sorted, and cleaned, the agricultural products are combined with the mycelium and sealed for several days. During that time, the fungus grows around those products, filling the empty spaces within the mold. The newly-formed material is then heat treated to dry out, kill spores, and ensure the stop of the growth process.

Joanna Yarrow, Head of Sustainability for IKEA in the UK, says that “the great thing about mycelium is you can grow it into a mold that then fits exactly. You can create bespoke packaging.”

Based in Sweden, IKEA has long been a leader in corporate and environmental responsibility, going so far as to offer a plant-based alternative to the famous IKEA meatballs in response to reports of harmful methane gas emissions caused from raising cattle.

“IKEA wants to have a positive impact on people and planet,” explains another company spokesperson, “which includes taking a lead in turning waste into resources, developing reverse material flows for waste materials, and ensuring key parts of our range are easily recycled.”

Yarrow adds that deciding to use the mushroom-based packaging material was the retailer’s “small yet significant step towards reducing waste and conserving ecological balance.”

Conventional packaging waste makes up a massive portion of the plastic pollution damaging waterways, animals, and natural resources. On top of that, plastic is sourced from petroleum, which is itself an extremely limited resource. Even the manufacture of plastic pollutes the air. Post-consumer use, plastic lays around for generations, seeping into the dirt and water where animals then ingest it. Humans, in turn, eat those animals.

Mushroom and other plant-based packaging, on the other hand, uses a fraction of the energy required to make plastic, produces minimal carbon emissions, and naturally breaks down into the Earth with no pollution. So what IKEA may describe as a “small yet significant step” might just be the end-all answer to cutting plastic production and waste while protecting animal and human health.

The post IKEA Commits to Biodegradable Mushroom Packaging first appeared on Dornob.

Aside from ruining all your family picnics and camping trips, mosquitoes have also been known to transmit deadly diseases. In many countries around the world including the US, they’ve previously caused outbreaks of West Nile virus, malaria, and yellow fever. Repelling the vicious insects has stymied scientists for eons now, but a new material called graphene might just be the thing we’ve all been waiting for.

What is Graphene?

Graphene, the building block of graphite (most famously used for making pencil tips), is believed to be one of the thinnest materials on Earth at just one atom deep. It’s also around 200 times tougher than steel and a superb conductor of electricity and heat. For these reasons alone, it’s proven a very hot commodity, and it’s constantly being tested for several different applications. So far, it’s been researched in regards to improving solar cells, DNA sequencing, computer chips, batteries, and even tennis rackets.

How It Repels Mosquitoes

Brown University researchers recently coated a thin section of fabric called GO cloth with graphene and discovered that the mosquito proboscis — the sharp spiky part of their mouth that penetrates skin — was unable to penetrate it. Even more exhilarating, they found that graphene totally obstructed the chemicals on skin that attracted the pests in the first place. PhD student Cintia Castilho, the study’s lead author, notes: “With the graphene, the mosquitoes weren’t even landing on the skin patch — they just didn’t seem to care.”

Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were only unable to penetrate the fabric when dry. When it was wet, they easily broke through to the skin. However, a customized version of the cloth with a low oxygen content called rGO worked to repel the mosquitoes whether it was dry or wet. The problem here is that rGO is not breathable, which makes it unsuitable to use on human skin. For that reason, the main challenge remains modifying the standard GO cloth so that it’s stronger and equally effective when wet or dry.

The Experiment

Real people were used to test the graphene cloth. Each of them had a small patch of skin on their arms covered with the stuff before exposing the area to several mosquitoes at once. That area of skin included three sections: one bare, one covered with cheesecloth, and one covered with a thin layer of GO. All the mosquitoes involved were lab-raised, so they were guaranteed free of disease.

This research proved that the GO worked, with that area being the only one of the three that wasn’t eagerly attacked by the insects. “We had assumed that graphene would be a physical barrier to biting through puncture resistance, but when we saw these experiments, we started to think that it was also a chemical barrier that prevents mosquitoes from sensing that someone is there,” Castilho adds.

To confirm the chemical barrier theory, the researchers applied a small amount of human sweat to the exposed side of a GO cloth. When placed here, the mosquitoes congregated on the patch very similar to how they went after bare skin.

The Brown University team says they will continue with their studies in hopes of finding appropriately engineered graphene linings, which in turn could be used to produce clothing that puts an end to bothersome and often deadly mosquito bites.

The post Could Graphene Be the Key to Keeping Mosquitoes at Bay? first appeared on Dornob.

Designers are always on the lookout for new clothing materials, sourcing products from the sea, food scraps, and cutting room floors. After all, in this zeitgeist of low waste, corporate accountability, and sustainable practices, it seems like the lens is constantly being aimed at ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle — especially in the textile industry, which has been labeled one of the top polluting industries on the planet. But even with all of that background, it’s pretty shocking to discover a t-shirt made from milk.

The Limitless Milk Shirt not only breaks the mold for being the first shirt made from milk, but the Los Angeles-based company behind it, Mi Terro, has also picked up the no-waste torch by using milk that would otherwise have been tossed, typically gathered directly from the farm.

The upcycled milk is converted to yarn via a special fermentation process that drains it of all fat and water. The remaining powdered milk is dissolved, dried, and purified to isolate the casein protein, which is turn stretched and spun into yarn. The milk yarn is then mixed with Micromodal, another environmentally-friendly fiber made from beechwood. Note that processing beechwood leaves behind no by-products and uses about 20 percent less water than cotton manufacturing.

The combined processes result in a material that is flexible for comfort and breathable, making it a great option for t-shirts. The team soon realized that these qualities made it a good option for other clothing, too, which is why they’ve since added underwear to their wardrobe of products. And since milk is naturally antimicrobial, the shirts are also anti-bacterial and repel smells common when working out or sweating on a hot day. Claiming to be three times softer than cotton, wearers describe the Limitless Milk Shirt as silk-like, soft, and stretchy.

With the goal of complete comfort in mind, the Milk Shirt is manufactured with premium threads and seamless design to avoid any rubbing or skin irritation and encourage a long-lasting product.

Even by using milk that otherwise would have been thrown out, the Limitless Milk Shirt and add-on underwear cost some money to produce, but luckily the company’s Kickstarter campaign was fully funded in the first few hours. The campaign officially comes to a close on September 15th, but at the time of writing, over $25,000 had been pledged towards the meager $3,000 goal.

Mi Terro Global, the company behind the milk fabric clothing, aims to offer sustainability in every step of their manufacturing process. To this end, their items are shipped in reused or sustainable materials to minimize waste and avoid the use of harmful plastics. Durability of the Milk Shirt is another main focus in order to avoid the fast fashion waste that’s so prevalent these days. And who doesn’t want a shirt that lasts a really long time?

Water consumption is another concern for Mi Terro, as it should be throughout the entire textile industry. However, consumers also play a part in water use during washings. To counter it, the company encourages consumers to wash their Milk Shirts half as often to save water and keep chemicals present in detergent from being sent into the water system. Besides, the anti-microbial components in the tees mean they don’t need to be washed nearly as often as normal ones. Best of all, Mi Terro is partnering with Eden Reforestation Projects to plant 10 trees for every shirt sold.

The post Mi Terro’s New Limitless Milk Shirt is Made From Discarded Milk first appeared on Dornob.

Lifepack HUSTLE provides a great base for people to build their mobile offices around, fitting an impressive amount of objects in its sturdy, compact interior. Plus, each bag has been equipped with the Solarbank 2-in-1: a portable photovoltaic system and power bank that can be charged using the sun’s rays or a micro-USB cable. It’s got 2 USB ports of its own for quick charging, a 10,000 mAh battery that can power up to five smartphones, and fourth generation solar technology that generates enough electricity to juice up your devices after just four hours of exposure to sunlight.

Each Hustle bag also boasts an integrated combination anti-theft lock that fixes it to one spot and prevents it from opening. For extra security, the backpacks have all been outfitted with quick & easy magnetic closure and a double-reinforced hexagon latch, the buckle of can also be used as a bottle opener. Did we mention that all of these features can be utilized with a single hand? Anyone who’s ever tried working at a coffee shop only to worry about leaving their possessions unsupervised when going to the bathroom is sure to appreciate these handy safety additions. The lock’s compressed coil cable can extend up to 39 inches, but that’s as far as any potential thief would ever get with your stuff without having to steal an entire cafe chair or park bench!

Inside the bag, a fleece-lined computer sleeve can safely store any laptop with a display of 15 inches or less. The backpack’s inner lid features a dedicated cable storage compartment and a special pocket for the Solarbank. Each bag has been designed to stand up on its own at all times, even when it’s empty, and you’ll find a USB charging port in one of its air-cushioned straps. If all of that isn’t enough, you’ll be happy to hear that the Lifepack HUSTLE also offers two more hidden pockets, plenty of back padding, and a hip-holster USB port for easy-access charging. The backpack is available in a range of colors, including stealth black, steel, and “vintage” gray with a brown leather finish.

If you’re looking for something with business-casual look, we’d recommend going with the Hustle shoulder bag. These beauties are made from quality vegan leather and posess many of the same features as the backpack. A comfortable luggage strap makes these bags particularly easy to travel with.

The Hustle collection’s Kickstarter campaign just launched, but it’s already surpassed its initial goal of $100,00 by over $60,000! Backing the project now will earn you a nice discount on any one of the company’s individual products. If you’re feeling especially generous, you can pledge enough to score a bundle, which includes both bag types and a pair of Solarbanks!

The post Lifepack HUSTLE: Solar Bag with Anti-Theft Lock first appeared on Dornob.

The post Enko the Energy-Saving Running Shoe first appeared on Dornob.

Most standard building materials are designed to attempt to thwart nature, whether they’re successful or not. But what if architecture and infrastructure were made to live in harmony with it instead?

A new material called Green Charcoal bio-bricks gives us an intriguing glimpse at what this could look like. Engineered by researchers at the Indian School of Design and Innovation in Mumbai as a more sustainable alternative to concrete, the bricks are intentionally porous. The aim is to provide more places for plants and wildlife to thrive within urban environments, boosting biodiversity.

Made of charcoal and organic fibers from the loofah (also spelled luffa) plant, which is actually a vegetable, this brick is infused with soil and contains thousands of tiny air chambers so living ecosystems of plants and insects can grow within it.

Researcher Shreyas More says the bricks could also help cool buildings naturally by absorbing and releasing water while also providing us with a sense of material connection with nature, even in the middle of the city. Plus, concrete manufacturing is responsible for about 8 to 15 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, making the building industry one of the largest contributors to the climate crisis.

“The green charcoal brick replaces metal reinforcements found in standard RCC with luffa’s fibrous network, which provides strength, appropriate flexibility, and ensures a high porosity. These luffa pores provide anchorage for plants and act as thousands of tiny water tanks reducing the temperature of the brick, thereby cooling the interior environments.”

“One of the components of the biodegradable brick mixture — charcoal being an adsorbent of nitrates — is used in small portions on the surface. This creates a co-dependent system where the charcoal adsorbs impurities from the air that serve as nutrition for the plants to feed on.”

“In biophilic spaces, people are happier, patients recover faster, students learn better, retail sales are higher, workplace productivity goes up, and absenteeism goes down. If the facades of buildings, compound walls, and dividers that follow the road network are built using the green charcoal bricks, they will not only clean the air or control rise in temperature, but [they] will also inspire a positive social behavior.”

One thing More doesn’t mention is what materials the bricks might have to be lined with on the interior side of a building to keep insects, mice, and other potential pests from burrowing straight through to our kitchens, bedrooms, and other areas that should really be kept as pest-free as possible. But there are probably ways to handle that problem.

With important pollinators declining around the world (and cities occupying some of their prime habitats), the need to make room for nature within our built environments will likely only continue to grow in the years to come. Natural building materials that collaborate with nature instead of fighting it could be one way to help do that.

The post Charcoal Bricks Offer a Biodiversity-Boosting Concrete Alternative first appeared on Dornob.

A recent NPR feature pointed out that popular plastic alternatives like paper, canvas, and glass have worrisome carbon footprints of their own. The piece almost sounds like a public relations campaign for plastic companies, in fact, suggesting that plastics are commonly used to replace things that would do even more damage to the climate, so we might as well just find a way to live with it.

Of course, that analysis was completed by the American Chemistry Council, which isn’t exactly a neutral third party in the matter. It leaves out all sorts of possible alternatives with the potential for much lower environmental impacts all around, from production to the end of their lives.

Here’s one particularly cool example: liquid toiletries that are contained not by plastic or glass, but by solid soap. A designer and post-graduate student at Central Sant Martins Mi Zhou came up with this clever idea, reexamining the usefulness of packaging and what we should expect from it.

Developed for the Materials Future program and exhibited in the school’s degree show between June 19th and 23rd, 2019, “Soapack” is solid enough to safely house liquid contents like shampoo, hand soap, and body wash, looking a bit firmer than typical soap. While the designer doesn’t specify the exact shelf life of this material or whether it’s made from anything more complex than standard solid soap, it seems substantial enough to do the job it was meant to do and then some.

The resulting products also offer two-for-one functionality, allowing you to use the bottles like bars of soap when the liquid is gone. Plus, the packages are just plain beautiful, resembling vintage faceted glass perfume bottles. If there’s one caveat to the idea, it’s the potential for higher pricing, but soap doesn’t necessarily cost much more to produce than common packaging materials anyways.

The brilliance of this eco-friendly packaging concept lies not only in its extra value to the end user, but also in the fact that there’s ultimately nothing to dispose of. There’s not even anything the consumer needs to reuse or recycle, which is ultimately what we should be aiming for as much as possible. To that end, it calls to mind innovations like edible packaging made of seaweed or sugar, which could help eradicate the need for a lot of single-use plastics as well as cardboard and glass.

It’s true that traditional materials like paper and canvas aren’t necessarily better for the environment than plastic, especially if we’re producing far too much of them in the first place and failing to properly reclaim them when their usefulness to the consumer has ended. But all manner of fascinating materials are currently in various stages of development, including “liquid wood,” algae-based water bottles, and a number of mushroom-based concepts.

These breakthroughs tell us that plastic is no longer the material of the future, but rather something we should leave in the past and move beyond.

The post Plastic-Free Packaging Wraps Liquid Toiletries in Solid Soap first appeared on Dornob.