Tag: #94

Malleable metal tyres are a revelation. Now a startup from London has developed a patent-pending system which aims to prevent tyre wear from entering the environment. The microplastic pollutants are produced when vehicles accelerate and brake. Using electrostatics and airflow, particles charged from friction with the road are diverted to containers beneath the rear bumper. Captured pollution can be...

An app is supporting Black and indigenous women with breast cancer. Now an organisation from California is focusing on Black healing and how to respond to generational trauma. Among topics addressed: inequalities in the justice system, misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, HIV/AIDS, racism and domestic violence. The organisation offers creative training sessions and psychological tools for self-reflection. Courses and events take...

Edible construction material may soon be on everyone’s lips. Now, an Italian-Ecuadorian design team is producing versatile new materials using agricultural waste from cocoa crops. Key to the enterprise: the beans’ outer shell. Their first product from crushed and pressed shell remains is a 12-15 cm thick chipboard perfect for furniture or component parts. Further products such as bioplastic...

Salvia can speak volumes on oral cancer. Brain tumours, however, are harder to spot, and are usually only discovered at an advanced stage, when patients’ speech or movement becomes affected. Enter a research team from Japan and their non-invasive test to detect brain tumours through our urine. The team discovered particles with special characteristics. The so-called extracellular vesicles are...

A smartphone can help detect the Zika virus. But research into how mosquitoes spread diseases is disagreeable for living test objects and both expensive and time-consuming. Cue a research team from Rice University, which has developed a cost-effective method using a synthetic, 3D-printed hydrogel skin. The gel is placed in a closed chamber with mosquitoes, and its tiny passageways...

Human urine could help build astronauts’ sleeping quarters on the moon, or supply fertiliser for farming. Cattle, however, are a major contributor to greenhouse gases by passing methane front and back. According to a study by a Washington State University research team, help might come from an unlikely source: the faeces of baby kangaroos. For, in contrast to their...