Tag: Sport

They’re great for compost, facial scrub, or for making CO2-neutral briquettes. Now an English football club is testing them for an even more unusual purpose. We’re talking, of course, about coffee grounds. Three cups and five plastic bottles of the stuff yields a prototype shirt. Already renowned for their green approach, for the past two years the club’s jersey...

Venture outside during a storm. A strong gust of wind and your umbrella is blown inside out. A sophisticated mechanism prevents the same thing from happening to dragonflies in flight. Their filigree wings are interwoven with a honeycombed web of protein resin which provides flexible support. If the creature’s wings are overextended, further bending is prevented by the presence...

The wooden bowl on the kitchen table, the cheese roll in the fridge. Apart from a few exceptions, these days pretty much everything is battery-operated. And there aren’t always enough sockets to go around. For some time researchers have been working on how to use our bodies as biological batteries. The latest development? A stretchable polyimine module that can...

Interviews, appearing on stage, the menopause… all can bring us out in a sweat. And sport. Now researchers in Singapore have developed a novel film to keep us cool when we exert ourselves. Two highly hygroscopic chemicals make sure that sweat evaporates from our skin swiftly: fifteen times more moisture can be absorbed at six times the rate compared...

The world, it seems, is not everyone’s oyster. In response to the challenges people with disabilities face in their everyday environment, the University of Tennessee has developed an interactive ‘Global Disability Rights Map’. The map shows how different countries are tackling the issue of inclusion by highlighting policies and laws in place at the local and national level. The...

Maintaining healthy muscles can help keep our weight, blood-sugar and cholesterol levels in check. But what about those who are unable to exercise because of injury, disease or old age? A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore has discovered the existence of a protein existing in muscles which can be used to stimulate growth when subjected...

Everywhere you look you can find tips for a healthier lifestyle. Sometimes even on your wrist. Smart watches track our steps, our pulse rate, even our sleep – impressive when you consider how much space technology like this used to take up. In future, such technology might be so small as to be practically invisible. Researchers at the University...

The human body is a marvel, but who’d have thought we’d be able to use it as a means of generating electricity? Developments in the field of thermoelectricity mean that human beings will soon be able to produce green energy – through body heat. Though not entirely new, it’s a method which was previously regarded as inefficient. Now scientists...