Checkerspot x Autodesk: A Better Future for Snow Sports (and more)

In the summer of 2023, our field trip from the Salt Lake City ASM summer teacher camp was to WNDR / Checkerspot.

When the trip was initially described to me, I thought we were going to see how snowboards and skis are made. I'm not a winter sport guy, so I figured it could be interesting but not necessarily my scene.

When we got there, though, I found that WNDR - the winter sports equipment maker and retailer - wasn't the real business. The real business was Checkerspot, a materials company that was producing polymer raw materials from microalgae as a replacement for petroleum sourcing. 

That company needed some way to demonstrate the utility of their materials, so they found a consumer-focused industry with high margins and a strong environmental conscience among its consumers. In the Salt Lake City area, skiing and snowboarding made sense for them because the final products - the snowboards and skis themselves - are high users of polymers in their composite materials, and the people who buy tend to be willing to spend a little more to buy environmentally friendly products.

The tour was outstanding, and I highly recommend getting to see their process if you're ever out in Salt Lake City. You can see some of their facility in this next video.

Meet The Plastic-Eating Worms | Planet Fix | BBC Earth Science

I am both hopeful about and horrified at the prospect of enzymes that will break down plastics.

I'm hopeful because the man-made polymers that we have been creating and covering our world with for decades now are going to have to be broken down somehow, sometime. If decomposers are beginning to be able to process them into harmless - or even beneficial - products, that's great.

...but we have a lot of currently in-use polymers that we don't necessarily want to start breaking down into gray goo just yet.

...and if we find a way to make polymers break down more easily, will that just encourage us to make more of those polymers rather than stopping the production of them sooner?

Like Natalie Imbruglia, I am torn.

Why Can’t We Scoop All the Plastic Out of the Ocean?

Arrggggh!!!

Why can't the world be simpler?

We have dumped a bunch of plastic into the ocean. Bad!

Some people are trying to clean up that plastic from the ocean. Good?

Maybe...but it's more complicated than just "Good!" because there are tiny neuston (from wikipedia: "organisms that live at the surface of a body of water, such as an ocean, estuary, lake, river, or pond") that use those floating plastics to help stay afloat and on which they lay eggs, and removing all the plastic would remove a significant portion of their habitat...which might be bad for the environment as a whole.

So removing that plastic from the ocean might be Bad!

Arrrrrgggghhh!!!

To adsorb or not to adsorb

 

Source - https://phys.org/news/2021-06-adsorb.html

Man, he looks like a fun guy at parties, eh?

"Hey, guys, I brought a bowl full of 3d printed phages! They can be party favors, no?"

"Sure, Ivan, just put them in the corner there next to the coats. And did you bring money for the pizza?"

"Sorry, I forgot with all the excitement about the phages. I'll get you next time."

Yeah, sure you will.

As the phys.org article says, "bacteriophages...are specialized viruses that can infect and kill bacteria without adverse effects on humans." 

In order for those phages to work, however, they have to be stored and then injected into the human body. "Unfortunately, despite beneficial treatment and numerous trials, the number of active bacteriophages in the solution for injection can drastically decrease, making the treatment ineffective."

The scientists in this study looked at how the properties of the container used to store the phage solutions affected the concentration of available phages. They found that the hydrophobicity of the polymer material of the container drastically affected that concentration as the phages adsorbed onto some container's surfaces rather than remaining available and in solution. Apparently the "aggregation of phages onto walls is mor [sic] profitable energetically than staying in solution."

As the study said, "[i]n case of sudden need...the choice of container for the phages seems to be trivial. However, as the study shows, such a factor has a tremendous impact on the number of active phages in the solution and, therefore, in determining successful therapy."

Who knew? The container matters?

Robotic ray is part animal, part machine

Frankenstein, here we come.

Or Frankenstein's monster if you'd rather.

Or just Frankenstein if you really want to be pedantic.

I caught this video from the Science journal article that goes into more detail than does the above, silent film video (sadly lacking a mustache twirling badguy). In all honesty, the idea of tuning heart cells to contract in response to light stimulus - which is then designed to create waves of motion within the 'string ray' - is pretty phenomenal.

Mitch Anthamatten Explains a Shape-Memory Cycle Involving Strain Induced Crystallization

Wait, a shape memory polymer?

There's a bunch of good connections here to what we teach in our material science course.

• The polymer switches from being largely amorphous to largely crystalline on addition of strain.
• The addition of heat energy then causes the polymer to shift back to amorphism.
• The phase change happens around body temperature, like the stints we talk about.
• We have a solid-state phase change.
• At 0:55, the professor says the energy is 'enough to melt those crystals.' I'm way less knowledgeable and more a neophyte about all this than he is, but that sounds wrong to me. I don't think of a crystalline solid changing to an amorphous solid as 'melting.'

All that in less than two minutes time...

That's better than watching the Kentucky Derby.

Mantis Murder Shrimp (slow motion) - Smarter Every Day 121

That's pugilism at its finest.

The first punch is thrown at 1:38 and then shown again in slow motion ten seconds later - then with sound effects.

We then get an explanation of the potential energy storage mechanism at 2:45. That storage mechanism requires a strong material - an organic composite of helicular (sp?) chitin - at 4:29. The variation of the material within the saddle then, is phenomenally complex, varying throughout the surface, depth, and location within the saddle.

Go mantis shrimp!

Interestingly, this is, I think, the only time Destin's sister has been shown.

A new type of bandage will draw out bacteria and speed healing

Personally, I like the bacon bandages available from Archie McPhee. I will warn you, however - and this comes from someone who has bought a full box of those bandage tins - that their sterile wrapping isn't as well made as are the name-brand Band Aids. If you leave the bacon bandages for a few years, the wrapping comes apart.

I'm thinking, though, that any bandages made out of the material from this article will be of slightly higher quality than were those bacon bandages.

The basics - including the graphic above from the ACS-published article - are that...

[t]he nanofibre mesh is created using a technique called electrospinning, in which polymer filaments 100 times thinner than a human hair are squeezed out of an electrified nozzle.

The resulting fibre is then coated in compound called allylamine, which Abrigo has found makes a range of different bacteria quickly attach to it.

The bandages have been tested on liquid media and directly onto agar plates but not yet on actual wounds.

From the ACS abstract - and possibly most interesting from a material perspective, "[f]iber diameter was shown to affect the ability of bacteria to proliferate within the fibrous networks, depending on cell size and shape. The highest proliferation rates occurred when fiber diameter was close to the bacterial size. Nanofibers were found to induce conformational changes of rod shaped bacteria, limiting the colonization process and inducing cell death. The data suggest that simply tuning the morphological properties of electrospun fibers may be one strategy used to control biofilm formation within wound dressings."

How cool...

'Smart implants' dissolve after healing - Science Nation

I don't get what's so impressive. I implant ice cream directly into my body with some frequency, and my body takes care of that all the time.

Too much ice cream, actually...

I'm hoping that they take any magnesium implants out of the bodies before they get cremated... sheesh.

That would be pretty cool, though, if medical implants could be absorbed into the body after the structural support is necessary.

Superfast clotting agent could save many lives

I have to admit that I found this story from the not-school-appropriately-named I F*&(ing Love Science website. It's honestly way more entertaining and informative than I want it to be because I can't ever share these links on my class Facebook page - which I hate.

That's I hate not being able to share the links.

Not that I hate my class Facebook page. I don't. I actually like it a fair bit.

The video shows an in-development product designed to clot blood nearly instantly. It's apparently a polymer made of plant-derived polymers extracted from plant cell walls - like Lego blocks according to the company's co-founder and CEO.