Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2016 bigsmile

Artist Phil Ross introduces leather made from mycelium as a more eco-friendly replacement for animal leather.

Google has announced a new technology, powered by an acquisition called Socratic, that will let students take photos of their math homework in order to get the solutions. Google says it wants the Lens-powered technology to help parents and caretakers who are homeschooling, likely for the first time, as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Circa 2018

Bolt Threads–which also makes synthetic spider silk to use in clothes–is debuting a handbag made from mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms.

[Photo: Bolt Threads]

Bay Area based artist-inventor and amateur mycologist Phil Ross has an international patent pending on a method of producing fungus as a sustainable construction material. It may be surprising to hear that a biodegradable, durable, and non-toxic building material is on sale in the vegetable aisle at the supermarket. However, it’s not the tasty caps that Ross is after, but the root-like fibers of mushrooms form an enormous underground tangle called mycelium. Dried mycelium forms a lightweight mold and water resistant fire-proof material that is an effective insulator. It is also very sturdy stuff. Bob Engels of Gourmet Mushrooms notes, “Hardened steel blades on equipment at our farm need regular attention following their encounters with these massed threads of hyphae.”

Ross reported that multiple saw blades and metal files were destroyed while shaping the five hundred mycelium bricks he grew into an archway. The archway was a 6×6 foot sculpture titled Mycotectural Alpha, and was likely the first man-made structure made entirely out of mushrooms. Others have taken notice of the potential of fungus—a new start-up called Evocative Design producing mycelium alternatives to styrofoam and insulation material has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture.

Ross’s “biotechnical” artwork encompasses drawings, paintings, sculptures, prototypes, and extensive materials research. Over the past 15 years he has been experimenting with fungus, growing and shaping mushrooms in sterile laboratory-like environments, even learning to make his own air filters to provide the necessary clean air. He says mycelium bricks can be grown in about a week from a mixture poured into a mold, but the more organic-looking mushroom sculptures that are created by adding or subtracting gas or air from their growing environment can take years to create. the artist explains how the “myotecture” bricks are made:

Bacteria that can help defuse highly toxic dioxin in sediments in the Passaic River—a Superfund hazardous waste site—could eventually aid cleanup efforts at other dioxin-contaminated sites around the world, according to Rutgers scientists.

Their research, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, needs further work to realize the full potential of the beneficial bottom-dwelling microbes.

“The bacteria-driven process we observed greatly decreases the toxicity of dioxin,” said senior author Donna E. Fennell, a professor who chairs the Department of Environmental Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

Circa 2015

Solar power plants in Qatar and Jordan, not far from the sea, are powering desalination systems that irrigate plants in and around greenhouses.

An international leader in quantum computing, architect of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative, and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Chris Monroe will join longtime long-distance collaborators at Duke to build practical quantum computers for use in fields from finance to pharmaceuticals.

Another potential explanation is that the heartbeat is illuminated by more diffuse and unstructured outflows of gas and particles generated by the disk’s precession. These outflows are not as concentrated and luminous as the jets, but they could potentially ripple out to Fermi J1913+0515 and light it up in this unique way.

The team is in the midst of collecting follow-up observations with the IRAM 30m millimeter radio telescope in Spain that might constrain the origins of the strange gamma ray heartbeat.

“We discovered the source, and discovered its periodicity, but we do not know what it means or how it is produced, so we need more observations to continue the study,” Li said.

Circa 2014

The waste fibres from hemp crops can be transformed into high-performance energy storage devices, scientists say.

They “cooked” cannabis bark into carbon nanosheets and built supercapacitors “on a par with or better than graphene” — the industry gold standard.

Continue reading “Hemp fibres ‘better than graphene’” »