Researchers in India have designed a new type of wearable technology based on green team. From a Feb. 15, 2017 news item on plys.org,
Wearable electronics are here—the most prominent versions are sold in the form of watches or sports bands. But soon, more comfortable products could become available in softer materials made in part with an unexpected ingredient: green tea. Researchers report in ACS’ The Journal of Physical Chemistry C a new flexible and compact rechargeable energy storage device for wearable electronics that is infused with green tea polyphenols.
Powering soft wearable electronics with a long-lasting source of energy remains a big challenge. Supercapacitors could potentially fill this role — they meet the power requirements, and can rapidly charge and discharge many times. But most supercapacitors are rigid, and the compressible supercapacitors developed so far have run into roadblocks. They have been made with carbon-coated polymer sponges, but the coating material tends to bunch up and compromise performance. Guruswamy Kumaraswamy, Kothandam Krishnamoorthy and colleagues wanted to take a different approach.
The researchers prepared polymer gels in green tea extract, which infuses the gel with polyphenols. The polyphenols converted a silver nitrate solution into a uniform coating of silver nanoparticles. Thin layers of conducting gold and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) were then applied. And the resulting supercapacitor demonstrated power and energy densities of 2,715 watts per kilogram and 22 watt-hours per kilogram — enough to operate a heart rate monitor, LEDs or a Bluetooth module. The researchers tested the device’s durability and found that it performed well even after being compressed more than 100 times.
The authors acknowledge funding from the University Grants Commission of India, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India) and the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (India).
Green tea’s popularity has grown quickly in recent years. Its fans can drink it, enjoy its flavor in their ice cream and slather it on their skin with lotions infused with it. Now, the tea could have a new, unexpected role — to improve the image quality of MRIs. Scientists report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that they successfully used compounds from green tea to help image cancer tumors in mice.
Sanjay Mathur and colleagues note that recent research has revealed the potential usefulness of nanoparticles — iron oxide in particular — to make biomedical imaging better. But the nanoparticles have their disadvantages. They tend to cluster together easily and need help getting to their destinations in the body. To address these issues, researchers have recently tried attaching natural nutrients to the nanoparticles. Mathur’s team wanted to see if compounds from green tea, which research suggests has anticancer and anti-inflammatory properties, could play this role.
Using a simple, one-step process, the researchers coated iron-oxide nanoparticles with green-tea compounds called catechins and administered them to mice with cancer. MRIs demonstrated that the novel imaging agents gathered in tumor cells and showed a strong contrast from surrounding non-tumor cells. The researchers conclude that the catechin-coated nanoparticles are promising candidates for use in MRIs and related applications.
Suzanne Lee and her ‘green tea’ couture are being featured in a May 20, 2014 article by Adele Peters about futuristic fashion and a new documentary, ‘The Next Black’, for Fast Company,
Fabric grown from bacteria. T-shirt designs that “refresh” themselves. Or how about a new way to dye fabrics without water or pollution? These are ideas for the future of fashion that blend style and sustainability.
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Biocouture is growing new fabric from bacteria using a process more like brewing beer than making any other textiles. The company hopes that eventually clothing could be grown directly on dress forms, creating zero waste. …
Studio XO, a company pioneering interactive digital fashion, shares their vision for a “Tumblr for the body”–a subscription service for clothing that could automatically refresh itself as you wear it (picture a T-shirt with an ever-evolving print curated by designers or your friends). …
You can find the full 45 min. documentary embedded in the Peters article. You can also find additional information about Suzanne Lee’s work in my June 8, 2012 post titled, Material changes, which also features other designers.
The last time I featured green tea was in the context of couture in this June 8, 2012 posting,
First, a June 7, 2012 article by Jane Wakefield about fashion and technology on the BBC News website that features a designer, Suzanne Lee, who grows clothing. I’m glad to see Lee is still active (I first mentioned her work with bacteria and green tea in a July 13, 2010 posting). From Wakefield’s 2012 article,
“I had a conversation with a biologist who raised the idea of growing a garment in a laboratory,” she [Biocouture designer, Suzanne Lee] told the BBC.
In her workshop in London, she is doing just that.
Using a recipe of green tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast she is able to ‘grow’ a material which she describes as a kind of “vegetable leather”.
It turns out there are other uses for green tea, aside from its function in couture or as a beverage with health benefits, according to an Apr. 24, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),
Already renowned for its beneficial effects on human health, green tea could have a new role — along with other natural plant-based substances — in a healthier, more sustainable production of the most widely used family of nanoparticles, scientists say. Published in ACS [American Chemical Society] Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, their Perspective article (“Greener Techniques for the Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles using Plant Extracts, Enzymes, Bacteria, Biodegradable Polymers and Microwaves”) concludes that greener methods for making silver nanoparticles are becoming available.
The article describes how extracts from plants — such as green tea plants, sunflowers, coffee, fruit and peppers — have emerged as possible substitutes that can replace toxic substances normally used to make the nanoparticles. In addition, extracts from bacteria and fungi, as well as natural polymers, like starches, could serve as substitutes. “These newer techniques for greener AgNP synthesis using biorenewable materials appear promising as they do not have any toxic materials deployed during the production process,” the scientists say.
A few items have caught my attention lately and the easiest way to categorize them is with the term, ‘materials’. First, a June 7, 2012 article by Jane Wakefield about fashion and technology on the BBC News website that features a designer, Suzanne Lee, who grows clothing. I’m glad to see Lee is still active (I first mentioned her work with bacteria and green tea in a July 13, 2010 posting). From Wakefield’s 2012 article,
“I had a conversation with a biologist who raised the idea of growing a garment in a laboratory,” she [Biocouture designer, Suzanne Lee] told the BBC.
In her workshop in London, she is doing just that.
Using a recipe of green tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast she is able to ‘grow’ a material which she describes as a kind of “vegetable leather”.
The material takes about two weeks to grow and can then be folded around a mould – she has made a dress from a traditional tailor’s model but handbags and furniture are also possibilities.
Bio-biker image courtesy of Bio Couture (http://www.biocouture.co.uk/)
Wakefield’s article goes on to discuss technologies being integrated into design,
While computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) is not a new technology, it has rarely been used in the fashion world before but French fashion designer Julien Fournié wants to change that.
Mr Fournié began working in fashion industry under Jean-Paul Gaultier but these days he is more likely to be found hanging out with engineers than with fashionistas.
He has teamed up with engineers at Dassault Systèmes, a French software company which more usually creates 3D designs for the car and aerospace industries.
…
Recently Mr Fournié has been experimenting with making clothes from neoprene, a type of rubber.
It is a difficult material to work with and Mr Fournié’s seamstresses suggested that the only way to stitch it would be to use glue.
“To my mind a glued dress wasn’t very sexy,” he said.
So he handed the problem over to the engineers.
“They found the right pressure for the needle so it didn’t break the material,” he said.
Wakefield discusses more of Fournié’s work as well as a ‘magic mirror’ being developed by the FashionLab at Dassault Systèmes,
“A store may have a magic mirror with a personal avatar that can use your exact body measurements to show you how new clothes would look on you,” explained Jerome Bergeret, director of FashionLab.
There is more in the Wakefield including the ‘future of fashion shopping’.
Still on the material theme but in a completely different category, flat screens that are tactile. From the June 6, 2012 news item by Nancy Owano on the physorg.com website,
Why settle for flat? That is the question highlighted on the home page of Tactus Technology, which does not want device users to settle for any of today’s tactile limitations on flatscreen devices. The Fremont, California-based company has figured out how to put physical buttons on a display when we want them and no buttons when we don’t. Tactus has announced its tactile user interface for touchscreen devices that are real, physical buttons that can rise up from the touchscreen surface on demand.
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The customizable buttons can appear in a range of shapes and configurations. Buttons may run across the display, or in another collection of round buttons to represent a gamepad for playing games. “We are a user interface technology where people can take our technology and create whatever kind of interface they want,” said Nate Saaal, VP business development. He said it could be any shape or construct on the surface.
Lakshmi Sandhana also wrote about Tactus and its new keyboard in a June 6, 2012 article for Fast Company,
The idea of a deformable touchscreen surface came to Craig Ciesla, CEO of Tactus, way back in 2007, when he found himself using his BlackBerry instead of the newly released iPhone because of its keyboard. …
“I realized that this question could be answered by using microfluidics,” Ciesla says. Their design calls for a thin transparent cover layer with some very special properties to be laid on top of a touchscreen display. Made of glass or plastic, the 1mm-thick slightly elastic layer has numerous micro-channels filled with a non-toxic fluid. Increasing fluid pressure with the aid of a small internal controller causes transparent physical buttons to grow out of the surface of the layer in less than a second. Once formed, you can feel the buttons, rest your fingers or type on them, just like a mechanical keyboard. “When you don’t want the buttons, you reduce the fluid pressure, draw the fluid out and the buttons recede back to their original flat state.” (No messy cleanup–the minimal amount of fluid is all contained within the device.) “You’re left with a surface where you don’t see anything,” Ciesla explains.
It’s a little bit on the dramatic side, I think their professional voiceover actor could have a future career as a Rod Serling (Twilight Zone) sound alike. Regardless, I do like the idea of a product than can function as a flat screen and as a screen with buttons.
My last item is about an emotion-recognition phone. Kit Eaton who writes for Fast Company on a pretty regular basis posted a June 7, 2012 article about systems that recognize your emotions (Note: I have removed links from the excerpt),
Nunance [sic], which makes PC voice recognition systems and the tech that powers Apple’s famous Siri digital PA, have revealed their next tech is voice recognition in cars and for TVs. But the firm also wants to add more than voice recognition in an attempt to build a real-life KITT–it wants to add emotion detection so its system can tell how you’re feeling while you gab away. …
Nuance’s chief of marketing Peter Mahoney spoke to the Boston Globe last week about the future of the company’s tech, and noted that in a driving environment emotion detection could be a vital tool. For example, if your car thinks you sound stressed, it may SMS your office to say you’re late or even automatically suggest another route that avoids traffic. (Or how about a voice-controlled Ford system that starts playing you, say, Enya to calm the nerves.) Soon enough, you may deviate from your existing “shortest route” algorithms, while being whisked to parts of the city you never otherwise visit. Along the way, you might discover a more pleasant route to the office, or a new place to buy coffee.
But Nuance says it has far bigger plans to make your emotional input valuable: It’s looking into ways to monetize its voice systems, including your emotional input, to directly recommend services and venues to you.
There are more details and a video demonstrating Nuance’s Dragon Drive product in Eaton’s article. As for me, I’m not excited about decreasing my personal agency in an attempt to sell me yet more products and services. But perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic.
Since my weekend is about to start and these items got me to thinking about materials, it seems only right that I end this posting with,
It takes about one minute before the singing starts but it’s worth the wait. Happy weekend!
Trash Fashion, opened at Antenna, a science gallery at London’s Science Museum in June 2010 with a piece of bio couture amongst other ‘trashy’ pieces. According to an article by Suzanne Labarre at Fastcodesign.com,
[Suzanne] Lee, a senior research fellow in the school of fashion and textiles at Central Saint Martins in London, makes clothes from the same microbes used to ferment green tea. By throwing yeast, sweetened tea, and bacteria into bathtubs, she produces sheets of cellulose that can be molded into something you might actually want to wear. (Fortunately, the microbes are non-pathogenic.)
Here’s a close up of Lee’s garment,
Detail of Suzanne Lee's bio couture ruffle jacket (image from Ecouterre via fastcodesign)
Labarre’s article offers more detail about Lee’s work and how it fits into the Science Museum’s Trash Fashion show. The Ecouterre item and images can be found here. You can find London’s Science Museum website here but I had a hard time finding anything more than this about Trash Fashion on their site.
Transgenic salmon
If you think of it as new ways of interacting with various life forms, then these two items can fit together although it is a stretch. In an article written by Ariel Schwartz in a rather provocative style for Fast Company, Schwartz introduces his transgenic salmon by referencing genetically modified food and, in case we missed the point, goes on to call these salmon ‘frankenfish’,
Do genetically modified fruits and vegetables make you uneasy? …
The transgenic salmon is a mash-up of Atlantic salmon, a growth hormone gene from the chinook salmon, and an “on-switch” gene from the ocean pout that triggers the fish to eat year round, according to The Olympian. AquaBounty doesn’t plan to sell the actual salmon. Instead, the company will sell fish eggs to farmers.
Despite its initial frankenfish creepiness, AquaBounty’s salmon has a number of advantages.
Apparently, the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is close to giving its approval to a ‘salmon’ which grows twice as quickly as the ones in the wild. That’s a big advantage given the current issues with faltering salmon stocks on the west coast. From the Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s page on Fisheries Management and Wild Salmon Policy,
There is no question that fisheries management presents complex biological, economic, and political challenges. The status of salmon throughout much of BC and the US Pacific Northwest substantiates this difficulty.
In the lower continental US, salmon have disappeared from 40% of their historic spawning range and commercial fisheries proceed only as exceptions. In British Columbia, commercial catches of salmon between 1995-2005 were the lowest on record and the number of stocks contributing to this catch has declined, shifting over the decades from many diverse runs to fewer large runs.
In 2008, Raincoast published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences on the status of salmon on BC’s central and north coast. Our findings show that since 1950, salmon runs have repeatedly failed to meet their DFO escapement targets – meaning that not enough fish are returning to spawn. This resulted in a diminished status given to all species in nearly every decade. Only 4% of monitored streams consistently met their escapement targets (by decade) since 1950.
Species currently in the worst shape are chinook, chum and sockeye, which were depressed or very depressed in more than 70% of runs (2000-2005; 85%, 72% and 73% respectively). While specific to the north and central coast, this is likely true coast wide.
After the collapse of Canada’s east coast cod fishery, cynics noted that the policies which led to that collapse were being followed on the west coast. In any event, adjustments of some kind will have to be made whether that means going without fish or eating transgenic fish or some other alternative.
ETA Sept 21, 2010: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding a hearing about transgenic salmon. Christopher Hickey (at Salon.com) offers a roundup of comments and opinions.
