Hasta La Ideas

As cool as it is to see birds using manmade objects to decorate their lovenests, it’s a little heartbreaking. But the reality is that the wilderness is strewn with refuse, hence bottlecaps and Bics go onto the B.O.M.

Well, turns out it’s not just bowerbirds, but also bees that make use of human garbage—specifically, plastic—to spruce up their digs. The Ecological Society of America has released a paper entitled “Bees collect polyurethane and polethylene plastics as novel nest materials,” detailing York University researcher J. Scott MacIvor’s discoveries on the subject.

[While building nests, the bee species] Megachile rotundata was discovered using pieces of polyethylene-based plastic shopping bags and M. campanulae used a polyurethane-based exterior house sealant…

…Furthermore, since plastic pieces were found in combination with leaves in brood cells, and found only near the end of the cell series, bee naivete does not appear to be the cause for the use of plastic… It is interesting to note that in both bee species, the type of plastic used structurally reflects the native nesting material, suggesting that nesting material structure is more important than chemical or other innate traits of the material.

Interestingly enough, the usage of plastic as a nest component has both positive and negative effects on the hatching of brood. The parts of the nest made up of plastic tend to store moisture, and mold building up in those areas killed up to 90% of the brood; but on the plus side, the plastic kept parasites away from the brood, as the pests “were unable to sting through the plastic wall.”

MacIvor points out a similar finding to that latter part, concerning house finches. When these birds use discarded cigarette butts to build their nests—gross, I know—the nicotine inside them tends to keep parasites away.

I can’t decide if it’s sad or exciting that animals and insects are finding ways to repurpose human garbage. But it will presumably continue, and at the very least, this puts quite a different spin on parents teaching their kids about the birds and the bees.

Via Modern Farmer

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These chairs were grown with 12 separate molds over the course of two weeks

Google “mycotecture” and Phil Ross is the first hit you’ll see. For good reason, too. His work features a combination of fungi grown over a number of weeks, burgeoning to become colorful statement pieces of edible furniture and art. That’s not even the kicker—not only are they edible, they’re biodegradable, flame-retardant and practically bulletproof.

Ross’ intrigue with mycotecture isn’t just an experiment in food design. His inspiration stems from a lifelong interest in biology and its connection to all aspects of his work history and personal interests. In his words:

While I was terrible in high-school science and math, my education about the life sciences emerged from a wide engagement with materials and practices. Through my work as a chef I began to understand biochemistry and laboratory methods; as a hospice caregiver I worked with life support technologies and environmental controls; and through my interest in wild mushrooms I learned about taxonomies, forest ecology and husbandry.

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As an industrial designer, if you confuse extruding with embossing during a job interview or at an engineering meeting, you’ll get some funny looks. But if you screw up the difference between laser sintering and laser melting, you’re likely to be given a bit more slack. That’s because there’s a lot of confusion about the difference between Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and LaserCusing (no sexy acronym), and in fact, some vendors of these technologies themselves do not always draw clear distinctions between their capabilities. As conflicting information is being circulated, here we will attempt to explain the difference between the terms. (And hopefully those of you in our readership directly experienced with these technologies will sound off in the comments.)

First off, all four procedures follow the same basics:

1. A designer/engineer designs a part
2. Software cuts that part up into virtual slices on the horizontal plane
3. A chamber in the production machine is filled with powder
4. A laser runs over the powder, solidifying it and building up a thin layer of material
5. Layer after layer is built up from bottom to top, until the part is finished
6. The leftover powder is re-usable, leaving no waste

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We’re saving these pickles for the end, but you can skip ahead if you must.

…the slush-caked roads of the Greater Tri-state Area, that is. (Ok, that was a really cheesy, but take the puns with a grain of salt. You’ve been warned.)

We Polar Vortexans have been experiencing some technical difficulties lately. Unlike the proverbial perambulating pretzels, the roads are not getting a-salted, and it’s a kind of a problem. Many of the hardest-hit states in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. are running low on sodium, and Quartz notes that they may have to turn to an arguably less savory solution, such as “cheese brine and other dairy waste products.”

Indeed, Gizmodo picked up on Modern Farmer‘s report on the win-win waste disposal practice last November. The smell, apparently, is an issue (though ’tis the season for nasal congestion anyway), but it’s definitely a creative whey to solve two problems at once.

L: Lotsa Mozza; R: More on Milwaukee’s industrial-strength cheese grater at the Journal-Sentinel.

Of course, cheese runoff is just one of the upcycled waste products that the National Geographic examines in their alt-de-icer round-up, which concludes with some DIY (De-Ice-Yourself, duh) tips. “You can easily try the brine or juice methods. Combine salt with molasses or beet juice from your grocery store, or that green liquid in pickle jars. Mix it all up, pour it into a spray bottle, and spray away. If all goes well, you will achieve maximum meltage with minimal salt.”

Lo and behold, the folks across the Hudson had turned to last of those options, so to speak, some three years ago. As early as 2011, certain municipalities in northern New Jersey were substituting in “a briny mixture of salt and water that resembles pickle juice” for NaCl (a recipe for dis-ice-ter, if you will). At seven cents a gallon, it’s difficult to determine how much money they’ll save on $63/ton salt, not least because it’s not clear how much of each it takes to deice, say, a mile of road. (According to the Times, NYC’s Sanitation Department started the season with 250K tons of road salt and have used 346,112 tons so far; more on the cost savings below).

In any case, the CBS reporter’s attempt is decidedly non-superlative:

Bergen County? More like gherkin county.

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Last month, I attended a dinner party where one of the guests wore his Google Glass at the table and throughout the entire evening. Many of us silently teased him, but wearable computers, a.k.a. wearables, are here to stay. And they are now showing up beyond just the geeky, early adopters.

But the limiting factor with wearables is power. How do we carry long-life batteries that won’t break our backs? So far, the options look bleak.

Scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology, however, have landed on a promising solution. We’ve heard of powering gadgets with our own movement before (think of the bike that powers a headlight) but this solution gives us more for less.

The team was able to capture energy from a new kind of nano-generator backpack that converts one’s walking movement into electricity. The contraption is based on something called the triboelectric effect. Simply put, this is the electricity generated when two objects of opposing charge come together and then separate. It’s the same principle behind static electricity shocks.

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