Category Archives: OXO

Climate change ruins everything — and now it’s coming for your tea

by MarlaTranter Posted on June 12, 2015

spoiler alert

Climate change ruins everything — and now it’s coming for your tea

By on 12 Jun 2015commentsShare

Have you ever noticed that climate change is ruining everything you love? It seems like every week a new study reveals untold threats to another one of our favorite things. Beer? Drink up while you still can. Wine? It’s getting weirder, not to mention greasier. Coffee? Might want to start cutting back now. If drinks are out, how about a nice walk in the woods? Uh, sure — you have fun being devoured by ticks.

Whatever you’re into — sportsball events, fresh guac, priceless historical sites, steamers, Venice, ice, any of these animals — I’m afraid I have bad news on all counts. And I really, really, REALLY hope you weren’t that into chocolate.

Welcome, friends, to Spoiler Alerts — your source for the latest (heart)breaking climate news. There may be no use crying over spilt milk chocolate, but at least we can cry about it together.

This week, we’re all about to get thirstier, as climate change levels its sights on the world’s second-most popular beverage: tea (water is first, duh). I may live in a coffee town, but in my secret British heart I always yearn for tea time — and now that time is running out. Here’s the story from Quartz:

Early research indicates that tea growing regions could decline in some parts of the world by up to 40-55% in the coming decades and the qualities, particularly for high-end teas, could also change.

…

Planting a tea bush is a decades-long investment—one not easily moved or replaced. That means, to prepare for future changes, farmers and companies need to act—if not now, then soon—if the tea in your mug is going to be there in the future.

And it’s not just the availability of tea that’s in danger — it’s the flavor, too:

In a preview of what’s to come, recent wet monsoon conditions led to a 50% increase in the quantity of tea produced, but a 50% decrease in some of the compounds that give Yunnan teas their distinct flavor, in essence diluting the tea.

You can read the rest of the story here, but I recommend taking it with a stiff upper lip and a nice, hot cuppa … while you still can.

Source:
Tea lovers beware, climate change is threatening your favorite beverage

, Quartz.

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Climate change ruins everything — and now it’s coming for your tea

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We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said.

by Myrna Posted on June 12, 2015

See original article –  We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said. ; ; ;

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We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said.

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Is spider silk the fabric of the future?

by Grace62Rbrbmv Posted on June 4, 2015

Is spider silk the fabric of the future?

By on 4 Jun 2015 4:38 pmcommentsShare

What would you rather wear: water guzzling cotton, petroleum-based polyester, or a crazy strong wonder material that comes from spider butts?

The correct answer is spider butts — I mean, spider silk. (Before you jump to the comments, I should say that I know that spider silk doesn’t actually come from spiders’ butts; it comes from their “spinning ducts.” But, come on, spider butts is way more fun to say.)

San Francisco-based company Bolt Threads is planning to have spider-silk clothing available as early as next year, according to Bloomberg Business. The company, founded five years ago by a group of graduate students at UC San Francisco, is pitching the nature-made textile as an eco-friendly alternative to some of the gross fabrics that we wear now.

But here’s the catch: Bolt’s spider silk doesn’t actually come from spiders. It turns out those little eight-legged monsters are terrible at textile mass production. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

Scientists, at least those who aren’t arachnophobes, have tried to mass-produce spider silk for decades with little success. Spiders are territorial and cannibalistic—try to farm them, and they end up eating each other. But scientists have long believed that if spiders would only cooperate, fabric made from their silk would be well-suited for use in military and medical equipment, like wound sutures or artificial tendons, as well as in high-performance athletic clothing and other garments.

When the Bolt crew first started out, they actually bought a bunch of spiders from an insect dealer in Florida and let them spin their silk all over the office. (Not surprisingly, that method of production proved untenable.)

Instead, the researchers genetically engineered yeast to produce the same material through fermentation. They can even specify the softness, stretch, and strength of the material, Bloomberg reports. Oh, and they also have a sweet office:

Bolt Threads occupies offices across the San Francisco Bay, in Emeryville. A copy of Charlotte’s Web is in the lobby, and a chandelier made of silkworm cocoons hangs in the conference room. The real action is in a series of interlinked labs, where billions of bioengineered yeast cells ferment, excreting their protein fibers into slurries of water, salt, and sugar. In another room, centrifuges filter out the silk from the liquid. A larger room will hold 200-liter fermentation units for producing silk in greater quantities. Bolt is working with manufacturing partners such as the Michigan Biotechnology Institute in Lansing, which will do larger-scale fermentation in 4,000-liter tanks using Bolt’s process, and Unifi, a yarn manufacturer based in Greensboro, N.C., which will spin Bolt’s fibers into apparel-ready yarn and textiles.

Of course, any plan to mass produce anything raises a lot of questions: How much water and energy will it take to put us all in spider silk tees? Could spider silk have any negative health impacts? Will spiders confuse us all for giant prey caught in giant webs? And most importantly — is there any chance (any chance AT ALL) that a shy, 25-year-old reporter who’s kind of a nerd could get superpowers from wearing spider silk clothing?

Source:
A Bay Area Startup Spins Lab-Grown Silk

, Bloomberg Business.

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Is spider silk the fabric of the future?

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Your Binge-Watching Is Making the Planet Warmer

by Myrna Posted on May 22, 2015

Those cat videos, TED talks, and Netflix original series you watch to unwind might be slowly killing the planet. mezclaconfusa/Flickr You recycle. You ride your bike to work. You bring your own bags to the grocery. You might think you’re a good environmentalist. But those cat videos, TED talks, and Netflix original series you watch to unwind might be slowly killing the planet. That’s the word from Greenpeace’s latest Clicking Clean report, which evaluates the clean energy initiatives of many different internet companies. While we’re used to thinking about our environmental impact in terms of how much trash we throw out, how much we drive, and how much electricity we use in our homes, the report highlights the ways that our internet usage has environmental effects that we never see. Data center emissions account for small percentage of global emissions, Greenpeace information technology analyst Gary Cook tells us. That’s not much compared to 14 percent that goes towards agriculture or the 13 percent that goes to transportation. But data center emissions are growing by at least 13 percent per year, Cook says. And within two years, information technology in general, including manufacturing servers and other gear, is expected to be to account for between seven and 12 percent of all electrical use, according the report. To keep reading, click here. View original article:   Your Binge-Watching Is Making the Planet Warmer ; ; ;

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Your Binge-Watching Is Making the Planet Warmer

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This Palm Oil Company Just Bulldozed a Rainforest

by Myrna Posted on May 22, 2015

Astra has cut down 14,000 hectares of forests since 2007 to make way for palm oil plantations, environmentalists say. Wikimedia Commons In the last two years, a series of companies have made bold commitments to halt deforestation in their supply chains (see this story for the context). But producing products like palm oil without clearing ecologically important rainforest isn’t easy: It’s much easier to get rich quick by exploiting natural resources. Though most companies have agreed to rein in their operations, forests are still being razed. To keep reading, click here. Source article: This Palm Oil Company Just Bulldozed a Rainforest ; ; ;

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This Palm Oil Company Just Bulldozed a Rainforest

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Farming in the Sky

by Myrna Posted on May 22, 2015

Why agriculture may someday take place in towers, not fields. chipmunk_1/Flickr A couple of Octobers ago, I found myself standing on a 5,000-acre cotton crop in the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, shoulder-to-shoulder with a third-generation cotton farmer. He swept his arm across the flat, brown horizon of his field, which was at that moment being plowed by an industrial-sized picker—a toothy machine as tall as a house and operated by one man. The picker’s yields were being dropped into a giant pod to be delivered late that night to the local gin. And far beneath our feet, the Ogallala aquifer dwindled away at its frighteningly swift pace. When asked about this, the farmer spoke of reverse osmosis—the process of desalinating water—which he seemed to put his faith in, and which kept him unafraid of famine and permanent drought. Beyond his crop were others, belonging to other farmers, so that as far as the eye could see were brown stretches of newly harvested cotton plants. When I think of the potential ills of contemporary agriculture, I think of this farm, a 19th-century crop taken to its 21st-century logical limit, organized largely the same way it was two centuries ago—only with less human labor, and over a much bigger expanse. There is, even in Texas, only so much usable surface area, and so much irrigable water to maintain future commercial crops, and it made me wonder: What would a truly modern crop look like? To keep reading, click here. Read this article –  Farming in the Sky ; ; ;

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Farming in the Sky

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Climate Change Blamed for Severe Drought Hitting Vietnam’s Coffee Crops

by Myrna Posted on May 22, 2015

Exports drop 40% as world’s second-biggest coffee exporter suffers rising temperatures and drought, combined with effects of deforestation, land degradation and depleted water resources caused by decades of growth. Wikimedia Commons The last time Nguyen Van Viet saw water in his well was almost four months ago. The 44-year-old has farmed coffee in central Vietnam for two decades and says that’s never happened before. “This is the worst drought I’ve seen in over a decade,” Viet, told the Guardian. “Some people don’t have enough water to drink.” For Viet and millions of other coffee farmers, this season has been disastrous. A prolonged drought has affected all five provinces in Vietnam’s Central Highlands – a region that produces 60% of the country’s coffee. “Normally, in March or April, it should start rain, but this year it hasn’t rained until now,” Viet said. “Over the years I’ve realised it’s getting harder to grow coffee mostly because lack of water. The temperatures are getting higher and higher and the rainfall is less.” Viet says he’s lost almost 4,000 sq meters of coffee crops on his five-acre farm in Dak Lak, a province responsible for 30% of total coffee harvests last year. At least 7,000 acres of coffee plants have died there since March, according to the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. And in neighbouring Lam Dong Province, the drought has stressed another 150,000 acres of coffee. To keep reading, click here. Taken from:  Climate Change Blamed for Severe Drought Hitting Vietnam’s Coffee Crops ; ; ;

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Climate Change Blamed for Severe Drought Hitting Vietnam’s Coffee Crops

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Meditation Made Easy – Lorin Roche

by Myrna Posted on May 19, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Meditation Made Easy

Lorin Roche

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 13, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HarperCollins


You′ve probably heard about the benefits of meditation: Sharper thinking, reduced stress, improved concentration, lower blood pressure, even increased sexual pleasure , all of these positive effects have been confirmed by science. In this uniquely accessible guide, Lorin Roche shows that meditation is that easy , and pleasurable. Roche answers questions and debunks meditation myths, and gives three easy-to-follow techniques for getting started 塴he Do Nothing Technique," "Salute Each of the Senses," and "Feeling at Home Exercise". He and shows you how to integrate "mini meditations" into spare moments of the day, from savouring morning coffee to taking advantage of the five minutes before a meeting. He explains how to overcome meditation obstacles, customise meditation to your own needs, and use your breath, voice, and attention as meditation aids. And he shows how meditation will give you the power to explore your inner passions , and enrich your sense of self.

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Meditation Made Easy – Lorin Roche

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In search of artificial muscles, scientists have turned to onions

by KatrinaDudley Posted on May 13, 2015

In search of artificial muscles, scientists have turned to onions

By on 13 May 2015commentsShare

Researchers in Taiwan were trying to build an artificial muscle, when suddenly they realized: “Wait a second, why don’t we just use gold-plated onion skin?” Best. Eureka. Moment. Ever.

OK, it probably didn’t happen quite like that. But they were trying to create an artificial muscle, and they did find that onion skin proved to be a pretty decent alternative — and an eco-friendly one at that. Here’s more from The Verge:

The muscle is built on the epidermis of the onion, the filmy layer underneath the outer shell. Like real muscles, that film is both stretchy and responsive to electricity, thanks to the single-layered lattice structure of its cells. Still, getting the film to work as a muscle took a lot of preparation. The team freeze-dried the skin to remove internal water and dipped it in dilute sulfuric acid to make the skin more elastic. Then the onion skin was dipped in two layers of gold and an electrode was attached.

Scientists have been trying to build artificial muscles for a while, but — surprise! — living tissue is complicated and awesome and really difficult to replicate (kudos, evolution). More specifically, it’s hard to fabricate a soft, robotic muscle that can both bend and contract/elongate at the same time.

The researchers in Taiwan were trying to do this using polymers, when they realized that nature already provided the very kind of material they were trying to create. They reported their discovery in the journal Applied Physics Letters:

The plant epidermal cells are cheap and easy to obtain, at no cost to the environment. Due to the diversity of plants and their cell structures, discovering the use of natural structures in engineering is of interest.

To test their onion muscle, the researchers put two together to form a pair of tweezers and then used those gold-plated onion tweezers to pick up a cotton ball, making us all regret our career choices.

This research is all part of a larger field of research called soft robotics, which is exactly what it sounds like. Scientists in the field want to build robots that are more lifelike. That is, soft and squishy — you know, like us. What could go wrong? Seriously, though, soft hardware (software? squishware?) could do great things for the world of medical implants.

If you want to see some early-stage soft robots, check out this creepy little sucker from Harvard:

Or this disturbing octopus arm from Italy:

Source:
This new artificial muscle is made from gold-plated onion skin

, The Verge.

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In search of artificial muscles, scientists have turned to onions

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Dear Marvel and Sony: We Love Movies for Their Kick-Ass Female Heroes, Too, You Jerks

by ChristaU73 Posted on May 6, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from Shakesville founder Melissa McEwan.

Each time WikiLeaks posts another round of emails from the Sony hack, there is a garbage trove of misogyny: unequal pay, gendered and racist harassment, Aaron Sorkin waxing sexist, Angelina Jolie dismissed as a spoiled brat. Found among the latest collection was a dispatch from Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter to Sony CEO Michael Lynton on the subject of female-centered superhero films, and if it’s not exactly as awful as you’re already imagining, that’s possibly because it’s even worse. Sent under the simple subject line “Female Movies,” Perlmutter writes:

Michael,

As we discussed on the phone, below are just a few examples. There are more.

Thanks,

Ike

1. Electra (Marvel) – Very bad idea and the end result was very, very bad. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=elektra.htm

2. Catwoman (WB/DC) – Catwoman was one of the most important female character within the Batmanfranchise. This film was a disaster. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=catwoman.htm

3. Supergirl – (DC) Supergirl was one of the most important female super hero in Superman franchise. This Movie came out in 1984 and did $14 million total domestic with opening weekend of $5.5 million. Again, another disaster.

Best, Ike

Case closed, your honor! At Women and Hollywood, Laura Berger quite rightly notes that Perlmutter’s list is highly selective and narrowly defined. “It seems fair to assume,” writes Berger, “that Perlmutter is referring specifically to female superhero movies. If that’s the case, why is something like ‘The Hunger Games’ omitted from this list? The extremely lucrative franchise is led by a woman, and while Katniss isn’t technically a superheroine, she’s certainly marketed as one. Isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ a more relevant example of how female-led films fare at the box office today than, say, ‘Supergirl,’ which was released over 30 years ago?” Emphasis original.

At ThinkProgress, Jessica Goldstein shows how easily one could selectively compile a list of male-centered superhero flops if one were inclined to make the incredulous assertion, based exclusively on box office returns and not on the inherent quality of the films, that male-centered superhero films don’t work.

The three films on Perlmutter’s list frankly just weren’t very good. Which has to do with their female heroes only insomuch as studios don’t generally dedicate equivalent creative and financial resources to female-centered superhero films, because they don’t want to “waste” them on films they fear won’t succeed at the box office. Thus the vicious cycle continues: Many female-centered superhero films are set up to fail, and then when one fails, the blame is directed at the women at its center, rather than the misogyny at her back.

This is a conversation that happens around every genre of “hero” film: Superhero films, action films, fantasy films, adventure films. The wildly successful male-centered flicks get rattled off as evidence of what “works,” and implicit condemnation of what (allegedly) doesn’t.

Many of the wildly successful male-centered franchises have, however, a token female character—carefully segregated from other women and girls, lest they get any ideas about taking over the world, I suppose.

And we are ever meant to understand that all of the dedicated superfans of these films watched them because of the men, always the men. What Perlmutter and his cohort don’t understand, don’t consider, or simply don’t care about is that there are plenty of us who watched those films for the women.

When I watched the Superman series, I wasn’t watching those films for Christopher Reeve; I was watching them for Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, who I was certain was the coolest woman with the most amazing voice who had ever lived. When I watched the Star Wars trilogy, I had zero interest in Luke; I showed up for Leia. When I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was watching it as much for Marion as I was for Indy. When I watched Dragonslayer (which admittedly was a commercial flop, but later became a cult classic) over and over until I could say every line, I was all about Valerian. When I watched Romancing the Stone, I was cheering for THE JOAN WILDER.

There were female heroes in my favorite films, and they were the reason I watched them. I imagine there are plenty of little girls (and little boys) who watch The Avengers not because of the guys, but because of the one, remarkable, exceptional (in every sense of the word) female hero in their midst. That doesn’t show up in the numbers—nor, apparently, in the imaginations of the men who make creative decisions based on numbers.

The thing about many of the films I mentioned is that they’re generally regarded as good movies. They were made with monumental investments of care and attention. And they didn’t have to be male-centered, but they got that care and attention because they were.

What would happen if a female-centered hero were given the same mighty powers? Welp.

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Dear Marvel and Sony: We Love Movies for Their Kick-Ass Female Heroes, Too, You Jerks

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