#2,162 – SpeedWarm

Everyone’s favorite wonder material, Graphene, is at it again. This time putting its magical properties to use in the form of a hoodie that can warm you up in just 60 seconds!

Yanko Design explains:

“Here’s the sheer magic of Graphene. A garment that’s about as thin as a regular fleece hoodie, possesses the ability of a down jacket or a thick comforter. Meet the SpeedWarm, a hoodie made from graphene-infused fabric that uses your own body heat to its advantage. In mere minutes, the SpeedWarm Hoodie will have you feeling fuzzy and toasty without needing to wear multiple layers of clothing or touching the thermostat. Go ahead and cue in the Jesse Pinkman “Yeah Science!” meme…

The SpeedWarm Hoodie is quite literally the future of thermal-wear. The hoodie, which covers you from your head to your knees, is a thin garment made from polyester fibers, with graphene woven in between. The graphene helps trap and distribute body heat, keeping you comfortable, while the polyester helps wick out moisture, allowing you to stay warm without feeling sweaty. The hoodie’s heating ability works in just seconds, given that graphene is the fastest conductor of heat and electricity in the world… and since polyester helps naturally absorb and release moisture, the SpeedWarm Hoodie can be worn immediately after a bath (so that your wet skin doesn’t feel the cold). The SpeedWarm hoodie’s proprietary fabric quickly dries you off, and self-dries pretty fast too, so you’re warm in seconds, and dry in minutes! This effectively means you can wear the Speedwarm as a hoodie, but also as a blanket, and even a bathrobe (hint: just wear it all day!)”

This is likely just the beginning for Graphene as scientists continue to unlock its properties and designers continue to figure out new ways to take advantage of them meaning that the best is probably yet to come. And now thanks to SpeedWarm we can be comfortable while we wait to see what will come next.

Is SpeedWarm the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,161 – Living Chandelier

The only thing I don’t like about renting an apartment is that I can’t upgrade the appliances and fixtures the way I would want. That means no Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell for me. And definitely no Living Chandelier. Wait. What?

My Modern Met explains:

“Design engineer and biotechnologist Julian Melchiorri—who first gained attention by creating the first synthetic biological leaf—recently came up with an ingenious lighting design that is as beautiful as it is eco-friendly. His ‘living’ chandelier Exhale, purifies air while lighting up your room and was on display at the V&A Museum during the London Design Festival.

The green lighting piece is composed of 70 glass leaves filled with green algae, which absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. The transparent liquid filters through light, giving off a warm glow. While green design is often based on clean lines and ultra-modern styles, Melchiorri’s chandelier is a sophisticated lighting piece that proves eco-friendly concepts can come in a myriad of styles.

The elegant chandelier is modular, which means that its leaves can be configured into different forms depending on necessity. It’s also functional for both indoor and outdoor use, according to where air purification needs are most dire. By basing his work on the simple principle of photosynthesis, Melchiorri is working to make man-made household items functional for the environment.”

I love this concept so much that I may need to buy a house just to accommodate it.

Is a Living Chandelier the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,160 – Square One

Do you prefer board games or video games? Risk or Call of Duty? Well, in the future you won’t have to choose. Thanks to Square One, a newly designed digitized game board that combines the best of both worlds.

As CNET puts it:

“It’s a touchscreen tablet built into a board game board base, designed to sit on your coffee or dining table. The 19-inch screen is surrounded by a border that uses NFC input to tell what cards or other game parts are placed on it. The game board itself changes depending on what game you’re playing, and each of the demos I tried had a different set of plastic tokens and NFC-enabled cards. “

Adds The Next Web:

“Effectively, Wizma, the company behind the SquareOne, wants the console to be a blend between computer and board games, cherry picking the best of both worlds to try and provide a new experience. This is why the board games console has a number of features that should elevate the usual tabletop experience, including online play with friends, dynamic tutorials, and the option to save and resume games.”

Sounds perfect for my first post pandemic game night. Whose coming over?!

Is Square One the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,159 – DefeXtiles

In the future it may be possible to 3-D print clothing thanks to a new printing process that cleverly takes advantage of something you wouldn’t ordinarily want your printer to do.

PC Perspective explains:

Over at Hackaday is some news about an interesting use of 3D printers, creating objects which behave more like cloth than a solid object.  The technique makes use of the blob-stretch that is usually the bane of 3D printing, when you end up with a glob of material with a thin string connecting to another glob and so on, as opposed to a solid smooth print.

This DefeXtiles process purposefully forces the printer to make these flaws, which results in a flexible end product which you can carefully fold or bend.  As the connecting string of material is not quite as strong as normal cloth, let alone a solidly printed object some care should be taken not to break all the stretched material, but as there are quite a few threads it won’t immediately fall apart.

The video demonstrations feature a printed dress, a 70m long roll of fabric and a malleable spiral, all with a thickness less than 0.4mm.  These came out of a 3D printer with no physical modifications, just code changes to convince the printer to do what normally you would not want it to.  There is, as of yet, no STL or G-code files available to try this out for yourself, but programming it shouldn’t be too hard for anyone familiar with their printer.”

Hopefully this inadvertent technique continues to be refined to the point where it is something that printers are meant to do resulting in even and more versatile materials.

Are DefeXtiles the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,158 – Nose Microbiome

If you’re a germaphobe like me it might pain you to know that our bodies are literally teeming with microbial life.

As Healthline puts it:

“Bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microscopic living things are referred to as microorganisms, or microbes, for short.

Trillions of these microbes exist mainly inside your intestines and on your skin.

Most of the microbes in your intestines are found in a ‘pocket’ of your large intestine called the cecum, and they are referred to as the gut microbiome.”

And they’re aren’t alone. As it turns out we may have another pocket of microbes residing in our nose.

Science Alert explains:

“It’s been widely reported how the mix of our gut bacteria can end up having a direct impact on our health. Now, new research points to a similar link between our wellbeing and the microbiome in the nose.

That’s right – your nose is home to an entire host of microorganisms, just like the rest of your body. The different types of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ bacteria specific to the nasal cavities might end up protecting you from certain health issues, or putting you more at risk of others.

The inspiration for this new study came from the mother of one of the researchers, who was having problems with headaches and chronic rhinosinusitis – a condition that causes pain and swelling in the sinuses and nasal cavity.

‘My mother had tried many different treatments, but none worked,’ says microbiologist Sarah Lebeer, from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. ‘I was thinking it’s a pity that I could not advise her some good bacteria or probiotics for the nose. No one had ever really studied it.’

Lebeer and her team analysed nose bacteria from 100 healthy volunteers and 225 people with chronic rhinosinusitis, characterising 30 different families of bacteria in all. One family in particular stood out: lactobacilli.

These bacteria were more abundant in the healthy group of study participants – up to 10 times more abundant in some cases. One particular strain of Lacticaseibacillus identified appeared to have adapted for nasal life, having evolved unique genes to manage the high oxygen levels in the cavity, and using thin tubes called fimbriae to help cling on.

The next problem for the researchers was testing whether the presence of these lactobacilli could be artificially introduced as a probiotic – something that can’t be easily done using an animal model.

‘There are actually no real good animal models or mechanistic models to study the interaction of nose bacteria and human host,’ says Lebeer. ‘The microbiome of the nose of mice compared with humans, it’s certainly different.’

In the end, the team created an experiment where one  lactobacillus strain was sprayed into the noses of 20 healthy volunteers, twice daily for two weeks. While the nasal cavity typically filters out foreign bodies, here the bacteria were able to colonise.

Any potential health effects of this intervention weren’t measured scientifically, though some participants reported being able to breathe more easily as a result. But as a proof of concept, it shows that snorting probiotics might be possible.”

Considering how much COVID-19 effects our breathing I wonder if the nose microbiome might hold the key for treatment?

Do we have a microbiome in our noses too?!

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#2,157 – Dating Profile Generator

Perhaps one of the reasons why I’m still single is that my dating profiles aren’t up to par. Would a funnier approach serve me better? Or maybe I need to add in more movie quotes? Either way, it’s clear that I need help. Thankfully. there’s now a web based Dating Profile Generator that can help me write a killer bio. All I have to do is select one of the following options: cheesy, sleazy, earnest, poetic, self-effacing, arrogant, or angry. Then fill out a few more questions about desired characteristics and traits Mad Libs style and it’s off to the races.

Here’s the profile that was created for me off of a cheesy, Harry Potter themed template:

“Athletic futurist seeks nerdy woman with perfect face for antiquing, hiking and maybe more…

A wise wizard once said, ‘Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.’ With that in mind…

Hello ladies! I’m learning about important dates in history. Wanna be one of them?

I’m a sweet kind of chap, who likes nothing more than antiquing with the right woman.

The first thing people usually notice about me is my funny personality, closly followed by my smashing arms. I’m the man for you, if you like great arms and legs, particularly combined with ample baby oil.

I work as a futurist, helping people. This allows me to exercise my skills: leadership and fundamentals.

• Recieve a telegram from an owl
• Fall in love with you
• Become the best futurist I can be
• Help all the people in the world

If you’re the right woman for me, you’ll be nerdy and sexy. You won’t be afraid to hike and will have a healthy respect for opinions.

My ideal date would involve hiking in japan with a freckles woman by my side. While we’re there, I admire your perfect face whilst feeling I’m the luckiest man on the planet.

Let me tell you about a funny thing that happened to me last week. I was just helping an elderly across the road when I was hit by a car. I needed three stitches. BOOM!

And I’ll leave you with a quote from the one-and-only Harry Potter: ‘It seems as though I always knew I’d have to face him in the end.’

Light me fire, babe

Craig”

It’s perfect! Thanks dating profile generator!

Is a Dating Profile Generator the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,156 – Hill Batteries

You wouldn’t want to turn a molehill into a mountain but in the future you will want to turn a hill into a giant battery. That’s the hope at least of a new company.

Fast Company explains:

“A U.K.-based startup called RheEnergise is working on a new way to store energy, making use of gravity on hills. It’s similar to existing hydropower plants that pump water up mountains when energy is cheap, and then release it when needed to spin turbines and generate more electricity. But while building a huge dam can take a decade or even longer and makes economic sense only on large, steep hills, the new system can be built on smaller hills, making it feasible in more areas. It also has less impact on the environment and can be built faster.

Instead of using water, the new system pumps a fluid that’s two and a half times denser, which means that it can store the same amount of energy on a smaller hill. The technology could potentially be put in abandoned mines that are now ready for new uses. The fluid travels up and down in pipes that can be put underground so they aren’t visible in more pristine areas.

Unlike a large hydro plant, it could be scaled down to store only the amount of energy produced by a typical solar farm or wind plant.”

Considering how urgently we need new energy alternatives in light of Climate Change an innovative approach like this that takes advantage of gravity and geography is an amazing idea.

Is turning a hill into a battery the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,155 – Tomato Medicine

You say tomato. I say tomato. And in the future we both say thank you. For it is now possible for tomatoes to be genetically engineered to produce medicine to treat Parkinson’s disease.

New Atlas explains:

“Genetically reprogramming certain easily grown plants to generate molecules to use as medicine is not a particularly new idea. Instead of relying on big pharmaceutical companies to synthesize medicines and then deliver them around the world, this strategy combines local plant cultivation with low-cost, simple extraction procedures to offer communities their own production capabilities.

An Australian native tobacco plant is perhaps the most used biofactory due to a novel gene mutation it evolved that essentially switches off its immune system. That tobacco plant has since been engineered to produce everything from flu and polio vaccines to human anti-inflammatory proteins.

[Meanwhile] researchers from the John Innes Center in the UK have been working for several years to develop ways to turn tomatoes into tiny drug-producing biofactories as tomato plants are high-yield crops and can be easily grown in many parts of the world. The team’s latest innovation, recently published in the journal Metabolic Engineering, describes how tomatoes can be easily modified to produce L-DOPA, a drug vital to the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.”

But why stop there? If that aforementioned tobacco plant can produce vaccines and anti-inflammatory proteins perhaps there are other things it could produce as well. And other fruit, vegetables, and plants that we can use in a similar fashion to tomatoes. Maybe we could even use this method to help produce a vaccine for COVID-19?!

Is using tomatoes to produce medicine the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,154 – Pee Power

In the future it may be possible to use pee and bacteria to generate electricity.

The Next Web Explains:

“One idea that has gained traction over recent years is generating electricity using bacteria in devices called microbial fuel cells (MFCs). These fuel cells rely on the ability of certain naturally occurring microorganisms that have the ability to ‘breathe’ metals, exchanging electrons to create electricity. This process can be fueled using substances called substrates, which include organic materials found in wastewater.

At the moment microbial fuel cells are able to generate electricity to power small devices such as calculators, small fans, and LEDs – in our lab we powered the lights on a mini Christmas tree using ‘simulated wastewater.’ But if the technology is scaled up, it holds great promise.”

In fact, “Biodegradable matter in waste materials such as feces and urine can be converted into electricity. This was demonstrated in a microbial fuel cell latrine in Ghana, which suggested that toilets could in the future be potential power stations. The latrine, which was operated for two years, was able to generate 268 nW/m² of electricity, enough to power an LED light inside the latrine, while removing nitrogen from urine and composting the feces.

For locations with no grid electricity or for refugee camps, the use of waste in latrines to produce electricity could truly be revolutionary.”

So if you find yourself needing electricity in a pinch urine luck.

Is Pee Power the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,153 – CLIP

Whenever I’m out for a bike ride I always see people zooming by me at incredible speeds. Leaving me to wonder if they have better bikes than me or if I’m just ridiculously out of shape. But as it turns out they have an unfair advantage. They aren’t riding a real bike at all but rather an E-bike that helps them do the heavy lifting. And now I can join them. Thanks to the creation of a portable device that attaches to any bike instantly turning it into an E-bike as well.

My Modern Met sums it up best:

“Urban commuters who favor bicycles as their mode of transport might agree that cycling from point A to point B can be a bit of a workout. E-bikes with a battery-powered ‘assist’ are great for giving you a boost, but they’re often expensive and stolen often. That’s why a Brooklyn-based startup decided to design CLIP, a portable and detachable e-motor that turns any bike into an electric one.

The electric bike conversion kit looks just like what it’s named after—a clip. It’s compatible with all city, road, and hybrid bikes with a 26″ to 28″ front tire. CLIP is as light as a laptop, fits in your backpack, and you can simply attach and detach from your bike as needed. With a black frame and brushed aluminum side panels, it looks sleek and modern enough to look good on any bike. It incorporates a 450W motor powered by a 36V, 144Wh battery, allowing commuters to reach a maximum of 24kmh / 15mph within a 10-15 mile range (around a 45 journey). CLIP can also be fully recharged in just 40 minutes, so you’ll always be ready to go.”

So all you Scottsdale Green Belt riders better watch out. Thanks to CLIP I might soon be zooming by you for a change.

Is CLIP the Greatest Idea Ever?

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