New Florence. New Renaissance.

Graphene's countless applications

Growth will be driven by much bigger ­players than niche sportswear startups. Although bendable tablets and fast-charging car batteries won’t arrive until at least a year, more incremental innovations are coming. Huawei Technologies Co.’s Mate 20x series marks the first time graphene has been used in a smartphone. Mackenzie fly rods have integrated the material for a better bend in its fishing poles, while tennis gear manufacturer Head has released a line of graphene rackets for truer serves. The fall collection of Prada SpA’s sporty Linea Rossa includes jackets that use nylon and graphene to help regulate body temperature. Ray-Ban is already using it in sunglasses.

BusinessWeek

 

 

The science behind Coke at McDonalds

Cokes taste better at that chain. It’s not a myth. MyRecipes goes into excruciating detail why.

While most restaurants have their soda syrup delivered to them in plastic bags, McDonald’s Coca-Cola syrup is stored in stainless steel tanks. This preserves the syrup’s flavor and protects it from temperature, light, and air, all things that can degrade the flavor quickly. The stuff in the bags doesn’t stand a chance.

McDonald’s filters their water many times over to maintain consistent flavor and quality. They have to do this because different municipalities have different water sources.

McDonald’s also mixes their syrup-to-water ratio to account for ice melt. That means the drink has a slightly higher ratio at sip number one to make sure that sips four, five, and six are supremely refreshing too. This is also why you should never order your McDonald’s Coca-Cola without ice. You’d be totally messing with the carefully designed soda experience.

The temperature of the water is also optimized for peak carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Indeed, CO2 doesn’t escape as easily from really cold liquids, so this temperature is designed to be both more refreshing and to keep your pop bubbly and crisp longer.

Compare a McDonald’s straw to that of any other fast-food chain, and you’ll see a size difference: McDonald’s is wider.

More in vid below

Reebok’s Sports Bra

The creation of the bra was spearheaded by Danielle Witek, a Reebok designer, who stumbled upon the technology while thumbing through a science journal (something she does for fun). In 2005, chemical engineers at the University of Delaware had invented a new substance called Shear Thickening Fluid, a gel-like solution that takes liquid form when in a still or slow-moving state, and stiffens into a solid when moving at high velocities. It was originally designed to be a modern form of armor technology, since you can incorporate it into a protective garment to defend the wearer from items flying at their body at a high speed–it’s since been used in everything from Kelvar bulletproof vests to NASA spacesuits that protect astronauts from shrapnel.

Fast Company

 

Densified Wood in cars

Yes, wood might no longer be just for dashboards and Morgan body framing. Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a way to make cheap, renewable, fast-growing, CO2-consuming wood 10 times stronger and tougher than natural wood, aligning its strength with some steels but at one-sixth the weight and vastly lower cost. (The cost savings over carbon fiber apply, as well.)

It's called "densified wood." Producing it involves boiling the wood in a solution containing sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfate just long enough to remove 12 percent of the cellulose, 73 percent of the hemicellulose, and 46 percent of the lignin. It's then boiled in deionized water to remove these chemicals and then hot-pressed (perpendicular to the growth direction) at 725 psi and 212 degrees F until it's squashed to about 20 percent of its original thickness.

Motor Trend

Billion-dollar colors

During his nine-year sojourn into the strange, finicky realm of color, Subramanian, a materials science professor at Oregon State University at Corvallis, has grown infatuated with a form of chemistry that he, like many of his peers, once considered decidedly low-tech. His renown derives from his accidental creation, in 2009, of a new pigment, a substance capable of imparting color onto another material. YInMn blue (pronounced YIN-min) is an amalgam of yttrium, indium oxide, and manganese—elements deep within the periodic table that together form something unique. YInMn was the first blue pigment discovered in more than 200 years.

It isn’t only the exotic blueness that has excited the color industry, but also the other hues the pigment can generate. Subramanian soon realized that by adding copper, he could make a green. With iron, he got orange. Zinc and titanium, a muted purple.

BusinessWeek

 

Botany at the Bar

Even in the spirited world of bitters, the flavors that Shoots & Roots draw from their tinctures stand out. Demon Flower is a mixture of 12 plants from Mexico and the Philippines; Chai Jolokia combines the native North Indian ghost pepper with masala chai; Black Bear’s Bitters uses osha root and juniper cone, two plants that bears eat to aid digestion.
The trio’s forthcoming book, Botany at the Bar, is taking their bitter transparency a step further by providing instructions for people who want to make bitters at home. Most of these plants, however, aren’t easy to find at the grocery store. “One of our missions is to increase awareness for underutilized crops,” DuVal says. “We hope generating more market interest might increase the availability of these plants down the road.”

Southwest Magazine

Perfume Capital

In this medieval town (Grasse, France) and its environs, which are sufficiently inland to be sheltered from the sea air, a confluence of soil, sun and temperature nurtured the rose, jasmine, lavender, myrtle, wild mimosa and other flowers that were the genesis of the French perfume industry in the 17th century. Grasse is especially known for its fragrant May rose, the pale pink flower that blooms in May, and jasmine. Both flowers are at the heart of more than a few famous fragrances, including Chanel’s breathtaking star, No. 5.

Perfumers in Grasse, along with those in the rest of the perfume world, have had to change with the times. Around the turn of the 20th century, a blast of new olfactory chemicals were discovered, though Grasse is known for natural botanical components.

From conversations with local perfume experts, I learned that flower production has been scaled back. Much of the land has simply become too expensive for farming.

Still, Grasse’s influence and relevance in the fragrance industry remains almost unmatched based on its history, the growers’ quality and the creative gifts of the perfumers who live here.

New York Times

High Visibility

Vollebak, the same company that brought us a pink hoodie designed for maximum relaxation, is launching something new: The Nano Meter 555 Midlayer, which features two details that hack human perception to make you, theoretically, as noticeable as possible.

FastCompany

 

The 90 second oil change

Nexcel integrates an oil filter into a reservoir containing all the oil the vehicle should need for the duration of its oil-change interval. An oil change starts by initiating the procedure on the dash or via OBD port. Then all the engine oil gets pumped into the reservoir, you replace the sealed container of dirty oil and filter with a fresh one, and the oil gets pumped back into the engine. It all takes about 90 seconds, and the filter/reservoir units can be reused about five times and then recycled. Pretty convenient—but who really cares how long an oil change takes?

That wasn’t Castrol’s primary motivation. Rather, Nexcel aims to improve the lubrication of today’s increasingly high-strung engines and to clean up the environment. These downsized and highly boosted engines really stress their lubricants, and up until now that lubricant is the one thing engineers haven’t really had control over. After a vehicle leaves the showroom, folks like sis and me are free to economize or make mistakes regarding what brand and grade of oil and filter we select. The sealed Nexcel unit comes prefilled with the manufacturer’s specified oil and filter, and a chip on the reservoir verifies this with an electronic handshake with the engine control computer before the engine will restart.

Motor Trend

 

Alcohol through the Ages

All over the world, in fact, evidence for alcohol production from all kinds of crops is showing up, dating to near the dawn of civilization. University of Pennsylvania biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern believes that’s not an accident. From the rituals of the Stone Age on, he argues, the mind-altering properties of booze have fired our creativity and fostered the development of language, the arts, and religion. Look closely at great transitions in human history, from the origin of farming to the origin of writing, and you’ll find a possible link to alcohol. “There’s good evidence from all over the world that alcoholic beverages are important to human culture,” McGovern says. “Thirty years ago that fact wasn’t as recognized as it is now.” Drinking is such an integral part of our humanity, according to McGovern, that he only half jokingly suggests our species be called Homo imbibens.

National Geographic