Beach Rocks wallpaper, Flax bicycles, Antioxidants and life extension

Beach Rocks wallpaper

Natural Materials Making a Comeback in Tech Cycling World

The Belgian framemaker Museeuw is weaving ancient flax fiber with ultramodern carbon fiber to create a flax-carbon hybrid composite that has exceptional shock-absorbing capabilities, the company claims.

The picture (more of the other models are available to view at the Museeuw web site) tells much of the story. Consumers can have a great looking bike that is a little more environmentally friendly without sacrificing  lightness in the frame.

New study on antioxidants shows mixed results for life extension

First the good news: a study by scientists at the Buck Institute for Age Research shows four common antioxidants extended lifespan in the nematode worm C. elegans. And the not such good news: those four were among 40 antioxidants tested, the majority of which did nothing or caused harm to the microscopic worms.
The findings highlight the complexity of biological processes involved in aging and sends a cautionary signal to consumers who take antioxidants assuming the supplements will help them live longer, healthier lives. Results of the study now appear in the online edition of Experimental Gerontology.

Gordon Lithgow, PhD thinks that some antioxidants show promise in the anti-aging process, but there is no reason to take a huge hodepodge of supplements since out of forty tested to date only four show any promise for humans. Lipoic acid for example, was shown to have negaitive and positive effects

Lightning Storm wallpaper IV, Mining landfills, Polyphemus moth

Lightning Storm wallpaper IV

There’s gold in them there landfills

IN THE movie WALL·E, humankind has left Earth in a bit of a mess. The planet is choked with garbage and all the people have shipped out, leaving robot WALL·E to clean the place up and make it habitable again. Things may not be quite that bad yet, but there’s no doubt that we produce a huge amount of waste. Even with increased recycling, landfill sites are filling up by the day and -in the absence of a plucky robot – the waste experts of planet Earth are working on the next best thing: landfill mining.

The idea is simple. Instead of disappearing under mountains of our own waste, while paying through the nose for diminishing commodities, why not dig up and recycle what we have already thrown away?

Sorry but, since I don’t have a subscription to New Scientist I can’t excerpt anything from the main body of the article. We don’t have a national policy on the disposal of metals like the kind found in electronics so many valuable metals are ending up in our landfills. It does seem like a terrible waste of resources to not try and recover recyclable materials especially metals like gold, copper and silver.

Polyphemus Moth eastern USA.

The Antheraea polyphemus are found in almost every state and much of Canada. TTheir host plants include several tree species such as the oak which I know from personal experience. Other hosts include the willow, birch trees and maple. The female usually lays her eggs on the leak which the catepillars will eat when they hatch. They mate the same day they emerge from their cocoons.