Researchers kept searching for the path to engineered silk. Yet, year after year, they failed. Each ran into scaling issues, production costs, and regulatory due diligence. After all this time, silk-based tech is weaving its way into health care, the food industry, and clothing.
SilkVoice is a gluey mix of hyaluronic acid and microscopic particles of regenerated silkworm silk meant to treat vocal fold disorders. SilkVoice is authorized for human use. The majority of the 40 people who have received the injections have retained their improvements.
Mori has commercialized silk as a way of protecting food. Unlike wax, Mori’s coating can cling to both water-repellent and porous surfaces, like the outside and inside of a zucchini. Mori already has pilots running at farms and food companies around the US, and larger-scale manufacturing is supposed to start later this year.
Kraig Labs claims to have produced the first “nearly pure” spider silk fabricated by silkworms and has scaled up production. It has partnered with a company in Singapore to make luxury street wear and is working with Polartec on performance outerwear. The company is also considering biomedical uses and bullet-resistant protective apparel.
Purdue University engineers have developed a method to transform existing cloth items into battery-free wearables resistant to laundry. These smart clothes are powered wirelessly through a flexible, silk-based coil sewn on the textile. “By spray-coating smart clothes with highly hydrophobic molecules, we are able to render them repellent to water, oil and mud. These clothes are almost impossible to stain and can be used underwater and washed in conventional washing machines without damaging the electronic components sewn on their surface.”
Tag: fashion
Clothing started agriculture?
Archaeologists and other scientists are beginning to unravel the story of our most intimate technology: clothing. They’re learning when and why our ancestors first started to wear clothes, and how their adoption was crucial to the evolutionary success of our ancestors when they faced climate change on a massive scale during the Pleistocene ice ages. These investigations have revealed a new twist to the story, assigning a much more prominent role to clothing than previously imagined. After the last ice age, global warming prompted people in many areas to change their clothes, from animal hides to textiles. This change in clothing material, I suspect, could be what triggered one of the greatest changes in the life of humanity. Not food but clothing led to the agricultural revolution.
Fashion Industry Collapse
the industry was on an unsustainable pace where they produce 4 collections a year, and have 1000s of losers travel from 1 fashion show to the next. what a deadweight loss, not to mention all the environmental destruction.
Digital super-models
Some of the most eye-catching and spontaneously interesting fashion models popular today have a secret: they may not be human at all. Advances in computer illustration and photography have made virtual high fashion models a super trend. Can you tell them apart from people? Avant-garde stylists are exploring this creative intersection of life + art. These digital personas are rising in the fashion world’s spotlight. This is Miquela: she’s a 19 year old model and singer. But she’s not real. She’s computer generated, created by mysterious start-up called Brud co. Their team of story-tellers dictate her every move. She has 1.2M followers and she collaborates with major artists, brands — and is popping up everywhere. She’s released her own songs with auto-tune and lyrics videos.
Tracking Clothes
a new line of clothes and accessories that all come bugged with “smart chip technology,” which tracks how often you wear them and where you go with them on.
Ramen Shirts
Are you so ramen-obsessed that you feel the need to publicly declare your allegiance to Menya Musashi’s tsukemen over rival Tokyo chain Setagaya’s? Of course you are. Now, Uniqlo has come to your rescue. The clothing chain just released a collection of tees with graphics honoring Japan’s top ramen shops, so you can now wear the logo of your favorite “world-renowned Japanese ramen shop” in a $15, 100% cotton design.
Dressing for cold
The system is best used in varying combinations and is not meant to be layered sequentially, meaning one garment on top of another, on top of another, until you’re wearing all 7 levels. The conditions of your operating environment and the requirements of your mission will determine not only what you wear, but also what you stow in your pack for later use. The wind shirt (Level 4), in particular, is a very versatile garment meant to be sandwiched between your various layers. It allows for a more stable internal temperature to be managed, as well as reducing friction between insulation layers.
Heck
Satan opens up Heck, a lighter version of Hell. What kinds of torture are in it?
Fashion Peacocks
this nature documentary is very well done.
Choosing eye color
Our clinical trials thus far have been limited to changing eye color from brown to blue, since that is both the simplest and most sought-after color change. We will soon begin testing dark brown to light brown color change, as well as changing hazel or green to blue, and it is possible that our first commercial laser will also be able to accommodate these color changes. Changing brown or hazel eyes to green is more complicated, and it is unlikely our initial laser will be able to accomplish this. Because our technology relies upon the removal of pigment, it will not change eye color from light to dark, e.g., blue to green, green to hazel, or hazel to brown.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 