Mushrooms will help recycle plastic waste. Free Technical Library News

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Mushrooms help recycle plastic waste

04.01.2015

Scientists say there are over 250 tons of plastic in the oceans. What to do with this waste? Austrian designer Katarina Unger thinks we can... eat it.

Katarina, together with scientists from the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), has developed a system that allows you to turn plastic into edible mushrooms. We are talking about Pestalotiopsis Microspora, which are able to decompose polyurethane without turning into toxic waste. The tabletop system is a factory for growing two types of fungus, Schizophyllum commune and Pleurotus ostreatus, which can be eaten despite their rather unusual addiction to plastic.

To convert plastic into a food product, it is placed in a chamber where ultraviolet radiation sterilizes the material and starts the degradation process. Then the plastic is placed in a capsule made of agar, a mycelium is added to it and the plastic turns into a fluffy mushroom mass. At the moment, such processing in the mycelium takes several months, but researchers are working to speed up the process by optimizing growth conditions.

With the help of food additives in agar, you can choose almost any flavor of the final product: Unger herself has already tried "plastic" mushrooms and noted that they have a "rather neutral taste." However, scientists have yet to be convinced of the safety of the use of this product.

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Walking is good for the brain 05.05.2017

Ernest Greene and colleagues at New Mexico Highland University have found that simply walking activates your brain - hitting your foot while walking sends pressure waves through your arteries that significantly alter and can increase blood flow to your brain.

Until recently, it was believed that the blood supply to the brain (cerebral blood flow or CVD) is automatically regulated by the body and more or less independent of changes in blood pressure caused by exercise or stress. It has previously been determined that the impact of the foot during running (4-5 G) causes significant retrograde (reverse) waves through the arteries, which are synchronized with heart rate and stride speed to dynamically regulate blood flow to the brain.

In this study, researchers used a non-invasive ultrasound method to measure carotid internal velocity waves and artery diameters to calculate cerebral blood flow in both hemispheres of the brain of 12 healthy young adults while standing still and walking uniformly at a speed of 1 m/sec.

It turned out that while the pressure on the foot during walking is weaker than during running, walking still generates large pressure waves in the body, which significantly increase blood flow to the brain. Although the effect of walking on cerebral blood flow was less significant than that caused by running, it was more pronounced than that observed during cycling, which does not affect the foot at all.

"New evidence now suggests that blood flow to the brain is highly dynamic and directly dependent on cyclic aortic pressures that interact with retrograde pressure impulses from exposure to the legs," the authors state. pressure on pedals, walking and running. It is hypothesized that these actions may optimize perfusion, function, and overall sense of well-being during exercise."

"It's amazing that it took us so long to finally measure this apparent hydraulic effect on cerebral blood flow," explained Ernest Greene. rhythm (about 120 per minute) when we move vigorously.

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