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Embodied Energy of Corn Flakes Brekfast Cereal

Why scientists are rooting for mushrooms

Mushrooms are the organisms that keep on giving. They grow and feed the soil by breaking down organic matter. For centuries, they’ve also been a staple in our diet. 

Recently, people have started taking a closer look at mushrooms, and more specifically, mycelium — the hidden root of mushrooms — as an engineering material to produce goods like surfboards, packaging materials, furniture and even architecture.

As far as natural materials go, there’s never been anything as versatile and cost-effective as fungi, says Sonia Travaglini, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, who is collaborating with artist and mycologist Philip Ross to unlock the seemingly infinite potential of fungi.

Mycelium can grow into any shape or size (the largest in the world blankets an entire forest in Oregon). They can be engineered to be as hard and strong as wood or brick, as soft and squishy as foam, or even smooth and flexible, like fabric. 

Unlike other natural materials, mushrooms can rely on their recycling properties to break down organic matter so you can grow a lot of it very quickly and cheaply just by feeding it biodegradable waste. In as little as two weeks, you can cultivate a hunk of mushroom that’s brick-sized.

That mycelium actually takes in waste and carbon dioxide as it grows (one species of fungi even eats plastic trash) instead of expelling byproducts makes it far superior to other forms of production.

Plus, when you’re done with mushroom, you can compost it or break up the material to grow more mycelium from it.

“And, unlike forming synthetic materials, which have to be made while very hot or under pressure, all of which takes a lot of energy to create those conditions, mycology materials grow from mushrooms which grow in our normal habitat, so it’s much less energy-intensive,” said Travaglini.

In the lab, Travaglini and other researchers crush, compress, stretch, pull and bend mycelium to test the amount of force the material can tolerate.   

They found that mycelium is incredibly strong and can withstand a lot of compression and tension.

Most materials are only strong from one direction. But mycology materials are tough from all directions and can absorb a lot force without breaking. So it can withstand as much weight as a brick, but won’t shatter when you drop it or when it experiences a hard impact, said Travaglini. 

As one of the newer organisms receiving an application in biomimetics, a field of science that looks to imitate nature’s instinctive designs to find sustainable solutions and innovation, we might be getting merely a glimpse of what fungi is capable of.

“Mycology is still a whole new field of research, we’re still finding more questions and still really don’t know where it’s going to go, which makes it really exciting,” said Travaglini.

How to Build A Root Cellar

Yes, renewable energy is intermittent.  And lots of people are looking at deploying energy storage to help bring renewables online, and building a more reliable grid.  Check out this simple and clever idea to store energy as Gravitational Potential Energy.  When renewable energy is abundant, motors raise the rail cars, loaded with concrete blocks, to a higher elevation.  When the grid needs the power, the cars roll downhill, turning generators, and releasing electricity.  It uses existing technology, and, unlike other energy storage technologies, it requires no water, no underground caves, no lithium, no lead, no high temperatures, no extreme pressure, nor giant discs spinning at 10,000 rpm.  These guys built a test track in the Tehachapi Mountains.

The just got BLM approval to build their first commercial scope project. 

“That project, called ARES Nevada, will consist in a 5.5-mile track traveling up an 8-degree slope, covering 106 acres of public land near the delightfully named town of Pahrump, Nevada. It will boast 50 MW of power capacity and be capable of producing 12.5 MWh of energy. The company expects to start construction early next year and finish by 2019.”

article here, and more videos

company website 

Moss is useful bioindicator of cadmium air pollution, new study finds

Moss growing on urban trees is a useful bio-indicator of cadmium air pollution in Portland, Oregon, a U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station-led study has found. The work–the first to use moss to generate a rigorous and detailed map of air pollution in a U.S. city–is published online in the journalScience of the Total Environment.

Moss have been used as bioindicators–living organisms that can help monitor environmental health–by the Forest Service and other agencies for decades. Because moss lack roots, they absorb all of their water and nutrients from the atmosphere, inadvertently taking up and storing whatever compounds happen to be in the air.

“Our study shows that moss bioindicators have the potential to improve air-quality monitoring by serving as a screening tool to help cities strategically place their air-quality monitors,” Jovan said. “The heavy metals analysis for moss costs us $50 per site, a low cost that makes it possible to sample extensively and flag hotspots for followup instrumental monitoring.”

Jovan and her co-lead Geoffrey Donovan, also with the Pacific Northwest Research Station, launched their exploratory moss study in 2013 with five scientists from the Forest Service and Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health. Setting out in a minivan and armed with a ladder and collection equipment, Jovan and Donovan gathered 346 samples of Lyell’s orthotrichum moss, a species that grows abundantly on the trunks and branches of hardwood trees across Portland, along a randomized grid.

Initially, the science team was concerned with air pollution from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a class of potent environmental toxins emitted by the burning of fossil fuels and wood. The scientists added in heavy metals because the laboratory analysis was relatively inexpensive. One heavy metal in particular, cadmium, was also a top concern of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) because a 2011 DEQ study found discrepancies between predicted and observed concentrations of the metal at Portland’s one permanent air-quality monitoring site. Cadmium, which is used primarily in nickel-cadmium battery manufacturing, electroplating, and stained-glass production, is linked to health problems such as kidney disease and cancer.

When their moss sample results came back from the lab, the science team spatially modeled the data to create a fine-scale map of cadmium deposition across the city. Their preliminary results revealed two significant “hotspots” of cadmium levels in moss, both of which were centered on two stained-glass manufacturers. Out of concern for public health, the scientists shared their findings with Oregon DEQ, which responded in October 2015 by placing a mobile air-quality monitoring instrument adjacent to one cadmium hotspot and taking 24-hour readings over the course of nearly a month. This was a necessary step because it was unknown how well concentrations in moss correlated with those in the air. Their results confirmed the high levels of cadmium found in the moss, showing mean cadmium concentrations in the air 49 times higher than Oregon’s state benchmark.

“Data from this monitor, along with three others that DEQ was operating at the time, helped us compare our moss data with actual concentrations measured in the air,” Jovan said. “We got a very high correlation, suggesting that moss may be able to estimate cadmium levels in the air very accurately, but we acknowledge that four data points is a small sample from which to draw definitive conclusions.”

Buckwheat, fagopyrum esculentum