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January 6, 2017

Strange But True!

Q. Try to name a few of Scientific American magazine's 10 “big ideas” of 2016 that have the potential to change the world for the better.

A. 1. Let's start with “cool clothes” of nanoporous material that can keep you from getting too hot no matter where the thermometer sizzles, thereby reducing the need for air-conditioning with its greenhouse gas emissions, report the magazine editors. Materials science professor Yi Cui of Stanford University is working with nanoporous polyethylene, or nanoPE, that lets infrared radiation emitted by our bodies escape. Roughly the same price as cotton fabric, nanoPE looks like a flimsy piece of plastic with interconnected pores which Cui's team “turned into a passable textile by coating it with a chemical that wicks away water, sandwiching a layer of cotton mesh between two sheets and poking tiny holes in the fabric… so that air could flow through it more easily,” cooling simulated human skin by two degrees Celsius more than cotton. So on hot days, even if you still run the AC, you will be able to turn the thermostat up and cut energy use by almost half. Eventually nanoPE might be used in uniforms and scrubs for factory and hospital workers.


 
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