SCIENCE NEWS IN BRIEF
March ENVIRONMENT
An end to plastic pollution?
Plastic Pollution in Kanapou Bay, Kaho‘olawe, Hawaii
It isn't news to us that the world has a problem with plastic. Each year eight million tonnes of plastic enter the world's oceans, destroying habitats, disrupting wildlife and contaminating the food chain, all on a global scale.
5 trillion
pieces of plastic are in the world's
pollution. Importantly, the treaty acknowledges lower-
Considering plastic takes hundreds of years to break down, its persistence as a problem will only worsen alongside its widespread use in society. Such implications were discussed during the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) on the 2nd of March in Kenya. From production and use to their disposal, the full life cycle of plastics was placed at the forefront of the assembly,
income countries that suffer the most from plastic and pollution, calling for the need of an additional financing model to overcome plastic reliance. With the treaty comes substantial pressure, being described as one of the world's most ambitious since the 1989 Montreal protocol which phased out ozone-depleting substances. Environmental groups mirror such expectations, calling for clear global standards that incentivise nations to reinforce
shedding light on the impacts of the crisis: in addition to the negative impacts on marine life, there are fears it may affect our health too. Most plastic originates from lower and middle-income countries with less capacity to burn or recycle it, further perpetuating these adversities. "We need a global
new rules and regulations concerning plastic, while penalising harmful products and practices. Considering the unfathomable harm our use of plastic has inflicted on the environment in the space of a decade, it's about time we move towards putting things Lily Pfaffenzeller right again.
oceans
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agreement to enable us to deal with the widespread challenges that plastic gives us as a society." advised Professor Steve Fletcher from the University of Portsmouth. Indeed, a global crisis calls for a global solution: as a result, 175 countries signed a legally binding treaty to end plastic
MATERIALS
New fabric can hear sounds
Researchers sewed in two panels of acoustic fabric in the back of a dress shirt. Courtesy of the Finke Lab
A new fabric created by Wei Yan and his colleagues as part of a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rhode Island School of Design unlocks another avenue in wearable technology. The new fabric converts sound vibrations into electrical signals, which can detect a wide range of noise
listening for heart murmurs analogous to the use of a stethoscope. The successful proof-of-concept could have exciting implications for nonintrusive monitoring and diagnostic tools - “this fabric can imperceptibly interface with the human skin, enabling wearers to monitor their heart and respiratory condition in a
levels like a microphone. These researchers modelled the fabric
comfortable, continuous, realtime, and long-term manner”,
after the human ear: sound travels in pressure waves causing the eardrum to vibrate, which the cochlea translates into electrical signals. Similarly, they created a fibre containing cotton fibres and Twaron (a stiff material) which convert sound into vibrations. They wove piezoelectric materials into the fibre as well, which are materials that generate a voltage when mechanical stress, in this case from the vibrations, is applied. To test the fibre, it was incorporated into a shirt. The researchers clapped at different angles from the garment, and the fibre accurately matched the distance and direction of the sound’s source. They further investigated the fibre’s ability to monitor the heart through this wearable technology,
says Yan.
The fabric was able to detect the angle of
sound
3 metres away to within 1 degree
Apart from that, the new fibre could be used in many ways. If embedded into buildings, it could be used to detect cracks. Its ability to distinguish the direction of sounds could be used to aid those with visual impairments. And, of course, there is the cool futuristic possibility of us being able to answer phone calls through our acoustic garments, a foolproof way to confuse other pedestrians. Vanessa Yip
