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Found: A sweet way to make everyday things almost indestructible
A new discovery from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals how sugars could be used to make almost indestructible cloth and other materials. Nature figured it out long ago, but the answer has been hidden away in bubbling baths of acid.
In certain acidic hot springs, even volcanic hot springs, live ancient single-celled organisms that can exist in conditions far too extreme for most forms of life. They have tiny appendages called pili that are so tough that they resisted UVA scientists' numerous efforts to break them apart to learn their secrets. "We were unable to take these things apart in boiling detergent. They just remained absolutely intact," said researcher Edward H. Egelman, PhD, of UVA's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. "So we then tried much harsher treatments, including boiling them in lye, which is sodium hydroxide. Nope."
The researchers tried several other approaches before throwing up their hands and turning to cryo-electron microscopy, which allows them to image submicroscopic things almost down to individual atoms. What they found was shocking. "There's just a huge amount of sugar covering the entire surface of these filaments in a way that has never been seen before," Egelman said. "These bugs have devised a way to just use massive amounts of sugar to cover these filaments and make them resistant to the incredible extremes of the environment in which they live."
[...] People can take a lesson from nature's design to manufacture products that are similarly sturdy, Egelman said. Take a protein such as wool, say, and coat it in a special arrangement of sugars and you could make amazingly durable clothing, carpet or even building materials. "Proteins are pretty sturdy and resilient, but with this type of covering of sugar, they would be much more stable, even more resilient," Egelman said. "They could have lots of uses."
An extensively glycosylated archaeal pilus survives extreme conditions (DOI: 10.1038/s41564-019-0458-x) (DX)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 01 2019, @08:59PM (3 children)
You can still (mostly) get such long-lasting goods - you just have to pay 4x as much because that kind of quality is more expensive to build, and there's not nearly as much market demand and thus far poorer economies of scale.
It's not government interference that has flooded the market with cheap trash, it's consumers not being willing to spend the extra effort and money to identify and purchase high-quality goods.
Now, maybe a little government interference could help nudge things back in a less wasteful direction - for example just like foods must have nutrition labels and ingredients lists, make non-consumable goods carry a durability label indicating the expected lifetime before replacement or major repair will be required, as estimated by some battery of government regulated tests. Maybe require a repairability score as well, since there's usually not any good way for a potential consumer to judge that for themselves without dismantling it in the store.
That might help - especially if accompanied by an expected cost per year based on the suggested retail price, since few people will do that division for themselves. Maybe something based on the warranty period as well.
Then again - they did that with CFLs for years and they still didn't really catch on until subsidies made them almost as cheap as incandescents. Didn't matter to the masses that a $10 CFL might (on average) save them $12 in electricity every year for several years, they were still out $10 today instead of $0.25 and wouldn't break even until almost a year later, with no guarantee that the bulb would actually last that long. You need long-term planning and enough financial security to feel that you can afford the initial expense for the CFL to be the rational choice. Neither of which are as common as many would like. And of course things get worse when we start talking products that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, where many struggle to afford even the cheap trash, and where a breakage the day after the warranty expires can make any expected returns over the average product lifespan completely irrelevant to your own net losses.
And then of course there's high tech products, where cheap trash may actually kind of makes sense due to the pace of technological obsolescence.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:46AM (2 children)
I'd lean more in the direction of not being able to identify, differentiate and purchase high-quality goods.
Products hit the market and then morph and evolve into cheap imitations of themselves within a few seasons - bought some really great quality underwear at WalMart? Come back 6 months later and find the same brand in the same package at the same price with 1/2 the fabric weight. And, that's just an extreme example - so many industries pump up an image, sell a few copies of something good to get a reputation, and then sell-out their brand to make profit on the reputation. My grandmothers' Maytag washer and dryer come to mind - 30 years old and still look and function like they were new. Meanwhile, we bought "premium Maytag" appliances in 2014 and less than 2 years later the paint was completely removed from the tops, there's rust showing in all sorts of interior places, etc. They're still running, but they look like crap and they're not likely to still be in one piece 25 years hence.
If the "Consumer Reports" concept became a consistently (and preferably, freely) available source of independent product information on a wider range of goods - maybe even as a government service, with some sort of tax breaks given to the product manufacturers who make the most durable and highest value for money goods (or, if you'd rather, a tax penalty for selling cheap junk), that would help a lot. As it stands, all we have are Amazon reviews full of shills.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @10:59AM (1 child)
What you're talking about happened specifically with the GPP's CFL light 'bulbs'. I got a couple of the original ones when they first hit the market at $20 each. They lasted at least 10 years. One in the shed is still going. A few years later and the lifetime on new CFLs was down to a year or so.
It looks like LED bulbs are doing the same thing. The first few I got are still running. Some more recent ones have died within a few months.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @03:56PM
value engineering for sure.