{"id":725,"date":"2011-03-16T17:14:37","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T22:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stringpage.com\/blog\/?p=725"},"modified":"2011-03-16T17:14:37","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T22:14:37","slug":"tentacles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/?p=725","title":{"rendered":"Tentacles!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple odds and ends: <a href=\"https:\/\/whodunnknit.com\/2010\/08\/26\/stitched-squid\/\">baby squid<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/whodunnknit.com\/2011\/02\/11\/plarchie\/\">monster squid<\/a>. They&#8217;re string-related, I swear!<\/p>\n<p>In a triumph of science, feeding silkworms to make them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/blogs\/shortsharpscience\/2011\/03\/silkworms-produce-fluorescent.html\">spin colored silk<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/photos2011\/Silk-thumb-600x457-119776.jpg\" alt=\"colored silk\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I skimmed the <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/adma.201003860\/full\">original journal article<\/a> too. The scientists fed the silkworms dye mixed with mulberry powder, and when the right chemical type of dye is used it is excreted in the fibroin, not just the sericin. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Aside from providing a cost-effective and environmentally friendly method for dyeing silk, which will be valuable in the commercial silk textile industry, this work may also lead to a large-scale production of novel biomaterials with added functionalities. We can foresee a great demand to produce functional silk materials containing stimuli-sensitive dyes and various drugs that can be applied for wound dressing with monitoring or sensing features, tissue engineering scaffolds with antibacterial, anticoagulant, or anti-inflammatory features, and many others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Medical silk, self-dyed silk, functional silk&#8230; Science is wonderful! The dyes are also fluorescent. (As, apparently, is untreated silk. I didn&#8217;t know that, but look at the lovely blue fluorescence from the control.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/photos2011\/nfig002.jpg\" alt=\"From the original paper\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>(From the original paper: Tansil, N. C., Li, Y., Teng, C. P., Zhang, S., Win, K. Y., Chen, X., Liu, X. Y. and Han, M.-Y. , Intrinsically Colored and Luminescent Silk. Advanced Materials, n\/a. doi: 10.1002\/adma.201003860)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I taught my new tablet weaving patterning class at Hrim Schola this past weekend. I had a very advanced student, and a near beginner, and they both went away happy and having learned something. I call that a great success! This is only the second time I&#8217;ve taught that class (the first was at FFF last fall); both went quite well. This time I had enough looms that everyone could try it out without waiting as long. I will be writing this one up for publication: there&#8217;s actual new and original material. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple odds and ends: baby squid and monster squid. They&#8217;re string-related, I swear! In a triumph of science, feeding silkworms to make them spin colored silk! I skimmed the original journal article too. The scientists fed the silkworms dye mixed with mulberry powder, and when the right chemical type of dye is used it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}