Believe it or not, a Christmas tree won't stay upright on its own. Instead, you need a stable Christmas tree stand that can accommodate the type and size of tree you have. We researched dozens of the best Christmas tree stands to help you find the right one for your needs, whether you have a real tree, an artificial tree, a small tree, or a behemoth. The stands in our guide have a track record of durability, performance, and easy setup. We also outline the size and type of tree each stand is meant for. Check out our guide to the best Christmas tree skirts once you've chosen the right stand for your tree. The best Christmas tree stands in 2022 Best Christmas tree stand overall: Krinner Tree Genie Christmas Tree Stand, available at Amazon, $82.79 The German-engineered Krinner Tree Genie Christmas Tree Stand is easy to set up in a couple of minutes and keeps trees up to 12 f...
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
Flame-resistant variety of cotton could cut need for toxic retardants
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
White cotton can normally only be made fire resistant by adding toxic flame retardants, but a new form could enable us to make inherently non-flammable cotton fabrics
A form of cotton that is able to resist flames has been created by breeding parent strains that had no similar characteristics themselves. This could let us make fire-resistant fabrics without having to add toxic chemicals.
The spread of fires through people’s homes often involve textiles catching alight, so many countries now require the fabrics used in furniture to have a certain level of resistance. Some workers and soldiers also need to wear flame-resistant clothing. There are synthetic fibres that are inherently resistant to fire, such as aramid, but they aren’t as comfortable or as sought-after as natural fibres like cotton.
While a few varieties of brown cotton do have some fire resistance, at present, the only way to make white cotton resistant is to add flame-retarding chemicals. These typically release toxic substances, such as formaldehyde, and the fire-resisting qualities can also be lost when fabrics are cleaned.
Previous studies of the brown cotton varieties suggested that their flame resistance is due to the presence of a colourless compound of a kind known as a flavonoid, hinting that it could occur in white cotton too. So, Gregory Thyssen at the Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA-ARS) and his colleagues decided to look for flame resistance in hundreds of lines of white cotton previously created by USDA-ARS for developing improved varieties, in case any also had this characteristic.
While standard untreated cotton is consumed by flame in seconds (top row), fire extinguishes on a new fire-resistant cotton (bottom)
Thyssen et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC0
These lines were created from 11 diverse parent strains using a breeding technique designed to generate a lot of variety in the offspring.
The researchers burned tiny quantities of each cotton line and picked the five that produced the least heat as they burned. They then made nonwoven fabric from these five lines and did a standard flammability test involving putting a strip of fabric on a 45-degree incline and exposing it to a flame for a few seconds (see video, above). Four of the five fabrics self-extinguished after the flame was removed, whereas strips of normal cotton burned up entirely.
“The fibre quality was not affected by the new self-extinguishing trait,” says Thyssen. “Since these new lines were developed from already cultivated white cotton varieties, they do possess desirable traits for growers and consumers.”
Thyssen and his colleagues were surprised to find this level of flame resistance given that none of the 11 parent strains had this trait. They have identified some gene variants involved in flavonoid synthesis that might be responsible, but haven’t yet been able to pinpoint any specific compound involved. Whether the flame resistance is retained after washing isn’t yet known, says Thyssen.
I recently watched “ the greatest film of all time ,” and the most boring one. In retrospect, the title alone should have been a sufficient warning: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles . Alas, I’m old enough to be a bit nostalgic about massive telephone address books. And massive it is. Clocking over 200 minutes, Chantal Akerman's 1975 dreary drama follows three days in the monotonous routine of Jeanne, a widow, a mother, and a prostitute. I watched Jeanne’s autopilot existence, until, staring at her back as she washes dishes, I decided to fast-forward a couple of minutes, only to discover she was still at it. And Jeanne is equally thorough when she’s busy baking, cleaning, folding laundry, or shining her son’s shoes. She speaks so scarcely and mechanically, that it’s impossible to detect any emotion or volition beyond her carefully controlled chores . Watching Jeanne Dielman is what the word “painstaking” was invented for. Chantal...
Stored procedures: like functions for your SQL. A stored procedure is a batch of SQL statements created and stored on a database. You can reuse a stored procedure over and over again. A stored procedure can accept parameters, run a query, and return results. Many users can call a stored procedure and different applications can call it with different parameter values. What Are the Benefits of Using Stored Procedures? Apart from allowing multiple users and applications to reuse it, a stored procedure has other benefits. It is easy to modify. You can change a stored procedure when necessary and these updates will be reflected for all users. Furthermore, you don’t need to redeploy your application when you modify the stored procedure. It reduces network traffic because the server only passes the procedure’s name over the network and not the entire query. It improves database security since users don’t have direct access to tables. To make...
Believe it or not, a Christmas tree won't stay upright on its own. Instead, you need a stable Christmas tree stand that can accommodate the type and size of tree you have. We researched dozens of the best Christmas tree stands to help you find the right one for your needs, whether you have a real tree, an artificial tree, a small tree, or a behemoth. The stands in our guide have a track record of durability, performance, and easy setup. We also outline the size and type of tree each stand is meant for. Check out our guide to the best Christmas tree skirts once you've chosen the right stand for your tree. The best Christmas tree stands in 2022 Best Christmas tree stand overall: Krinner Tree Genie Christmas Tree Stand, available at Amazon, $82.79 The German-engineered Krinner Tree Genie Christmas Tree Stand is easy to set up in a couple of minutes and keeps trees up to 12 f...
Comments
Post a Comment