I must admit I didn't see that one coming. It suggests a fascinating application, which is to wear a graphene condom, on top of a rubber condom, on top of a graphene condom. Thus creating a condom 'super capacitor' [1] that you would charge up by rubbing it, which could then power a piezo electric vibrator. I'm so waiting to see who patents that!
The possibilities of graphene are vast and many and exciting but this is kind of scary. For all intents and purposes, graphene is nanotechnology and in certain forms can act like asbestos and has a lot of other unknown behaviors in the body [1]. Unfortunately the field of nanotoxicology hasn't really organized itself and caught up to the widespread use of nanocoating and other material science in industry[2]. I hope they find ways to make it extremely inert in the human body but there's much work to be done.
Graphene flakes and carbon nanotubes are already relatively common in the environment as they are naturally occurring. You get carbon nanotubes in ordinary soot, for instance.
The set of things that are sub optimal to breathe is pretty wide ranging though. I agree that breathing soot is not great, but I don't think this is particularly because it contains CNTs, as much as because it is a fine particulate that can get into and block up alveoli. I can't think of any fine particulates off the top of my head that are particularly good to breathe in.
I think Paracelsus description of lung cancer in miners might predate that.
"Paracelsus was a pioneer in chemistry and chemotherapy. He introduced mercury, lead, sulfur, iron, zinc, copper, arsenic, iodine, and potassium as internal remedies. But he gave due warning in his writings that all chemicals are potentially poisons, and concentration and dose are what make them poisonous or nonpoisonous. His collected papers on chemotherapy of various ailments, including cancers, were published by his followers in 1567 in a book,4De Grandibus. In it, there is the first description of industrial cancer, cancer of the lung in miners of metal ores and in the workers who smelted the ore."
To counterbalance, it is important to know that the structure of fullerenes strongly affects their chemical properties and hence toxicity. It does not immediately follow that just because CNTs are rolled up graphene that graphene will be just as toxic.
C60 for example not only shows no indication of toxicity but also appears to have health benefits. My general understanding is while relatively little is known about graphene, what is known suggests it is much safer than CNTs [1]. As well, CNTs are most dangerous when inhaled. CNTs can do damage once inside a cell but breaching membrane is a special enough cirscumstance to make it relatively easily solvable compared to how to mass produce the fullerenes in the first place. The asbestos like quality also seems to be length dependent [2] and most risky to workers - which is a more controllable environment. While it is important to know how harmful these substances may be to us and our environment and I am a tad wary of CNTs, one must keep in mind that the setting of these experiments tend to be exceptional. The fear mongering on this seems like it will end up like GMO, vaccines and fission; yet another inappropriately maligned technology of great potential.
[1] The results show that GO [digraphene oxide] has a moderate toxicity to organisms since it can induce minor (about 20%) cell growth inhibition and slight hatching delay of zebrafish embryos at a dosage of 50 mg/L, but did not result in significant increase of apoptosis in embryo, while MWNTs exhibit acute toxicity leading to a strong inhibition of cell proliferation and serious morphological defects in developing embryos even at relatively low concentration of 25 mg/L
[2] The apparent similarity between multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) and asbestos fibers has generated serious concerns about their safety profile. The asbestos-like pathogenicity observed for long, pristine nanotubes (NTlong, see scheme) can be completely alleviated if their effective length is decreased as a result of chemical functionalization, such as with tri(ethylene glycol) (TEG).
Fun graphene fact: As the article mentions, graphene was first isolated at the University of Manchester using sticky tape. For this discovery, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics... making Andre Geim the first person to be awarded both the Nobel Prize and the Ig Nobel Prize. He was previously awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for magnetically levitating a live frog.
So which accomplishment do you find more rewarding? While I see graphene becoming an extremely popular 21st century material, levitating a frog is the first step to levitating anything larger.
Thanks. Good point on the trains, completely missed that.
I guess levitating a live frog seems more interesting to me however. To be able to use magnetics to simulate gravity for humans safely, is IMO, a huge barrier (of many) to space travel/living one day.
My understanding is that they do use such magnets for microgravity experiments. Here is a cool video on diamagnetic levitation from the University of Nottingham: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nod54HFkH0o
This is a good idea which won't solve the underlying problems with poor condom usage in places which really need it (Africa).
That's being powered by deliberate misinformation campaigns and cultural leftovers, not the specific properties of condoms (though improving them is always a good idea).
When it comes to human life, things aren't binary. A 1% increase in condom usage can have massive impact on the health and safety of millions of people. It's another straw we can add to the camel's back.
In some cases "underlying" problems (eg misinformation campaigns and cultural leftovers) are really just used as excuses by men who don't like how condoms feel. Fix that, and many will be happy to ignore those thing.
As an aside: don't forget the largest major anti-condom propagandists is not African at all (ie, the Catholic church).
>As an aside: don't forget the largest major anti-condom propagandists is not African at all (ie, the Catholic church).
That would be the curch that also goes on about abstinence before marriage and monogamy afterwards? Never understood why the church gets beaten up for that (not a fan of the stance on condom use but this implies people "religously" follow one of their rules while blatantly ignoring others).
The difference is that you can't really convince people to practice abstinence and monogamy. You can quite easily convince people to not use condoms. Failing to take this into account when you are in a position of authority is unethical at best. Spreading misinformation such as HIV being able to get through condoms is plain old evil.
Sex is part of human nature. It used to happen before Humans invented the notion of marriage. The church is trying to stop something that is intrinsically a part of us, that is a bad strategy and is actively making the world a WORSE place.
A better idea would be to encourage people to use condoms. This does not circumvent human nature and has a much better chance of working.
Don't defend ill thought out policy with bad logic.
Most people don't wake up in the morning with the urge to fight someone, a lot of people do wake up with the urge to have sex. Sex, like voilence, will always happen. We need to find a way to work with what we've got rather than trying to suppress are human needs.
However, the reason that I said "men" is that most of the time women aren't the problem. There are three main scenarios where condoms are helpful to society:
1) As a form of birth control. In this case the woman may not have access to other forms, and she has to rely on the man wearing a condom. If the man doesn't like it she is often left without options (particularly in jurisdictions where - unfortunately - consent laws are different for women who are married). Even if a women doesn't like sex with a condom she usually prefers it to yet-another-baby.
2) As a protection against sexually transmitted disease. A subset of that is sexually promiscuous women who dislike condoms (and in that case you are 100% correct - a condom which feels good to women will help). However, the other case - women who are paid to have sex - is unfortunately more common, and in that case the woman often has few options if the man doesn't want to wear a condom.
3) Gay Sex. Obviously this is really a subset of (2) above, but I'm putting it separately because it's quite a large vector for sexually transmitted diseases, and increased condom use would cut it dramatically.
Sorry, what is the correct term for sex between two men these days? That's the specific issue I was attempting to highlight (and I was making a distinction between that and other sex because - to generalise - the power difference between two gay men is different to between a man and a woman).
Lesbian with strapon sex? - not sure there is a huge incident of sexually transmitted disease associated with that?
That is "mainstream media" is ermm mainstream usage. Most gay men I know just call it "anal" without making a big song and dance over it. It is 2013 after all.
People don't feel the need to turn to God(s) when they are doing fine. That's why the Catholic Church goes out of its way to make people miserable and afraid. They have been doing that in Europe for centuries, now Africa is the better target.
Actually, you can't really fix the 'feel' problem, because the 'feeling' is mostly imaginary. The problem with condoms is part education, part laziness and part men actually wanting women to have more kids.
Melinda Gates herself said condoms, in their current state, don't really solve a lot of contraceptive issues in Africa in an article she wrote for Foreign Policy. But any advancement in the technology that encourages greater adoption is a net positive.
I'm very glad to live in this era. I can imagine a few years from now young people will be talking about how back then they used very thick condoms that suppressed all pleasure and people still fucked using them.
"We take a double-pronged approach: (1) Narrow the gap so that advances for the rich world reach the poor world faster, and (2) turn more of the world’s IQ toward devising solutions to problems that only people in the poor world face."
There was an interesting profile in Forbes about how he saw improving access to birth control, eliminating childhood and early adult mortality, and improving education both here and abroad as ways of leading to decreased populations and increased wealth and happiness.
He made his mission pretty clear. He believes every human life has equal value. He wants to make basic services and liberties the developed world takes for granted available to every human being on planet Earth. He's applying his wealth and expertise to high impact projects that can make that a reality.
I remember he made a comment (can't remember where) that he chooses projects which are likely to have the greatest impact per dollar, or something to that effect. You'll have to find the source yourself, though.
He gives where he think it can do the most good the most efficiently. Specifically, his major goals seem to be global disease reduction and elimination.
Tribologist here, about to publish a study of reciprocating friction and wear in graphene-loaded plastic composites. We see two orders of magnitude wear reductions at 30,000 cycles for 10% graphene by mass (dry reciprocating conditions) and suppression of the abrasive wear mode. Also friction coefficient goes down by 10%, but other studies have reported much bigger friction coefficient improvements.
Scribble a pencil on a piece of paper for a while, fold it in half, blow the dust into the lock and run the key in and out a few times. Works like a charm.
Teflon is actually completely inert in your body. It's only a problem if it is heated to the point of giving out fumes at 260 celsius, and I hope that isn't happening in the bedroom...
It's not the material that's the problem in many places, but the cost. There are reports of people using post-exposure prophylaxis drugs over condoms because they're cheaper!
Only in places that allow use of cheap generic post-exposure drugs produced in India. Unfortunately the very same drugs in Europe are hell expensive. They should be probably subsidized by the country like Germany which is famous for its sex industry.
So, back in the day we would have said "bring your rubbers." I suppose once this condom hits the market we will say something like "make sure to bring the lead for your pencil." Actually, do people ever refer to the graphite in pencils as lead anymore? We did when I was a kid.
The condom is something in bad need of a radical overhaul and it would have a huge effect. At least, if this could deal with the sensation component of the problem, then it would get more people to use them.
Still problems would be distribution (religious blocking and availability for the poor are issues here), education (family planning so people know the full financial effects of having lots of kids) and "killing the moment" when you stop to put the thing on.
At 100K per competing group, it seems like the foundation could be getting lots of "bang" for its buck here.
Considering that most people don't wear condoms because they they think its coming in their way its a good idea to fund something that will encourage people to use condoms in developing nations such as africa and asia. Gates doing good job KUDOS. Now i only expect him to interviene into ms's anti-google missions and put a hold on that shitty business. Those are some cheap publicity stunts from ms while google is busy making cool products and amaze people[http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/21/google-building-chro...].
The donation was 100 grand to 11 different teams. That's about 1 engineer per company for 1 year (if that?), is that really enough to do this? There's first the invention of this thing, then there's manufacturing process, etc.
Am I the only one that finds "impenetrable" a funny selling point? It makes perfect sense but still sounds funny. I'm surprised they didn't go for "unbreakable".
"UOW researchers have used graphene to develop a new composite material which can produce the toughest fibres to date- even tougher than spider silk and Kevlar!"
[1] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/163071-graphene-superca...