Bacteria give alternatives to fossil fuels and cellulose from trees. In this episode we talk Isabel Alvarez-Martos, CEO and co-founder of Cellugy on how their company started as an idea in grad school and turned into a company making biodegradable and compostable materials. She tells us why bacterial cellulose is such a unique, beneficial, but also challenging material to use. We discuss why this cellulose source may be better than trees in this new developing industry, how these materials can be used in your shampoos and more, and how Cellugy navigated the start-up company space with this nanotechnology.

Ep 28B: Interview with Isabel Alvarez-Martos, CEO of Cellugy, on bacterial nanocellulose

Wendy from Charlotte, North Carolina, was baffled when a co-worker asked, Are you ready to race for pinks? The phrase racing for pinks refers to participating in car races where the winner gets ownership of a car, the pinks referring to the pink-colored page in a multi-part document conferring the car's title. The pink slip mentioned when someone is let go from a job refers to pink interoffice memo pages, that color signaling a message that's more urgent than messages on white paper. http://waywordradio.org

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In an article in The Atlantic magazine, humorist Mark Twain quoted a sing-songy bit of doggerel about conductors punching railroad fares that illustrates how colored paper has long been used to encode information. http://waywordradio.org

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In Appalachia, if you're being lazy, stupid, or idle, you may be told to quit your footercootering. http://waywordradio.org

1636-Footercootering

A Pennsylvania woman says that when her stepmother was frustrated by someone, as when the driver ahead of her was dawdling at a traffic light, she'd express her irritation with Are you posing for animal crackers? This expression goes back at least to the early 1900s and has been said to indicate that someone's being lazy or frivolous.  A variant is Are you being a model for animal crackers? http://waywordradio.org

1636-Intro-Animal-Crackers

Several years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts devoted a whole issue of its magazine to the topic of "The Art of Failure: The Importance of Risk and Experimentation." Writers, artists, and musicians all shared their insights about their creative process, and how to handle the failures that happen along the way. One of them, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, encouraged writers to regard failure simply as data that can help them get better. http://waywordradio.org

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In White Oleander (Bookshop|Amazon), novelist Janet Fitch touts the value of memorizing poetry with these memorable lines: Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay. http://waywordradio.org

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Another option for a term that denotes someone who relocates to be near the grandkids: trailing grandparent. http://waywordradio.org

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Outdoor enthusiasts divide the idea of fun into three categories: Type I fun is guaranteed to be pleasant, like get-togethers with good friends, Type II fun is miserable when you're having it, but enjoyable in retrospect, and Type III fun is simply harrowing, the kind you don't want to have again, ever. http://waywordradio.org

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Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been puzzling over eye rhymes, words that look like they should rhyme, but they don't, like tough and cough. What is the eye rhyme in the following sentence?  When I play peekaboo with my ________, I so enjoy the sound of her ________. http://waywordradio.org

1636-Word-Quiz-Eye-Rhymes

Gene-drives hold great potential for the control of biological pests, but first they need to be thoroughly tested under appropriate conditions. In this episode we discuss some new work assessing whether mosquito populations in Northern Australia could be used to test a gene-drive targeting malaria mosquitoes.

Mosquito population structure and gene-drives

Talk Green to Me is a monthly podcast brought to you by materials scientists and engineers discussing the science behind sustainability and recycling of different materials. Dr. Nasreen Khan and Dr. Manali Banerjee interview people from the industries that create or recycle each of the material types we'll explore in this podcast! Paper, plastic, glass, textiles and much much more!

Ep 28B: Interview with Isabel Alvarez-Martos, CEO of Cellugy, on bacterial nanocellulose

Talk Green to Me Podcast

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