Graphene-Fed Silkworms Produce Stronger Silk

Sounds like its an early April fools thing... along with all the narbon nano optical computing bollocks we are endlessly fed...
Del

Yes, but on the brighter side, there hasn't been an earth changing, revolutionary advance in battery technology in some time.

Here, as a consolation prize, here is some silk mittens woven by our trained silkworms... sorry, they are two right handed mittens. But we're working on it....

Send half of your worm herd south of the Equator.

Problem solved.

That'll be $5.00.

First, I have to have a worm round up... evidently, I built the wrong kind of fence... and they escaped

Is this one of yours? I got it at a thai restaurant, they served it as a side dish I must have accidently ordered...I put it in my shirt pocket when I left so as not to insult anybody....now my pocket seems to be sealed shut(sic)...

Well, their not silkworms yet,... I bought breeding stock.... from China... Here's a picture of the 'LOST' poster I'm making of them

You need a moth recovery team....

Do you ever listen to the Moth Radio Hour?

Muhths...

--Inspecteur Clouseau

you got ripped off that not silk worm moth

yah,... I like to think people see the humor in that.

Here's a picture of my cat wishing you a Merry Christmas.

That's no good.

They'll just spin a ladder and climb over that pitiful little fence.

Apparently they're saying they did this on purpose even though it sounds to me like someone spilled graphene in the silkworm tank.

Accidents happen,... and some turn out to be very fortunate....

I remember growing up, we would make wine, Choke Cherry, concord grape and my favorite Dandelion wine.

When I was about 8-9 years old, we'd have a number of crocks all over the house fermenting. You'd almost get a jag on just walking into our house with the smell of fermenting beverages.

One crock was stored below our refrigerator door, I went to get a bottle of cola out, and dropped it in the fermenting wine, the cap came off and it fizzed out, most of the cola in the bottle was gone, when I pulled it out..

My brother was PO'ed, and literally cut into me with a tirade of verbal abuse, he even said, that since I ruin that it, I was going to drink that whole batch. I should have took him up on it, because, I don't know if it was from the extra shot of sugar or what, but that was one of the best batches of dandelion wine we made.

When our neighbors complimented my parents on it and asked for the recipe, as a 8 year old, I blurted out, "Why thank you, Its my own secret recipe" of which I immediately got punched in the shoulder from my older brother.

So, how can a legitimate thread lose its wheels and go off its rails so fast?

After #1 reply to the opening by Bayes, it never had a chance.

my work is done here...

Don't leave me here all alone to take the heat for this.

Del did it.

Kris made me post it
Del

Can't blame me this time!

Until now.

Feed them titanium powder for a new aerospace material! I sense a cottage industry emerging!

Feed them rubber plant leaves and the'll make stretchy silk....

Feed them carbon fiber, then Boeing won't need to spend 1.3 billion on a wing assembly facility.

But based on the NDGQD article about reducing carbon dioxide to ethylene, ethanol, methane, and other, do you think these silk worms will produce anything once they are shocked? Will they get drunk?

And Typhoon-class submarine hulls, now available at farmer's markets everywhere!

Doesn't that just make rutile silk?

Silk golf clubs? Titanium golf gloves? Titanium baby doll nighty?

Oh the horror!

Considering I got this thread derailed, I feel I should put it back on the track.

Silk basically is protein,... The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin. I have to look further into this, I don't know how the grapheme affects the proteins, or if it just passes through them. then its really no discovery at all. Its like the unprofessional link I posted below...

I understand they did do further process of the silk fiber for higher temperature retardance... is that because of the grapheme?

Its no different that adding the 'silk' gene to goats, where the goats then replicate the silk gene in their milk.

But now that's GMO.

And now for the link.

is this some type of a spin off to the 'Caption This' threads? Come on now,... I trying to be serious, and failing at it.

The article seems very inconclusive, which is no surprise as it is very early days yet.

The researchers did not uncover how the silkworms actually incorporated the nanotubes or graphene into the silks they made, for example. They also did not report how much of the materials were actually present in the silk that was produced. Also, it is not clear if the addition of the materials caused any adverse impact to the valuable silkworms.

It does seem interesting however and worthy of further study. Perhaps some hybrid form of nano-silk may be possible for future materials developments.

Seriously now - has anyone have any familiarity with the wonderfully named organization that produced this newsletter, phys.org? (sorry - I had to add that humor) The Wiki data on them makes them seem legitimate. There are other similar physics sites producing similar reports. however, none I am familiar with.

They seem legit, as does the scientific journal the paper was originally published in.

Don't let some recent fake online news scares freak you out, this news and the site it is posted on has nothing to do with politics, celebrities, "The Onion" or 1st of April.

_{<Fox news joke removed because it was just too easy>}

Good - yes, you understood my concerns - too many apparently real "news" stories these days that are just "view me magnets".

This will definitely require some biologically oriented types to explain how the graphene is doing what it does. I know they say "you are what you eat", but that always seemed to be just an adage to warn you to mind your diet, until now. This is almost like a mid 1950's sci-fi movie plot, with a much better result. Just a bit - no - a long way out of my expertise area. Still quite interesting.

A robust model of how graphene enters the silk could be very useful for refining production, but it probably isn't critical for making use of the improved properties.

I recall some other research showing material property improvement in silk via carbon nanotube introduction to spiders via wetting the spiders down with carbon nanotube water suspension. Not only was the silk strengthened, the spiders were also strengthened by nanotube introduction. The mandibles (?) and ovopositors of the spiders showed significant gains in strength via nanotube incorporation.

Seems like diffusion or similar action due to material dimensions on the nano scale is probably a significant contributors to nanotube inclusion in spiders and their webs.

You guys have broken the bathtub again!

It's the silk bathtub that cannot be broken!

But it leaks like a silk-screen sieve...