IN AN OLD SHOE FACTORY on the outskirts of Paris, new life is taking shape. A bank of PCR machines is multiplying plant DNA molecules by the hundreds of billions every few hours. Inside a gleaming white chamber, tiny emerald shoots are coaxed from single cells, unfurling in millimeters over a period of months.
It's a biologist's dream, says Patrick Torbey, CTO of Neoplants, a startup that's placing a multimillion-dollar bet on the air we breathe. Torbey grabs one of the clear plastic growing containers from the chamber and squints at his verdant creation: Nestled in a jelly-like growing medium called agar, it looks like a canapé-or, possibly, the future.
This is the Neo P1-a houseplant the firm genetically modified to help combat indoor air pollution. Pl is a tweaked form of golden pothos, commonly known as devil's ivy, one of the most ubiquitous and easy-going houseplants. Neoplants has engineered its DNA to boost its ability to sequester volatile organic compounds (VOCs)-formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene-that are prevalent in the air inside homes and businesses.
The modifications also enable the plant to convert the VOCs into substances like sugar and CO₂ that it can use to grow. Once it has outgrown the agar, Pl will be planted in a pot designed to maximize airflow and sold with packs of bacteria that are added to the soil each month to help the plant metabolize VOCs. Due to hit stores later this year, Pl will retail for $179-roughly 10 times the cost of an ordinary golden pothos plant, and in the ballpark of a decent HEPA purifier.
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Esta historia es de la edición April 2023 de WIRED.
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Spin Cycle - To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers).
To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers). When the Dominator is about to intercept a tornado, Timmer uses a two-prong system to anchor the vehicle. Air compressors lower the car so its thick rubber skirt nearly touches the ground, and spikes wedge 6 inches into the earth to firmly prevent the vehicle from liftoff. Timmer and ONeal have seen roughly 65 tornadoes in the past six months. It was a historic amount, ONeal says. A lot of meteorological setups are busts, but every day we drove out this year, we felt like we would see a tornado.
Fantastic Plastic - a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.
Stretchy seaweed. Reverse vending machines. QR-coded take-out boxes. To cure our addiction to disposable crap, we'll all need to get a little loony.
Piece of Mind - This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition.
This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition. Although this image wouldn't look out of place on a gallery wall alongside other splashy works of abstract art, it represents something very real: a 1-cubic-millimeter chunk of a woman's brain, removed during a procedure to treat her for epilepsy. Researchers at Harvard University stained the sample with heavy metals, embedded it in resin, cut it into slices approximately 34 nanometers thick
I Am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I Will Make Reading Sexy and Tragic Again
WHEN A FLATTERING EMAIL ARRIVED inviting me to participate in an AI venture called Rebind that I'd later come to think will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books, I felt pretty sure it was a scam.
DAMAGE CONTROL
According to Léna Lazare, the 26-year-old face of the radical climate movement, they're also acts of joy.
AN IMPERFECT STORM
CAN THE U.A.E. REALLY MAKE RAIN ON DEMAND OR IS IT SELLING VAPORWARE?
THE HOLE IN THE MAP OF THE WORLD
ON THE SURFACE, THERE'S NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT IT. JUST A SPOT OF OCEAN. BUT BENEATH THE WAVES LURKS SOMETHING INCREDIBLE: A MASSIVE WATERFALL. AND IN ITS MYSTERIOUS DEPTHS, THE FATE OF THE WORLD CHURNS.
COOLER HEADS
The deadliest environmental threat to city dwellers worldwide isn't earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, or fire. It's heat.
TERMINAL VELOCITY
IT WAS 2 AM at Denver International Airport, and Jared Murphy was only a few hours into a planned 17-hour layover.
THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF MARKDOWN
If the robots take over, we should at least speak their language.