Number of fires
in the United
States in 2009
1. 3
million
3
thousand
U.S. civilian
deaths from
fire in 2009
U.S. property
loss from fires
in 2009
panda poop may
hold biofuel key
gut microbes break down
tough bamboo efficiently
by Alexandra Witze
Two giant pandas in the Memphis Zoo
have dropped researchers a gift. Studies of the pandas’ poop show that their
gut microbes break down bamboo efficiently — a trick that humans could co-opt to turn woody plant material into
alternative energy sources.
“We’re taking refuse — panda poop and
the microbes that live there — and trying
to break down another form of refuse,”
says Ashli Brown, a biochemist at Missis-
sippi State University. Brown described
her team’s results on August 29.
bamboo breaks down quickly in pandas’
gastrointestinal tracts thanks to powerful
microbes that digest it, a study shows.
to speed up the complicated, expensive
process of turning the tough, fibrous
plant material known as cellulose into
biofuel.
building a greener flame retardant
Nanolayer approach incorporates renewable material
Materials scientists in Texas have developed flexible coatings mere billionths of
a meter thick that keep cotton clothing
from going up in flames and plastic foam
from melting. Unlike the widely used
but potentially toxic flame retardants
they’ve been designed to replace, these
nanocoatings appear relatively safe,
their designers say.
Researchers from Texas A&M University in College Station described their
team’s new technologies August 31.
Because fabric fibers are so thin,
“being able to fire-retard them is a big
deal,” observes chemist Charles Wilkie
of Marquette University in Milwaukee,
a fire-retardant specialist not involved
with the study. “So I’m encouraged. The
new work is impressive.”
The Texas team, led by Jaime
Grunlan, has been seeking safer alter-
natives to brominated fire retardants,
some of which have been banned
over concerns about their potential
toxic effects. The researchers tested
alternating layers of garden-variety
clay and an inexpensive waste material:
chitosan, a natural compound extracted
from shrimp and lobster shells.
Four pieces of cotton
were exposed to a flame
for 10 seconds. The
untreated piece (left)
burned up. The other
three were coated with
(from left) 5, 10 or 20
alternating layers of each
of two flame retardant
compounds. More layers
offered better protection.
www.sciencenews.org
September 24, 2011 | SCIENCE NEWS | 17
