Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100922/04310911114/dailydirt-uses-wine-besides-drinking-it.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100922/04310911114/dailydirt-uses-wine-besides-drinking-it.shtml

There's a persistent statistic that wine drinkers tend to live longer than teetotalers or people who drink other forms of alcohol. But according to a recent study, those wine drinkers also correlate highly with people who possess healthier habits in general. So wine could merely be the drink of the healthier -- and not some magic elixir for longer life. [url]

Some Australian researchers have developed a process to turn wine into clothing -- and it also works with other forms of alcohol. Bacteria are used to ferment the alcohol into a formable fabric, and the garments retain characteristic odors of their original beverage. So if you really like the smell of beer, there's a perfect shirt for you.... [url]

There's a possible "miracle molecule" in red wine called resveratrol -- and it seems to give older mice some improved mobility. Consuming more red wine might seem like the easy answer for older people to gain mobility improvements, but the study also suggested that a 150lb human would have to drink 700 4-ounce glasses of red wine a day to see an effect. Good luck with that! [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100922/04310911114 Wed, 2 May 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120306/14360218003/dailydirt-doing-whatever-spider-can.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120306/14360218003/dailydirt-doing-whatever-spider-can.shtml

Spider webs are amazing tough and resistant to damage. Webs can retain their original strength even if 10% of the web's spokes are cut. [url]

The most stretchable spider silk ever tested belongs to the cave spider, Meta menardi. The silk strands from the stalks of this spider's egg sacs can stretch up to 7.5 times their original length. [url]

Spiders don't actually produce much silk in their lifetimes, but silkworms are routinely used to produce commercial amounts of silk. So how about genetically modifying some silkworms to produce spider silk? Scientists are already trying to do this, but it's not so easy. [url]

To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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