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Morf shirt transforms to 24 shirts in one!

Design

Kelly Milone

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January 4, 2016

Morf shirt transforms to 24 shirts in one!

There’s a movie called 27 Dresses about a woman who finds love and finally gets to wear a wedding dress after serving as a bridesmaid, 27 times. You might think that “24 shirts” refers to a similar movie about a 24-time groomsman – but not so. It actually describes a recent fashion innovation by Israeli designer Tamara Salem: the “Morf Shirt,” a ladies’ shirt that can be worn 24 different ways!

I’ve seen shirts or dresses that can be worn a few different ways, but never have I seen the capacity breach double digits.

“Morf” is the name of the fashion design company owned by Ms. Salem and business partner Barak Kirschner. The name itself implies that they are creative and open-minded.

The Morf Shirt seems to include solid black, blue and grey options, and it throws black and white striped accents into the mix. There’s room to play with the color of the sleeves and the cut of the neckline. The trick is in the layering of the fabric. Amazingly, there are no buttons or zippers, velcro or other gadgets.

Even watching the video below, I can’t seem to wrap my head around how the shirt can be morphed so many times. How can something seemingly simple be so complex? Besides the fact that the Morf shirt is an extremely economic fashion choice, I say that it also makes its owner a magician.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCchVQOLXhQ

I’d like to see the manual that comes with the shirt. But even so, I don’t doubt its morf-ability. Israelis have a great track record of being resourceful, not only in the fashion industry but also in other arenas, such as visual art and technology.

Lightweight and durable, it’s no wonder that the Morf shirt has garnered the best feedback from backpacking travellers. But it’s truly for every woman. Wear it in blue with a pair of jeans and flats for a day look. Wear it in svelte black with heels and there’s your night look.

I’ve been meaning to donate clothes – maybe gaining the Morf shirt will mean finally getting rid of several different shirts I wear only every once in a while. The revolutionary fashion staple is available on Amazon or on the Morf website – where you can also check out the Morf shirt in green (with white as another solid-color option) and in red (with brown as another solid-color option), the Morf dress and the Morf shirt for men!

Consider joining the Morf movement. You’ll have a lighter laundry basket, or suitcase. Your wallet will thank you. So will the earth.

Did I mention that Morf also comes in a dress version? Oh, and a shirt for men?

Paris climate talks extended another day

Faisal O'Keefe

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December 11, 2015

Paris climate talks extended another day

Global climate talks expected to close today in Paris have extended into Saturday, according French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Appearing last night on French BFMTV he said that he would present a new compromise text for a deal to combat global warming on Saturday morning. The extra day of negotiations aims to reach accord between the near-200 participating nations.

One hundred and ninety-five nations, each with a specific agenda. Scan ten facts brought to the table. Can another day of discussion make headway into at least one theme?

2015 was the hottest year ever recorded.
Earth will be 2.7 warmer by the end of the century if governments don’t cut CO2 emissions.
Since 1993, sea levels have risen 3.2 mm annually.
2014 recorded 91 hurricanes, a new world record.
Insurance companies lose $50 billion annually due to natural disaster and climate change.
3.3 million people die each year due to air pollution.
8% of species are threatened with extinction if global temperatures rise by 3% by 2100.
The USA has used 250 billion gallons of water for fracking between 2005 through 2014.
One square kilometer of virgin forest is lost every second around the planet.
10.1 million more people will be pushed below the poverty line.

“The atmosphere is good, things are positive, things are going in the right direction”, Fabius added. The betting window is open: let us hear which topics you think will be tackled, and what difference will another day make.

Arab civil society calls Arab nations to achieve 100% renewable energy

Faisal O'Keefe

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December 9, 2015

Arab civil society calls Arab nations to achieve 100% renewable energy

While UN climate-conference delegates seek ways to cut world reliance on high-carbon fuels like oil, OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) confirmed that it would keep producing oil at current levels, estimated in excess of 31 million barrels a day, despite prices that continue to plummet. Arab activists are on the case.

Earlier this week activists gathered in front of the main plenary of the COP21 negotiations to express their frustration toward the current Saudi position and how the rest of Arab countries are following their lead at the climate talks underway in Paris.

“Right now, in the Arab Group, there is no peer pressure, there are no champions, so Saudi Arabia has been allowed to act as a blocker for much of the climate talks. Arab countries are standing silent and letting Saudi Arabia talk on their behalf. Morocco and Egypt have strong climate action plans and Jordan has the largest wind farm in the region, but due to their silence, their climate action and their reputations are being undermined. Will they keep hiding behind Saudi Arabia’s obstruction, or will they step out and represent the will for climate action in the region?”, said Safa’ al Jayoussi, head of climate campaign at IndyACT and CAN Arab World coordinator.

IndyACT and other youth activists staged a bit of performance art for international media, wherein negotiators tried to move towards an ambitious carbon-cutting agreement, but – tethered to the “oil industry”, they failed to make headway. “This reflects what is happening behind closed doors. We are asking Arab countries who are leading in renewable energy to take the initiative in moving ahead with an ambitious agreement,” PanAfrican Climate Justice Alliance representative and CAN Arab World Coordinator Chakri Said said in a press release.

“The conference in Paris presents our leaders with the opportunity to take critical action, such as investing in clean energy and the removal of legal and structural obstacles by creating detailed national energy plans that facilitate a fast transition to a 100% renewable energy system. This is essential if we are to keep average temperature rises to no more than 1.5°C, ” said al Jayoussi.

IndyACT is the leading Arab non-governmental organization working on climate change policy. Want to get involved on a local level? Contact Ms. al Jayoussi (email link here).

Images from IndyAct

MENA must push – NOW! – for 100% renewable energy

Faisal O'Keefe

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December 3, 2015

MENA must push – NOW! – for 100% renewable energy

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) must keep pace with the rest of the world and push for a future fully powered by renewable energy, says IndyACT, the leading Arab non-governmental organization working on climate change policy.

Israeli lab aims to hatch chicken from stem cells!

Green Prophet Guest

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November 30, 2015

Israeli lab aims to hatch chicken from stem cells!

Israeli non-profit Modern Agriculture Foundation (MAF) is developing lab-grown chicken meat that doesn’t require the rearing and slaughtering of birds. Since 2014, they’ve been researching mass production of cultured chicken meat from a single bird cell. If they succeed, we could soon be asking, Which came first, the chicken…or the chicken?

Chicken is the world’s second favorite meat product after pork, with an estimated 23 million chickens killed daily just to feed Americans. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 world population will exceed 9.6 billion. That’s two billion more mouths to feed, and increasingly, they’ll be meat-eaters. How is the food industry gearing up for demand?

In 2013, Green Prophet reported on the first lab-grown beef, an experiment undertaken by Maastricht University which culminated in a hamburger patty that cost roughly $325,000 to create. We questioned the viability of “victimless meat“: will consumer commitment to food with a lower carbon footprint overcome the “ick” factor of meat born in a petri dish? Considerable investment will be needed to scale up to commercial manufacture, so for now production of synthetic meat (or shmeat, or tubesteak) is now limited to research labs.

Did you know that ranching and livestock rearing now take up 30% of earth’s surface? Meat production causes negative environmental impacts ranging from soil erosion to deforestation with significant losses in biodiversity.

A report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization found that current levels of meat production contributes up to 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of “CO2-equivalent” greenhouse gases (GHG) generated globally every year. Scientific American put that into perspective, calculating that producing half a pound of hamburger releases as much GHG into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles. The industry is also a voracious consumer of water (4,325 liters of water is required to produce 1 kg of chicken meat, according to the British Institute of Mechanical Engineers ).

“Earth cannot take it. It’s not a prediction or speculation. It’s truth. There’s not enough land on the planet to raise the animals. We are raising 70 billion land animals at the moment. We won’t have space for another 70 billion,” MAF cofounder and biologist Shir Friedman told Mirror Online.

Cultivated meat sidesteps animal cruelty and flock-shared disease such as Avian and Swine flu.

Chickens bred for meat are typically raised in highly efficient (and controversially cruel) intensive factory farms which accelerate the birds’ growth to market weight in six to seven weeks, a rate three times faster than in the mid-1900’s.

Use of growth hormones in poultry is illegal in the US and many other countries, but the animals are fed high calorie feeds to quicken weight gain, which cause all manner of medical problems to the birds including immobility. Proponents of cultivated meat will point out that the fried thigh you are about to tuck into may have been pressed to a feces-packed floor for the few months of its owner’s life, featherless and covered with sores.

Cultured meat is made from stem cells harvested from live animals. The cells are fed with a nutrient cocktail that enables them to grow into muscle tissue, which must be mechanically stimulated in order to develop properly. It is 100% meat, and involves no genetic engineering.

Tissue specialist Amit Gefen (pictured below) from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is heading up the MAF study which aims to have devise a lab-cultured chicken meat recipe by January 2016, identifying all associated technologies, resources, and costs. The goal is to one day produce in factories on a commercial scale, which would require between seven and 45 percent less energy, 90% less fresh water and 99% less land, and would result in 80 to 90% less GHG emissions than the traditional chicken meat industry.

“If 2.5 billion people join us in eating only cultured meat by 2050, we get all those resources back. It’s truly a magic solution,” says Friedman.

Hebrew University Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, says that if the process becomes economically feasible, “the ecological and ethical considerations would make cultured meat irresistible. Cultured meat is one of the most important revolutions in the history of food and in the history of humankind itself.”

MAF is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization founded in March last year. The project is privately funded.

Lead image of a chicken from Shutterstock, all others from MAF Facebook page.

Cool innovation shocks salt from sea water

Tech

Maurice Picow

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November 25, 2015

Cool innovation shocks salt from sea water

$MIT-fracking-pond_0$

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!

Desalinating sea water is a costly and energy consuming way of providing fresh water in many parts of world. Though methods such as Graphene-Nanotechnology makes desalination more efficient, the end result is still problematic due to clogging of separation filters.

Returning heavily saline brine residue back to the sea makes seawater even more saline.

Rich countries and states like California, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and even Israel don’t care about cost of desalination to the national energy bill or to greenhouse gas emissions. We have said before and we will say again, desalination is not efficient and should only be used in a last-case scenario.

New research promises a more energy way to desalinate?

A much more efficient way of separating salt from sea or brackish water by literally shocking the salt from the water is being developed by a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Invented by an MIT research team, the system uses an electrically driven shockwave within a stream of flowing water that literally pushes salty water to one side of the flow and fresh water to the other.

This allows easy separation of the two streams without needing a filtration membrane. The team leader, Professor Martin Bazant, a professor of chemical engineering and mathematics, says that the electrolysis process is a “fundamentally new and different separation system that forms a membrane-less separation of ions and particles.”

The new electrical shocking system works without using a traditional desalination system of reverse osmosis or conventional electrodialysis, “This process looks similar to electrodialysis, but it’s fundamentally different,” says Bazant.

Besides the high costs involved, one of the biggest problems of conventional desalination is the clogging or fouling — a buildup of filtered material; or to degradation due to water pressure.

This often occurs with conventional membrane-based desalination, including conventional electrodialysis: “With our system, the charged salt particles, or ions, “just move to one side,” says Bazant.

One of the more promising uses of the electrical shocking system is removing salt and other impurities from brackish water; including cleaning of large amounts of wastewater generated by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Since the electro shocking process does not require the large infrastructure needed by conventional desalination, it can be used to clean saline waste water extracted by oil and gas wells: “The electric fields created by this process are pretty high, so we may be able to kill the bacteria in the water,” says Sven Schlumpberger, a graduate student also working on the project.

The electro shocking process being worked on by Professor Bazant and his colleagues is still in the developmental process; so it may be a while until it is actually put into use on a commercial scale. As a viable alternative to conventional desalination methods, it does appear to be promising.

What to do with the salt that “moves off to one side” willstill be an issue that will have to be dealt with, however.

Dive into our resources on desalination:

Graphene nanotechnology makes desalination 100 times more efficient
Cyprus gets new desalination plant with Mekorot Israel’s know-how
Going Green ends with Water from the Sea

Photo of fracking water pool, by MIT News:

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