The slimy strings from okra and the gel from fenugreek seeds can trap microplastics better than the slightly-toxic synthetic polymer in use.
"The substances behind the slimy strings from okra and the gel from fenugreek seeds could trap microplastics better than a commonly used synthetic polymer.
Texas researchers proposed in 2022 using these sticky natural polymers to clean up water. Now, theyâve found that okra and/or fenugreek extracts attracted and removed up to 90% of microplastics from ocean water, freshwater, and groundwater.
With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Rajani Srinivasan and colleagues at Tarleton State University found that the plant-based polymers from okra, fenugreek, and tamarind stick to microplastics, clumping together and sinking for easy separation from water.
In this next stage of the research, they have optimized the process for okra and fenugreek extracts and tested results in a variety of types of water.
To extract the sticky plant polymers, the team soaked sliced okra pods and blended fenugreek seeds in separate containers of water overnight. Then, researchers removed the dissolved extracts from each solution and dried them into powders.
Analyses published in the American Chemical Society journal showed that the powdered extracts contained polysaccharides, which are natural polymers. Initial tests in pure water spiked with microplastics showed that:
One gram of either powder in a quart (one liter) of water trapped microplastics the most effectively.
Dried okra and fenugreek extracts removed 67% and 93%, respectively, of the plastic in an hour.
A mixture of equal parts okra and fenugreek powder reached maximum removal efficiency (70%) within 30 minutes.
The natural polymers performed significantly better than the synthetic, commercially available polyacrylamide polymer used in wastewater treatment.
Then the researchers tested the plant extracts on real microplastic-polluted water. They collected samples from waterbodies around Texas and brought them to the lab. The plant extract removal efficiency changed depending on the original water source.
Okra worked best in ocean water (80%), fenugreek in groundwater (80-90%), and the 1:1 combination of okra and fenugreek in freshwater (77%).
The researchers hypothesize that the natural polymers had different efficiencies because each water sample had different types, sizes and shapes of microplastics.
Polyacrylamide, which is currently used to remove contaminants during wastewater treatment, has low toxicity, but its precursor acrylamide is considered toxic. Okra and fenugreek extracts could serve as biodegradable and nontoxic alternatives.
âUtilizing these plant-based extracts in water treatment will remove microplastics and other pollutants without introducing additional toxic substances to the treated water,â said Srinivasan in a media release, âthus reducing long-term health risks to the population.â
She had previously studied the use of food-grade plant extracts as non-toxic flocculants to remove textile-based pollutants from wastewater and thought, âWhy not try microplastics?â"
The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a
"The state, which has long ranked worst in the US for child wellbeing, became the first and only in the country to offer free childcare to a majority of families
There was a moment, just before the pandemic, when Lisset Sanchez thought she might have to drop out of college because the cost of keeping her three children in daycare was just too much.
Even with support from the state, she and her husband were paying $800 a month â about half of what Sanchez and her husband paid for their mortgage in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
But during the pandemic, that cost went down to $0. And Sanchez was not only able to finish college, but enroll in nursing school. With a scholarship that covered her tuition and free childcare, Sanchez could afford to commute to school, buy groceries for her growing family â even after she had two more children â and pay down the familyâs mortgage and car loan.
âWe are a one-income household,â said Sanchez, whose husband works while she is in school. Having free childcare âdid help tremendouslyâ.
...Three years ago, New Mexico became the first state in the nation to offer free childcare to a majority of families. The United States has no federal, universal childcare â and ranks 40th on a Unicef ranking of 41 high-income countriesâ childcare policies, while maintaining some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Expanding on pandemic-era assistance, New Mexico made childcare free for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $124,000 for a family of four. That meant about half of New Mexican children now qualified.
In one of the poorest states in the nation, where the median household income is half that and childcare costs for two children could take up 80% of a familyâs income, the impact was powerful. The state, which had long ranked worst in the nation for child wellbeing, saw its poverty rate begin to fall.
As the state simultaneously raised wages for childcare workers, and became the first to base its subsidy reimbursement rates on the actual cost of providing such care, early childhood educators were also raised out of poverty. In 2020, 27.4% of childcare providers â often women of color â were living in poverty. By 2024, that number had fallen to 16%.
During the stateâs recent legislative session, lawmakers approved a âhistoricâ increase in funding for education, including early childhood education, that might improve those numbers even further...
When now-governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced her candidacy in late 2016, she emphasized her desire to address the stateâs low child wellbeing rating. And when she took office in January 2018, she described her aim to have a âmoonshot for educationâ: major investments in education across the state, from early childhood through college.
That led to her opening the stateâs early childhood education and care department in 2019 â and tapping Groginksy, who had overseen efforts to improve early childhood policies in Washington DC, to run it. Then, in 2020, Lujan Grisham threw her support behind a bill in the state legislature that would establish an Early Childhood Trust Fund: by investing $300m â plus budget surpluses each year, largely from oil and gas revenue â the state hoped to distribute a percentage to fund early childhood education each year.
But then, just weeks after the trust fund was established, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.
âCovid created a really enormous moment for childcare,â said Heinz. âWe had somewhat of a national reckoning about the fact that we donât have a workforce if we donât have childcare.â
As federal funding flooded into New Mexico, the state directed millions of dollars toward childcare, including by boosting pay for entry-level childcare providers to $15 an hour, expanding eligibility for free childcare to families making 400% of the poverty level, and becoming the first state in the nation to set childcare subsidy rates at the true cost of delivering care.
As pandemic-era relief funding dried up in 2022, the governor and Democratic lawmakers proposed another way to generate funds for childcare â directing a portion of the stateâs Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education and care. Like the Early Childhood Trust Fund, the permanent fund â which was established when New Mexico became a state â was funded by taxes on fossil fuel revenues. That November, 70% of New Mexican voters approved a constitutional amendment directing 1.25% of the fund to early childhood programs.
By then, the Early Childhood Trust Fund had grown exponentially â due to the boom in oil and gas prices. Beginning with $300m in 2020, the fund had swollen to over $9bn by the end of 2024...
New Mexico has long had one of the highest âofficial poverty ratesâ in the nation.
But using a metric that accounts for social safety net programs â like universal childcare â thatâs slowly shifting. According to âsupplemental povertyâ data, 17.1% of New Mexicans fell below the federal âsupplementalâ poverty line from 2013 to 2015 (a metric that takes into account cost of living and social supports) â making it the fifth poorest state in the nation by that measure. But today, that number has fallen to 10.9%, one of the biggest changes in the country, amounting to 120,000 fewer New Mexicans living in poverty.
New Mexicoâs child wellbeing ranking â which is based heavily on âofficial povertyâ rankings â probably wonât budge, says Heinz because âthe amount of money coming into households, that they have to run their budget, remains very low.
âHowever, the thing New Mexico has done thatâs fairly tremendous, I think, is around families not having to have as much money going out,â she said.
During the recent legislative session, lawmakers deepened their investments in early childhood education even further, approving a 21.6% increase of $170m for education programs â including early childhood education. However, other legislation that advocates had hoped might pass stalled in the legislature, including a bill to require businesses to offer paid family medical leave...
In her budget recommendations, Lujan Grisham asked the state to up its commitment to early childhood policies, by raising the wage floor for childcare workers to $18 an hour and establishing a career lattice for them. Because of that, Gonzalez has been able to start working on her associateâs in childhood education at Central New Mexico Community College where her tuition is waived. The governor also backed a house bill that will increase the amount of money distributed annually from the Early Childhood Trust Fund â since its dramatic growth due to oil and gas revenues.
Although funding childcare through the Land Grant Permanent Fund is unique to New Mexico â and a handful of other states with permanent funds, like Alaska, Texas and North Dakota â Heinz says the Early Childhood Trust fund âholds interesting lessons for other statesâ about investing a percentage of revenues into early childhood programs.
In New Mexico, those revenues come largely from oil and gas, but New Mexico Voices for Children has put forth recommendations about how the state can continue funding childcare while transitioning away from fossil fuels, largely by raising taxes on the stateâs wealthiest earners. Although other states have not yet followed in New Mexicoâs footsteps, a growing number are making strides to offer free pre-K to a majority of their residents.
Heinz cautions that change wonât occur overnight. âWhat New Mexico is trying to do here is play a very long game. And so I am not without worry that people might give it five years, and itâs been almost five years now, and then say, where are the results? Why is everything not better?â she said. âThis is generational changeâ that New Mexico is only just beginning to witness as the first children who were recipients of universal childcare start school."
talking to people out and about these days can feel a lot like you've just booted up a new video game and the writers are trying to awkwardly insert world building information into all the dialogue options but like for actual real
Maglor during his wandering by the sea years but less sad seaweed soul and more âincredibly tanned older dude you meet at the local surf pub who has circumnavigated the globe in a kayak and needs you to hear about itâ. Let me find my giant pencil. This portrait needs a home.
âI got a fan letter from a young lady. It was a suicide note.
So I called her, and I said, âHey, this is Jimmy Doohan. Scotty, from Star Trek.â I said, âIâm doing a convention in Indianapolis. I wanna see you there.â
I saw her â boy, Iâm telling you, I couldnât believe what I saw. It was definitely suicide. Somebody had to help her, somehow. And obviously she wasnât going to the right people.
I said to her, âIâm doing a convention two weeks from now in St. Louis.â And two weeks from then, in somewhere else, you know? She also came to New York - she was able to afford to got to these places. That went on for two or three years, maybe eighteen times. And all I did was talk positive things to her.
And then all of the sudden â nothing. I didnât hear anything. I had no idea what had happened to her because I never really saved her address.
Eight years later, I get a letter saying, âI do want to thank you so much for what you did for me, because I just got my Masterâs degree in electronic engineering.â
ThatâsâŚto me, the best thing Iâve ever done in my life.â
I just love that multiple people not only though âthe black one is a princess and those are her bodyguardsâ but also came to the conclusion âtheyâre also, obviously, samurai.â
⨠Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind đ Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update! â¨
