Hemp may be the ticket to our energy future

We all know that hemp has many practical uses, including paper, textiles, construction, health food, and fuel. But in the past few years, scientists have been working on a new way to use the plant. Using perfectly legal hemp fibers, which contain no THC at all, these badasses were able to create cheap, high-performance supercapacitors "better than graphene."

"Graphene, an atomically strong material that is 100 times stronger than steel, and conducts electricity at higher efficiency rates than copper, can be applied to transform everyday electronics and machines. The problem is, the carbon monolayer is expensive to produce, which severely limits its adoption in industrial sectors (it cost roughly $2,000 per gram). By comparison, using converted hemp fibers as an alternative for graphene costs less than $500 per ton to manufacture.

The process of turning hemp into a superior nanomaterial involves 'cooking' the leftover bark until it turns into carbon nanosheets, a technical process called hydrothermal synthesis."

Read Is Hemp the Next Graphene? at the MassRoots blog.

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Enigmatic Shapes and Psychedelic Patterns

To say that I love Sanagi 's work is an understatement. Looking at her art feels sort of therapeutic, and I find her drawings refreshingly intricate. They're trippy, psychedelic, and resemble something that you might see under a microscope. Not much is Googleable about Sanagi, but that's fine. There aren't many artists these days that still pull off the whole mysterious vibe, so I commend her for that. By the way... they're all hand-drawn with pen and ink.

James DeRosso's ceramic monsters

I really like these whimsical ceramic creatures by James DeRosso. Yes, they have bulging eyes and toothy grins, but they're not scary at all. The Portland-based artist started making cute monsters while he was a student to jokingly create gargoyle-like guardians for the kiln. After other students kept taking his quirky little figures, he realized there was a market for them. "I'm enjoying the whole monster making niche," James says. "It's amazingly gratifying to be doing ceramics full time and especially to be a teacher introducing kids to the joy of clay." Be sure to visit his website and like his Facebook page for the latest monster news.

Kidlat de Guia's woven art

Kidlat De Guia is a photographer and filmmaker who lives and works in the Philippines. He is best known for a body of work that mixes different media as well as traditional with contemporary art-making techniques. The selected images in this post were part of his Woven into Being exhibition, which took place a fews weeks ago at the Galeria Duemila in Pasay City. This series of portraits deals with the idea of blending modern photography with the indigenous art of weaving to produce geometric tapestries with tile-like look. Working with his stock of photos taken during trips and fieldwork around the Philippines, Kidlat creates double vistas through the cutting, splicing, and weaving of the pictures. The results are rivetingly composite and texturized layers of photographic images that disclose an alternate reality.

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