One step closer to Bio-Neural Gel Packs ;)

bluegeek

That, or edible tricorders...

http://gizmodo.com/wooden-computer-chips-might-lead-to-biodegradable-gadge-1707021124

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steamwright

Not to kick off a fight, but is it really "green" if you're increasing trees cut in order to make chips? I could see it if it was made from the fiber of grass clippings, for example, since that is an abundant, easily replenished source.

I'm curious how they get past the flamability issue as well. Obviously, they have, or they would not be publishing results. I'd just like to learn how it was done.

markhawkman

steamwright wrote: »

Not to kick off a fight, but is it really "green" if you're increasing trees cut in order to make chips? I could see it if it was made from the fiber of grass clippings, for example, since that is an abundant, easily replenished source.

I'm curious how they get past the flamability issue as well. Obviously, they have, or they would not be publishing results. I'd just like to learn how it was done.

We can always plant more trees. :P

Also... do you have any idea how many parts of a computer are already flammable? :P

alexmakepeace

steamwright wrote: »

Not to kick off a fight, but is it really "green" if you're increasing trees cut in order to make chips? I could see it if it was made from the fiber of grass clippings, for example, since that is an abundant, easily replenished source.

If I recall correctly, most processed wood (at least in the developed world) comes from tree farms rather than forests--it's just more economical. Deforestation is mostly due to the clearing of land for agriculture in third-world countries. The land is marginal at best and doesn't last long before becoming useless, precipitating a perpetual need to clear more and more land.

Here's NASA's take on it.

gulberat

alexmakepeace wrote: »

If I recall correctly, most processed wood (at least in the developed world) comes from tree farms rather than forests--it's just more economical.

That's correct. I don't know if you've ever driven through the state of Alabama, to name one major place in the US where tree farming is done, but there is a lot of attention paid by the paper companies to replanting an area once the trees have been cut. You can see the visible evidence of this when you come across large tracts of rural land where huge ranges of pine trees are all lined up in perfect rows. Those are areas where the paper companies have been before, and they will come back according to a long-range timetable.

markhawkman

gulberat wrote: »

That's correct. I don't know if you've ever driven through the state of Alabama, to name one major place in the US where tree farming is done, but there is a lot of attention paid by the paper companies to replanting an area once the trees have been cut. You can see the visible evidence of this when you come across large tracts of rural land where huge ranges of pine trees are all lined up in perfect rows. Those are areas where the paper companies have been before, and they will come back according to a long-range timetable.

Weyerhauser does that in Arkansas. It takes around 20 years I think, but eventually you have big enough trees.

mirrorchaos

i am more skeptical of the advancement. humans have been destroying earths landscape for almost a century now, if bombs and cannons were bad enough to throw a pile of earth into the sky and leaving all sorts of contaminants everywhere during the last years before ww1 and before that, and now we got industrial scale digging into the ground digging up all sorts of resources and leaving these places open and uncovered and then abandoned after its been done.

you got humans in south america cutting down certain types of trees because of their value and strength as wood, you got animal species endangered if not almost extinct because of our reckless approach to our efforts.


tree farms take too long to produce a substantial enough amount of chips for generations to come, it take half a century just to get some good strong trees before you got to cut them down and then turn them into chips, that have a half life for what? a few years at most before the decomposition of the biological component of the wood starts happening.

we are no where near bio neural gel packs, not even close. if this technology is of benefit and it starts getting looked at seriously as a replacement, but even then this is the start of the crude phase of research and integration, it will likely take decades to see any significant change in direction for the computer chip to the duonetic relays and then isolinear microchip all the way to the bio neural gel pack.

bluegeek

mirrorchaos wrote: »

we are no where near bio neural gel packs, not even close. if this technology is of benefit and it starts getting looked at seriously as a replacement, but even then this is the start of the crude phase of research and integration, it will likely take decades to see any significant change in direction for the computer chip to the duonetic relays and then isolinear microchip all the way to the bio neural gel pack.

Oh, sure. The thread title was not meant to be serious. I even put in a winky and made a joke about edible tricorders.

The real news here is that they have a potential product that can be made from renewable resources and does not result in nearly as much contamination when it's disposed of.

Who would have ever thought you could make a circuit board out of cellulose?

lilchibiclari

mirrorchaos wrote: »

i am more skeptical of the advancement. humans have been destroying earths landscape for almost a century now, if bombs and cannons were bad enough to throw a pile of earth into the sky and leaving all sorts of contaminants everywhere during the last years before ww1 and before that, and now we got industrial scale digging into the ground digging up all sorts of resources and leaving these places open and uncovered and then abandoned after its been done.

you got humans in south america cutting down certain types of trees because of their value and strength as wood, you got animal species endangered if not almost extinct because of our reckless approach to our efforts.


tree farms take too long to produce a substantial enough amount of chips for generations to come, it take half a century just to get some good strong trees before you got to cut them down and then turn them into chips, that have a half life for what? a few years at most before the decomposition of the biological component of the wood starts happening.

If you think that making chips out of trees is bad for the environment, then you have not heard about how much worse the materials that we already use for chips are--the massive strip mining for rare earth elements leaves behind absolutely staggering amounts of toxic soil and ponds of toxic water. Moving to wood as a raw material is a massive improvement over that.

capnmanx

It'll probably just be used as an excuse to shorten the lifespan of electronic goods even further.

'My CPU has gone rotten!'

'Well, guess you'll be needing a new one then. Have you seen our new bio-chip 4?'