About eight years ago, Li Jinglong and Guan Dian visited the Palace Museum in Beijing. The cloisonne (景泰蓝瓷器) objects on display attracted them in particular. They spent hours looking at those beautiful objects. They just couldn't take their eyes off them. 

 Born and raised in Beijing, 35-year-old Li is no stranger to cloisonne, since there were a pair of cloisonne vases in his grandparents' home. His wife, 34-year-old Guan, who learned to paint as a child and later became a designer after graduating from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, is also familiar with cloisonne, as it appears in her art books. As a result of their visit, the couple made the daring decision to open a workshop. 

"We learned cloisonne after seeing the pieces displayed in the Palace Museum. We wanted to turn our hobby into a career, so that people could enjoy and learn to make the craft themselves," said Li, who worked in a finance company before quitting his job to launch Handcraft Addicted, a DIY workshop where participants can make cloisonne. Since 2018, they have opened three workshops in Beijing. They are happy to give people a glimpse of the traditional techniques of cloisonne as part of a DIY experience. 

Instead of focusing on making traditional cloisonne objects , such as plates and vases, the workshop allows participants to create the designs they want on surface of glass, resin (树脂) or wood. Although the process has been simplified, it is still not easy for people trying cloisonne for the first time to succeed. Participants spend months making one piece, which they take home or give friends as presents. It's a luxury for people to spend time alone and fully focus on one thing nowadays because of the fast pace of life. Participants come to the workshop not only to create art, but also to take a break from their busy lives. 

In May, as our scientific institution began to open back up and whispers about face-to-face lab meetings started to float around, I panicked.

My hearing loss began when I was in graduate school. At first, I fondly thought I could overcome it with hard work. I began to record every one-on-one meeting because even with the strongest focus I just couldn't catch everything, and taking notes is not a choice when you rely on lip-reading. In meetings, I sat in the front row, tiring myself as I strained to both hear the speaker and process the science. So, in the fourth year, I decided cochlear implants(耳蜗植入) were the right next step.

The week after I began to hear with both implants, I attended a conference. I looked over every listening environment to plan my equipment and where I needed to be located during the event. It worked OK — but it was still tiring, and I felt excluded from so much.

When meetings were held online, my experience was much better. The sound quality was clear, without the powerful noises of a physical office space or meeting room. I could sit back and let the sound come to me. It was easier to focus, participate, and think deeply about the science. I felt a sense of belonging. I began to leave seminars feeling refreshed rather than needing a short sleep.

I didn't want to be forced back into struggling to understand. So, with anxiety, I contacted my adviser to make a simple hearing plan which includes asking presenters to use a microphone for our lab meetings. It worked. Now, a few weeks later, my anxiety is gradually giving way to scientific curiosity and questions enabled by feeling included and worthy of belonging. A few of my lab mates have even thanked me because they, too, were unable to hear people without microphones. Maybe instead of rushing back to "normal", we can all take this opportunity to create environments that are more welcoming — for everyone.

When you go running in the woods in your running tights, elastane (氨纶) is the reason why they fit you so comfortably. Elastane is an elastic material that allows the fabric to stretch and adapt to your body.

But when elastane fibres are mixed with cotton, wool, nylon or other fibres, as is the case in many clothes today, the clothes become almost impossible to recycle. It is extremely difficult to separate out the different fibres, and therefore the materials in the clothes cannot be recycled.

But this may change, says Assistant Professor Steffan Kvist Kristensen from the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center at Aarhus University. Together with a number of colleagues, he is behind a new technology that can separate out fibres in mixed fabrics.

"We've developed a method to remove elastane completely from nylon. We're not quite there yet with cotton, because some of the cotton fibres are broken down in the process. But we believe that, with some minor adjustments, we can solve this problem," he says. 

It is not easy to separate elastane and other fibres once they have been woven(编织) together. Clothes are made by winding the main fibres, such as nylon or cotton, around the elastane fibres, which consist of long chains of molecules (分子). The fibres only break apart if we break the long chains of molecules, explains Steffan Kvist Kristensen.

By heating the clothes to 225 degrees Celsius and adding a specific alcohol, the researchers have found a method to break down the bonds in elastane chain. When this happens, the chains fall apart and the materials separate. "The whole process takes place in what is in effect a large pressure cooker that we feed the clothes into. We then add a little alcohol and a potassium hydroxide(氢氧化钾) base and heat it up. Then we let it cook for just over four hours, and when we open the lid again, the different fibres will have been separated." says Steffan Kvist Kristensen.

So far, Steffan Kvist Kristensen and his colleagues have only experimented with two nylon stockings at a time. The technology is therefore not yet ready for application at industrial scale.