Using pollen to make paper, sponges, and more
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav At first glance, Nam-Joon Cho’s lab at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University looks like your typical research facility—scientists toiling away, crowded workbenches, a hum of machinery in the background. But the orange-yellow stains on the lab coats slung on hooks hint at a less-usual subject matter under study. The powdery stain is pollen: microscopic grains containing male reproductive cells that trees, weeds, and grasses release seasonally. But Cho isn’t studying irksome effects like hay fever, or what pollen means for the plants that make it. Instead, the material scientist has spent…
