newscripts SOLVING THE STILETTO, PREHISTORIC PROBIOTICS
eople pay a lot of money to painfully ike futuristic footwear, ancient miteeter around on thin metal rods. For crobes might also be able to help keep decades, shoemakers—Big Heels, people on their feet longer. Anatoli if you will—have pedaled their uncomfortBrouchkov, head of the geocryology departable shoes to bipedal fashionistas to build ment at Moscow State University, says he a $40 billion-a-year industry, says Dolly DRANK MILLION-YEAR-OLD BACTERIA, Singh, founder of Thesis Couture. and he tells the Russian TV network RT that Singh, a former recruiter for the private he’s been working longer and hasn’t gotten space technology the flu in two years. company SpaceX, deBrouchkov and his cocided she was done workers found the baccompromising. So she teria several years ago assembled an impresin thawing permafrost sive team at Thesis in the Republic of Sakha to create what many in northern Russia. The thought to be impossiteam says the bacteria ble: A COMFORTABLE, could be up to 3.5 million STYLISH STILETTO. years old (Adv. Geron“It is possible,” Singh tol. 2011, DOI: 10.1134/ tells Newscripts. “Stis207905701101005x). letto design is archaic.” “It is a mystery how For the past 80 years, they survive,” Brouchkov High heel stakes: It takes hard nobody has looked at writes to Newscripts. work for a shoe to look—and the shoe for what it really The team is working to feel—this good. is: A chassis supporting unravel that mystery, a secondary structure but they suspect that that happens to be a human, Singh explains. higher organisms could benefit from the It’s an engineering problem. “But fashion microbes in the meantime. They conducted houses don’t hire engineers. Shoe manufacpreliminary studies of the bacteria in mice turers don’t hire engineers.” and fruit flies, and Brouchkov says he had Singh, however, hired engineers. She the opportunity to drink water with bacteria hired an astronaut, a rocket scientist, and during the team’s expedition. Amanda Parkes, who is among the world’s Although this might sound unusual, he first professional fashion says that more and more scientists. Parkes earned people will “receive these an engineering degree organisms with water” as from Stanford University permafrost continues to and a doctorate in media melt because of global arts and sciences from warming and other factors. Massachusetts Institute “It is obvious that the of Technology. gentleman is exploring Thesis Couture is about some interesting ideas,” 98% of the way to finishsays Jack A. Gilbert, the ing a stiletto that feels like group leader for microMammoth Mountain in a wedge, Singh says. The bial ecology at Argonne northern Russia: There’s old designers took the biggest National Laboratory, but (bacteria) in them thar hills. single step when they stresses it will be impossireplaced the metal rod trable to ascertain the efects ditionally used to give heels their lift with a of Brouchkov drinking the microbes. strong but forgiving polymer resin mixture. “The potential to use environmental The team is now fine-tuning the shoe microorganisms to augment your microbial design to optimize its weight distribution ‘health’ is real, however,” Gilbert tells Newsand aesthetic appeal. The stilettos should cripts, but more scientific research will be be available later this year or early next year, needed to capitalize on that potential. with prices ranging from about $350 to $925 for the “red carpet look,” Singh says. She also hints that Thesis may branch out MATT DAVENPORT wrote this week’s column. to other shoe styles in the future: “Once you Please send comments and suggestions to solve the stiletto, everything else is easy.”
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ANATOLI BROUCHKOV
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OCTOBER 19, 2015
