Grains of change: Northwestern researchers craft the future of plastics

J. Mirian Diop, a graduate student with Northwestern University’s
Torkelson’s Research Group, adjusts the construction of a screw for the
lab’s “extruder,” a gadget that combines polymers molecularly.
Diop left an industrial chemical engineering career to pursue
environmentally beneficial research. (Jessica Krinke/MEDILL)

In a small laboratory on the ground floor of an unassuming office building in Evanston, J. Mirian Diop, a petite young woman with a soft African accent and a beaming smile, spends her days reworking experiments until the right combination of polymer grains produces the desired results.

Northwestern University’s Torkelson Research Group has big plans for those tiny grains. Diop and her colleagues think that someday the work done here will change the way the world produces and recycles much of its everyday plastic products.

After each tweak of the mixture, Diop sets up again for another three-hour test beneath the lab’s florescent lights and concrete walls lined with machinery parts and trays of various granulated plastics.

Right now, the conventional way industry creates plastics is to melt down the specific polymers (science for plastic) needed and blend them with dyes until the mixture is the desired color and consistency.

Rock local - open mic night at Rogers Park's Red Line Tap

Final project for Wynne Delacoma's arts reporting class. The assignment was to make a video or slideshow about a live performance. I chose slideshow because it forces you to listen to the performances more and, to me, it's easier to make someone "there" with just pictures and sounds sometimes.

By the way, in case you're wondering why Brad Norman's voice sounds familiar, he now plays "Chad Ridgeway," the broker character in the Scottrade commercials. He told me during our short interview that he had just done an audition in California that he was waiting to her back about. I guess it went well. Good for him.

Alley Cat: Mark Thomas's lucky 7

Click to enlarge!

Mark Thomas pushes aside a rack of floor-length motorcycle jackets to reveal a door. “I just like weird shit.” A dingy staircase slathered in a garish shade of tennis ball winds upward on the other side. By the top, the ceiling is barely high enough to stand upright. Like Willy Wonka’s biker uncle, Thomas unlocks one coded door after another leading to his “cave,” a dusty, windowless office above his oldest store.

Thomas owns The Alley, the collection of punk/kitch/whatever stores on the corner of Belmont Ave. and Clark St. in Chicago that have attracted generations of suburban teens on their first pilgrimages to the big city.

After minding hell’s gift shop for three decades, Chicago’s godfather of alternative culture has enough keepsakes to fill four offices and stories to fill each one of his many shops. High above the driving music and scent of leather in the main Alley store, he reminisces about the toys in his attic.

Harder, better, faster, stronger: I:Scintilla grows with age, but is the world ready?

I:Scintilla press photo/ISCINTILLA.COM

Industrial corn school transplants I:Scintilla have a cult following and goth cred to spare. Too bad everyone around them doesn’t seem to be up to their level.

The 1300 block of West Lake Street is an odd place for an underground music venue. Not as out-of-place as Chinatown is for Reggie’s, but almost.