Artist collective brings carbon-absorbing murals to Houston

WHEN FINE ART MEETS FRESH AIR

For 713 Day, UXD created carbon-absorbing mural "(HUE)STON HARMONY" in collaboration with Downtown Houston+ and local artist David Maldonado. Photo courtesy of Egidio Narvaez

Anthony Rose, the CEO of creative agency United By Design, is on a mission to brighten Houston’s urban spaces and improve the city’s air quality one carbon-absorbing mural at a time.

Rose originally founded United By Design, or UXD, in 2019 to connect muralists like himself and commercial businesses seeking to beautify their spaces and form brand identities. After creating vibrant murals for Lockhart Elementary School, the Houston Astros, and Smoothie King, Rose expanded UXD’s vision to include environmental sustainability in their artistic collaborations in 2022.

“This city’s vibrant art scene and growing focus on sustainability makes it an ideal location for our projects,” Rose says. “We’re not just creating eco-friendly murals, we’re reimagining how art can actively contribute to environmental solutions.”

In search of ecologically-conscious paints, Rose formed a partnership with Spain-based, natural paint company Graphenstone. Rose says he was drawn to the company’s eponymous Graphenstone coating because of its nontoxic ingredients and exclusively uses the product for UXD’s carbon-absorbing murals.

"Between Land and Sky" by artist David Maldonado was UXD's first carbon-absorbing painting. Photo courtesy of Dario DeLeon and Tommy Valdez

The Graphenstone coating consists of a limestone base which goes through a process called photocatalysis, during which carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is absorbed into the surface, and is then sealed in with graphene, a thin layer of carbon atoms. The murals absorb carbon dioxide throughout the coat’s drying process which typically takes 30 days.

“Each of our murals absorbs about 1600 grams of CO2 during that curing process which is the equivalent daily absorption of about 33 growing trees,” Rose explains.

UXD’s largest carbon-absorbing mural to date is a floor-to-ceiling panorama in downtown Houston’s historic Mellie Esperson building, home to the company’s new creative hub. Painted by Houston-born artist Emily Ding, the mural is a tribute to the establishment’s namesake: an innovative, early 20th century entrepreneur who constructed the opulent building.

"Future's Past" by Emily Ding in partnership with UXD tells the story of the Mellie Esperson building. Photo courtesy of Dario DeLeon

Rose says UXD plans to expand their carbon-absorbing murals project in collaboration with more local artists and establishments, while creating an artist-in-residency program themed around sustainability. Though Rose acknowledges in the grand scheme of carbon pollution these murals are not a silver bullet, he says the non-toxic paints are encouraging conversations about how artists can be conservation-minded.

“We’re trying to figure out how art as a messaging tool can help break down scientific data, a language not many people practice daily, can break down barriers and help bridge the gap to a more intuitive knowledge of sustainability,” Rose says. “We’re bringing the community together, helping them feel empowered, and giving them actionable information to help them live more sustainable lives.”

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Houston researchers make headway on affordable, sustainable sodium-ion battery

Energy Solutions

A new study by researchers from Rice University’s Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Baylor University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram has introduced a solution that could help develop more affordable and sustainable sodium-ion batteries.

The findings were recently published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

The team worked with tiny cone- and disc-shaped carbon materials from oil and gas industry byproducts with a pure graphitic structure. The forms allow for more efficient energy storage with larger sodium and potassium ions, which is a challenge for anodes in battery research. Sodium and potassium are more widely available and cheaper than lithium.

“For years, we’ve known that sodium and potassium are attractive alternatives to lithium,” Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering at Rice, said in a news release. “But the challenge has always been finding carbon-based anode materials that can store these larger ions efficiently.”

Lithium-ion batteries traditionally rely on graphite as an anode material. However, traditional graphite structures cannot efficiently store sodium or potassium energy, since the atoms are too big and interactions become too complex to slide in and out of graphite’s layers. The cone and disc structures “offer curvature and spacing that welcome sodium and potassium ions without the need for chemical doping (the process of intentionally adding small amounts of specific atoms or molecules to change its properties) or other artificial modifications,” according to the study.

“This is one of the first clear demonstrations of sodium-ion intercalation in pure graphitic materials with such stability,” Atin Pramanik, first author of the study and a postdoctoral associate in Ajayan’s lab, said in the release. “It challenges the belief that pure graphite can’t work with sodium.”

In lab tests, the carbon cones and discs stored about 230 milliamp-hours of charge per gram (mAh/g) by using sodium ions. They still held 151 mAh/g even after 2,000 fast charging cycles. They also worked with potassium-ion batteries.

“We believe this discovery opens up a new design space for battery anodes,” Ajayan added in the release. “Instead of changing the chemistry, we’re changing the shape, and that’s proving to be just as interesting.”

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This story originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

FAA demands investigation into SpaceX's out-of-control Starship flight

Out of this world

The Federal Aviation Administration is demanding an accident investigation into the out-of-control Starship flight by SpaceX on May 27.

Tuesday's test flight from Texas lasted longer than the previous two failed demos of the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, which ended in flames over the Atlantic. The latest spacecraft made it halfway around the world to the Indian Ocean, but not before going into a spin and breaking apart.

The FAA said Friday that no injuries or public damage were reported.

The first-stage booster — recycled from an earlier flight — also burst apart while descending over the Gulf of Mexico. But that was the result of deliberately extreme testing approved by the FAA in advance.

All wreckage from both sections of the 403-foot (123-meter) rocket came down within the designated hazard zones, according to the FAA.

The FAA will oversee SpaceX's investigation, which is required before another Starship can launch.

CEO Elon Musk said he wants to pick up the pace of Starship test flights, with the ultimate goal of launching them to Mars. NASA needs Starship as the means of landing astronauts on the moon in the next few years.

TMC med-tech company closes $2.5M series A, plans expansion

fresh funding

Insight Surgery, a United Kingdom-based startup that specializes in surgical technology, has raised $2.5 million in a series A round led by New York City-based life sciences investor Nodenza Venture Partners. The company launched its U.S. business in 2023 with the opening of a cleanroom manufacturing facility at Houston’s Texas Medical Center.

The startup says the investment comes on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granting clearance to the company’s surgical guides for orthopedic surgery. Insight says the fresh capital will support its U.S. expansion, including one new manufacturing facility at an East Coast hospital and another at a West Coast hospital.

Insight says the investment “will provide surgeons with rapid access to sophisticated tools that improve patient outcomes, reduce risk, and expedite recovery.”

Insight’s proprietary digital platform, EmbedMed, digitizes the surgical planning process and allows the rapid design and manufacturing of patient-specific guides for orthopedic surgery.

“Our mission is to make advanced surgical planning tools accessible and scalable across the U.S. healthcare system,” Insight CEO Henry Pinchbeck said in a news release. “This investment allows us to accelerate our plan to enable every orthopedic surgeon in the U.S. to have easy access to personalized surgical devices within surgically meaningful timelines.”

Ross Morton, managing Partner at Nodenza, says Insight’s “disruptive” technology may enable the company to become “the leader in the personalized surgery market.”

The startup recently entered a strategic partnership with Ricoh USA, a provider of information management and digital services for businesses. It also has forged partnerships with the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, University of Chicago Medicine, University of Florida Health and UAB Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama.

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