Using pollen to make paper, sponges, and more
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 h