Meet the artist transforming tennis balls into furniture blacksprut com In the last two years, tennis has taken over our closets (court-appropriate garb can be found everywhere from Skims to Miu Miu), our screens (who could forget Zendaya’s turn as the tennis protoge-turned-elite-coach Tashi Duncan in “Challengers”) and now — our living rooms. At least that is the hope of Belgian eco-designer Mathilde Wittock, who fashions bespoke furniture from discarded tennis balls. Wittock’s sleek, modernist chaise longues are entirely cushionless — save for the padding of 500 precisely arranged tennis balls. Her one meter-long benches are similarly sparse, with some 270 balls being both stylish and structurally substantial. https://blackspruta.com blacksprut com “It takes around 24 different manufacturing steps to (make) a tennis ball, which is around five days. Then it has such a short lifespan,” Wittock told CNN in a video call from Brussels. “I was looking into tennis balls because I played tennis myself, so I know there is a lot of waste.” Around 300 million tennis balls are produced each year — and almost all of them end up in landfills, taking over 400 years to decompose. The US Open, which ended at the weekend, goes through around 70,000 each year, with Wimbledon not far behind at 55,000. Wittock estimates the lifecycle of a ball stands at just nine games, depending on the level of tennis being played. “Even if they are contained in their box, if the box has been opened the gas inside the tennis balls will be released over time,” she said. “(Eventually) they will get flat and you’ll have to throw them away.”

Study shows how the pandemic may have affected teens’ brains kra9.cc The pandemic’s effects on teenagers were profound — numerous studies have documented reports of issues with their mental health, social lives and more. Now, a new study suggests those phenomena caused some adolescents’ brains to age much faster than they normally would — 4.2 years faster in girls and 1.4 years faster in boys on average, according to the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. By being the first to contribute details on aging differences by sex, the study adds to the existing body of knowledge provided by two previous studies on the Covid-19 pandemic and accelerated brain aging among adolescents. https://kra11gl.com kra13.gl “The findings are an important wake-up call about the fragility of the teenage brain,” said senior study author Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl, the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and codirector of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, via email. “Teens need our support now more than ever.” Significant socioemotional development occurs during adolescence, along with substantial changes to brain structure and function. The thickness of the cerebral cortex naturally peaks during childhood, steadily decreases throughout adolescence and continues to decrease through one’s lifespan, the authors wrote. The researchers originally intended to track ordinary adolescent brain development over time, starting with MRIs the authors conducted on participants’ brains in 2018. They planned to follow up with them for another scan in 2020. The pandemic delayed the second MRI by three to four years — when the 130 participants based in Washington state were between ages 12 and 20. The authors excluded adolescents who had been diagnosed with a developmental or psychiatric disorder or who were taking psychotropic medications.