Brett Deering
The unruly stitch of a dragon first attracted Sabetta Matsumoto to the mathematics of knitting. Unlike the regimented stitches of a sweater that march two-by-two across a textile, the whiskers of this dragon stretched daringly across a lace shawl in a way Matsumoto had never seen before and she was determined to understand the math behind it.
“I knit really crazy things, and this was the first time that I’d really encountered something that was [so] different,” she says.
Matsumoto, an assistant professor of physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, studies the limits and possibilities of knitted materials to understand how different stitches transform the mechanical properties the stretchiness and support of everyday fabrics.
A Different Kind of Land Management: Let the Cows Stomp
Regenerative grazing can store more carbon in soils in the form of roots and other plant tissues. But how much can it really help the fight against climate change?
Cattle confined by movable electrified fencing graze on part of a pasture at Adam Isaacs’s ranch in Canadian, Texas.Credit.Brett Deering for The New York Times
Feb. 17, 2021
CANADIAN, Texas Adam Isaacs stood surrounded by cattle in an old pasture that had been overgrazed for years. Now it was a jumble of weeds.
“Most people would want to get out here and start spraying it” with herbicides, he said. “My family used to do that. It doesn’t work.”