They look just the same as fresh cut flowers now and last much longer.

Gone are the days of having to remember to water and prune them and clearing up the mess when they wilt and die!

>> Find Silk Flowers  Click here

Flowers and plants are wonderful ways to add ambience throughout your home or office.

Live flowers and plants can be a burden for a busy homeowner or office manager however, as they must receive the proper care in order to make the surroundings beautiful.

A plant can die for any number of reasons, and a wilting plant or set of flowers will look tacky to visitors. Additionally, plants that are cared for will grow, and you will find yourself pruning and repotting your decorations a couple of times a year. Add to that the potential mess of fallen leaves and scattered dirt, and you will see why houseplants can be quite a chore even if you are gifted with a green thumb.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to real plants if you want to add that extra splash of color to your home.

Artificial potted plants and silk flowers are a perfect low maintenance addition to the home or office in terms of decor. And you can buy them online

Find Silk Flowers  Click here for a beautiful selection

You can choose your favourite quality red silk flower arrangement or maybe some beautiful orchid silk flowers which are otherwise so difficult to maintain and expensive to keep on buying and replacing

Artificial plants can be purchased almost anywhere, as they do not require special care or storage from the retailer. Artificial plants can sit on shelves for long periods of time in stores, just as they can in your home. Artificial house plants and artificial trees are manufactured in all the varieties found in real plants, and can be tailored to fit your space needs. You choose the artificial plant variety, the pot, and then walk your new decor item out the door. The only maintenance you will need to do is dusting!

Silk flowers are an even more abundant option than artificial plants. Silk flowers can be bought in arrangements or separately, in a variety of species replicas and sizes. There is no need to keep silk flowers in a vase- if you want to have tiny individual daisies along the edges of your bathroom, you can accomplish the task with silk flowers!

In addition to their low maintenance appeal, artificial plants and silk flowers do not produce any pollen or sap, so they are not a risk for any person who might be afflicted with allergies. Artificial plants and silk flowers are a perfect housewarming or office decoration.

Copyright2006 www.allsikflowersandplants.com. Visit for more great articles on silk flowers and artificial trees, additional resources and trade news.

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Boxer shorts, also known as loose boxers or just boxers have come a long way since the early days

Lets look at the traditional male boxer short and the trend for silkier and snugger boxers for men.

Can you remember when shorts just used to be shorts and all there was to chose from was white cotton ones and perhaps a few other colors. However, there is a huge range of colors and styles now and they seem to have got silkier without even containing an ounce of silk.

Boxer shorts were once traditionally designed to be loose fitting cotton shorts worn as underwear. However, they seem to have taken on an entirely new shape and style, available in a range of super fine fabrics, which gives then a super soft and silky second skin feel to them.

It seems that men are no longer content with any old fabric and underwear manufacturers are rising to the demand and are producing a much broader range of men’s shorts that incorporate the latest technical fabrics. HOM fashion are even producing a range of underwear called ‘Light Colours’ made from fabric that have an anti bacterial property to it and fit like a second skin with silk like feel.

So what is on offer and what is driving the demand? There are trunks, boxer shorts, maxis, boxer briefs and hipsters to name just a few. However, what does seem apparent is there is much less of what we regard as the traditionaltype. Much, if not 90% of what is marketed nowadays is almost certainly going to incorporate a degree of lycra that produces a snug and close fitting pair of underpants. These seem to be one of the most popular styles of underwear for men and it appears that this is largely because of the fantastic amount of support and control that they offer men in the ‘giggleberries’ department.

Fabrics have evolved considerable and the choices available and used for ladies lingerie is now being used widely for men’s underwear. There are some particularly great technical fabrics and micro fibres that have all the properties that are idea for the active male and sportsman. These not only offer support and control, but have cooling qualities and an ability to wick sweat away from the skin.

Whatever your preference there is a vast choice of underwear for men that are labeled as ‘boxer shorts’. Take a look at what HOM Fashion has to offer at to see how far styles have come. Men can choose from fitted trunks that sit low on the hip, have a short square leg, are made from lycra, polymides, super soft next generation cottons that are almost as fine as silk and in a choice of colors as broad as the spectrum.

By Jane Pointon

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When you think of silk, besides thinking about the luxurious feel, its softness and cool touch to the skin, you might also think about the silkworm that is generally associated with its production. However that beautiful silk scarf you like to wear may one day soon actually be made from spider silk instead. This method of producing silk fiber is being seriously researched these days.

The charm of the silk fabric has allured mankind for thousands for years. The dazzle, broad range of colors and the excellent texture has made this fabric the most loved of all. Silk fabric is manufactured both naturally and artificially.

There are four types of natural silk available, namely tasar, mulberry, muga and eri. However, the higher demand for natural silk led pressure to find out other options to make silk. The four natural silk sources seem incapable of catering for the increasing demands. Now here a significant question arises – Is there any other source available to get natural silk? The answer is “YES”, it’s a “Spider Silk”. It is true that such an irritating and ignored insect can produce good silk fibre.

Spider silk is a fibre, which is extracted from spiders. It is strong fibre, even its tensile strength is compared to steel. The tensile strength for one type of steel is at 1.65 Gpa, whereas spider silk is nearly at 1.3 Gpa. But, the density of spider silk is much  less than steel and its tensile strength to density is about five times more than steel, such as DuPont’s Kelvar, aromatic filaments

Spider silk’s Structure

Within a distinctive fibre, there are crystalline sectors with amorphous linkages. These crystal sectors are beta-sheets, which are put together. Spider silk is very flexible, and can be stretched up to 40 percent of its original length with no breakage problems. This results in a high ductility. Liquid crystalline spinning of spider silk is similar to aromatic nylon.

Spider silk is made of complex molecules of protein. Spider can’t be farmed such as silkworms, as they are cannibals. Due to this nature they even eat each other. The silk extracted is very fine, thus to make one square yard cloth 400 spiders are required. The fibre gets hardened when it is exposed to open air that creates a problem to work with. Because of the repetitive symptoms of the DNA encoding it is difficult to recognize its sequence. Only from 14 species the protein has been decoded.

Although various protein sequences are found in different spiders, a common one in spider silk structure is a sequence of amino acids, which self-assemble into a beta sheet group. The Ala rich blocks are distinguished by segments of amino acids with heavier side groups. The beta sheets gathers to make crystals, on the other side, other segments makes amorphous domains. The interaction between the crystalline segments and elastic amorphous regions results in exclusive spider silk properties.

Spider Silk Origin

The silk gland releases the fibre. Different spider species have different glands for their own reason like web-creation, housing, capturing the prey and defense. The visible part of the gland is called as the spinneret. The initial part of the gland is full of thiol and tyrosine, the key ingredients in silk fibre. After the making of fibres, the ampulla plays the role of a storage box.

Here, the spinning duct sweeps-off water from the fiber and small channels also help in this process. Liquid separation is conducted at the verge of the distal limb of the duct, and further passes to the valve. The valve is anticipated to help in fixing broken fibers again, playing more in the way of a helical pump.

Artificial spider silk

It is not usually possible to utilize spiders to produce spider silk in enormous quantity to cater to industrial demands, because it is hard to manage huge number of spiders. Steps have been taken in extracting the spider silk gene and using other options to manufacture the needed quantity of spider silk. In the year 2000, a Canadian biotechnology company, Nexia was successful in making spider silk protein in goats.

These goats hold the spider silk protein gene, and the milk produced contains considerable amounts of the protein. However, the trials were unsuccessful at spinning the protein into a fibre equivalent to the natural spider silk.

The spider’s spinneret is able in turn the silk proteins into strong domains. Particularly, the spinneret makes an incline of protein concentration, pH and pressure that leads the protein blend through liquid crystalline transitions, resulting creation the required silk structure. Imitating this process in laboratory has been witnessed very tough. Nexia tried to imitate this process by pressing the solution of protein via fine holes; however, this was an insufficient trial to manage the fibres appropriately.

Spider Silk Applications

Recent research on spider silk includes its potential utilization as an extremely strong and versatile thing. The interest in producing the spider silk is mostly due to a blend, both its mechanical properties and the non-polluting option. The manufacturing of latest man-made fibres like Dupont’s Kevlar, are made from petrochemical processing that results massive pollution. On the other hand, the manufacturing of spider silk is entirely environment-friendly, as it is produced by spiders at normal temperature, pressure and water, without any pollution. Additionally, spider silk is fully biodegradable. If the production of spider silk increases, it may replace Kevlar and can be used for a range of products like bullet-proof clothing, wear-resistant lightweight clothing, topes, nets, seat belts, parachutes, rust-free panels on motor vehicles or boats, bio-degradable bottles and medical items.

Conclusion

The spider silk has raised an open challenge to scientist, engineer, spinner and weavers to manage its development and to get acquainted with inherent skills of spider in making the silk thread.

Spider Facts

The spider is equipped with eight eyes, two of which are extremely large and face forward giving the spider highly clear and magnified vision. The spider’s back legs are extremely strong and when the spider hunts, it does so covertly and then leaps on its … Spider silk is five time stronger than steel and twice as strong as bullet proof kevlar. This is in pound for pound studies. Spider silk is also capable of stretching about 30 per…   

Big in Japan: Socks warm the toes and sooth the soul

The problem with harvesting spider silk is that it’s difficult to near impossible to mass-produce due to the limited amount that spiders can make. This of course is why the work of Dr. Nakagaki is so groundbreaking. 

The Quality Stocks Newsletter For Smallcap Companies

Researchers around the world are working hard to untangle one of nature’s greatest mysteries: exactly how do spiders make silk and can it be produced on a commercial scale by man. … But it does nobody any good if it can’t be produced in the volumes necessary, and therein rests the biggest problem. There is currently no proven large scale way to produce spider silk. It turns out that you can’t just corral a bunch of spiders to spin their magic. 

Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/    http://www.amonline.net/    htpp://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/

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