Students in the Textile Technology/Textile Engineering Senior Design 2019-20 capstone course began the year with a manifold challenge; working in teams, they used recycled rice bags to design prototypes meant to solve real-world problems. This year’s winning teams transformed the bags into a menstrual pad, a fishing net and a solar lantern — functional designs that people in need can use and even construct themselves.

There is a place in the United States just outside Dayton, Ohio, where human beings willingly buckle themselves into a giant centrifuge capable of exerting 20 times the force of Earth’s gravity, or 20 Gs. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base houses a machine that simulates the conditions of high-speed flight; it is used to conduct research and testing and to train fighter pilots, flight surgeons, aerospace physiologists and others.