The thought of reviving it, though, has never quite gone away, and these days the fact that it is made mostly of protein, and could thus be chewed up by bacteria, is regarded as a virtue—if only the structural weakness could be overcome. Dr Schiraldi's approach does this by using a silicate clay called sodium montmorillonite as a skeleton that holds the plastic together.
然而对其进行改良的思想一直没有完全散去，如今看来，只要能够克服结构脆弱的问题，酪蛋白由蛋白质组成并且会被细菌吞噬的性质反而成为了一大优点。Schiraldi博士的方法是用一种叫做蒙脱土的硅酸盐粘土作为骨架将酪蛋白塑料固定在一起。
Sodium montmorillonite can be freeze-dried into a spongelike material known as an aerogel. Aerogels are famously fragile. But that is because they are mostly empty space. Indeed, they are sometimes nicknamed "solid smoke". This fragility disguises an underlying stiffness. Filling the pores in the aerogel with plastic should remove its fragility and, conversely, the networkof clay molecules in the aerogel will stop the plastic cracking. So the researchers reckoned that if they mixed casein with the clay and added glyceraldehyde (which substitutes for thepoisonous formaldehyde used in the original plastic), they might be able to make something really rather useful.
蒙脱土可以被冷冻干燥成一种叫做气凝胶的海绵状材料。因为主要是空心，所以气凝胶是一种有名的易碎材料。事实上，它们有时候也被戏称为"固态烟"。 其实，他们的易碎性掩盖了他们坚强的一面。如果将酪蛋白塑料灌入气凝胶的细孔，那么气凝胶将不再易碎，相反，气凝胶中粘土分子的网状系统同样会防止酪蛋白塑料破裂。所以，研究者们认为如果他们将酪蛋白与粘土混合在一起并添加甘油醛(用来取代原先塑料中所使用的含毒性的甲醛)，将形成一种非常有用的材料。
To test their ideas the team mixed a solution of casein with glyceraldehyde and sodium montmorillonite and vigorously stirred the result to get rid of the bubbles before freezing it at 80°C below zero. Once frozen, the material was placed in a freeze-dryer that removed all the water from it over the course of four days. It was then cured for 24 hours in an oven at 80°C above zero.
为了验证他们的想法，研究小组将一瓶酪蛋白溶液与甘油醛及蒙脱土进行充分混合以去除气泡并在零下80度下进行冷冻。在冷冻后，将此材料在冷冻干燥机中放上4天以去除所有水分。随后，再将其在80度烤箱中存放24小时。
The researchers report in Biomacromolecules that their new material matches the stiffness, strength and compressibility of expanded polystyrene, a common packaging material that is thebane of many a rubbish dump. However, unlike polystyrene, it goes away once it has been dumped. An initial experiment suggested that 20% of it vanished within 18 days in a dump-likeenvironment. A comedown, perhaps, from being a queen's brooch. But far more useful.
研究者们在《生物大分子》杂志上的报告称他们的新材料在硬度，强度以及压缩性上均可以与发泡聚苯乙烯相匹敌，而后者则是一种常见的包装材料同时也是垃圾场中的一大公害。但是，与聚苯乙烯所不同的是，这种新材料一旦被丢弃并会分解。一个早期实验显示，在诸如垃圾场的环境中，此新材料在18天内便可分解20%。也许，它也不再适合做女王的胸针了，但却有更大的用途。
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