UT Austin researchers have developed a biodegradable, biomass-based hydrogel that efficiently extracts drinkable water from the air, offering a scalable, sustainable solution for water access in off-grid communities, emergency relief, and agriculture.

Discarded food scraps, stray branches, seashells, and other natural materials serve as key ingredients in a new system developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin that can extract drinkable water from thin air.

This innovative system, called “molecularly functionalized biomass hydrogels,” transforms a wide range of natural products into sorbents—materials that absorb liquids. By pairing these sorbents with mild heat, the researchers can extract gallons of drinkable water from the atmosphere, even in arid conditions.

Summary: Concerns over potential negative impacts of AI have dominated headlines, particularly regarding its threat to employment. However, a closer examination reveals AI’s immense potential to revolutionize equal and high quality access to necessities such as education and healthcare, particularly in regions with limited access to resources. From India’s agricultural advancements to Kenya’s educational support, AI initiatives are already transforming lives and addressing societal needs.

The latest technology panic is over artificial intelligence (AI). The media is focused on the negatives of AI, making many assumptions about how AI will doom us all. One concern is that AI tools will replace workers and cause mass unemployment. This is likely overblown—although some jobs will be lost to AI, if history is any guide, new jobs will be created. Furthermore, AI’s ability to replace skilled labor is also one of its greatest potential benefits.

Think of all the regions of the world where children lack access to education, where schoolteachers are scarce and opportunities for adult learning are scant.

Pomelo is a large citrus fruit commonly grown in Southeast and East Asia. It has a very thick peel, which is typically discarded, resulting in a considerable amount of food waste. In a new study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers explore ways to utilize waste pomelo-peel biomass to develop tools that can power small electric devices and monitor biomechanical motions.

There are two main parts of the pomelo peel—a thin outer layer and a thick, white inner layer. The white part is soft and feels like a sponge when you push on it. Some people have used pomelo peels to extract compounds for essential oils or pectin, but we wanted to take advantage of the natural porous, spongy structure of the peel.

If we can upcycle the peel to higher-value products instead of simply throwing it away, we can not only reduce waste from pomelo production, consumption, and juice making, but also create more value from food and agricultural waste, said study co-author Yi-Cheng Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois.

Satellite-based optical remote sensing from missions such as ESA’s Sentinel-2 (S2) have emerged as valuable tools for continuously monitoring the Earth’s surface, thus making them particularly useful for quantifying key cropland traits in the context of sustainable agriculture [1]. Upcoming operational imaging spectroscopy satellite missions will have an improved capability to routinely acquire spectral data over vast cultivated regions, thereby providing an entire suite of products for agricultural system management [2]. The Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment (CHIME) [3] will complement the multispectral Copernicus S2 mission, thus providing enhanced services for sustainable agriculture [4, 5]. To use satellite spectral data for quantifying vegetation traits, it is crucial to mitigate the absorption and scattering effects caused by molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere from the measured satellite data. This data processing step, known as atmospheric correction, converts top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiance data into bottom-of-atmosphere (BOA) reflectance, and it is one of the most challenging satellite data processing steps e.g., [6, 7, 8]. Atmospheric correction relies on the inversion of an atmospheric radiative transfer model (RTM) leading to the obtaining of surface reflectance, typically through the interpolation of large precomputed lookup tables (LUTs) [9, 10]. The LUT interpolation errors, the intrinsic uncertainties from the atmospheric RTMs, and the ill posedness of the inversion of atmospheric characteristics generate uncertainties in atmospheric correction [11]. Also, usually topographic, adjacency, and bidirectional surface reflectance corrections are applied sequentially in processing chains, which can potentially accumulate errors in the BOA reflectance data [6]. Thus, despite its importance, the inversion of surface reflectance data unavoidably introduces uncertainties that can affect downstream analyses and impact the accuracy and reliability of subsequent products and algorithms, such as vegetation trait retrieval [12]. To put it another way, owing to the critical role of atmospheric correction in remote sensing, the accuracy of vegetation trait retrievals is prone to uncertainty when atmospheric correction is not properly performed [13].

Although advanced atmospheric correction schemes became an integral part of the operational processing of satellite missions e.g., [9,14,15], standardised exhaustive atmospheric correction schemes in drone, airborne, or scientific satellite missions remain less prevalent e.g., [16,17]. The complexity of atmospheric correction further increases when moving from multispectral to hyperspectral data, where rigorous atmospheric correction needs to be applied to hundreds of narrow contiguous spectral bands e.g., [6,8,18]. For this reason, and to bypass these challenges, several studies have instead proposed to infer vegetation traits directly from radiance data at the top of the atmosphere [12,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26].

Humanity came close to extinction 800,000 years ago. Only 1,280 of our ancestors survived.

A recent study published in Science suggests that a catastrophic “ancestral bottleneck” reduced the global population to just 1,280 breeding individuals, wiping out 98.7% of the early human lineage.

This population crash, lasting about 117,000 years, likely resulted from extreme climate shifts, prolonged droughts, and dwindling food sources.

Using a groundbreaking genetic analysis method called FitCoal, researchers analyzed modern human genomes to trace this dramatic decline, potentially explaining a gap in the African and Eurasian fossil record.

Despite the near-extinction, this bottleneck may have played a crucial role in shaping modern humans. Scientists believe it contributed to a key evolutionary event—chromosome fusion—which may have set Homo sapiens apart from earlier hominin species, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. The study raises intriguing questions about how this small population survived, possibly through early fire use and adaptive intelligence. Understanding this ancient crisis helps scientists piece together the story of human evolution and the resilience that allowed our species to thrive against all odds.

For protein, the researchers found that the levels in their yeast exceed those of beef, pork, fish, and lentils. Eighty-five grams, or 6 tablespoons, of yeast provides 61% of daily protein needs, while beef, pork, fish, and lentils meet 34%, 25%, 38%, and 38% of the need, respectively. However, the yeast should be treated to rid compounds that can increase the risk of gout if consumed excessively. Even so, treated yeast still meets 41% of the daily protein requirement, comparable to traditional protein sources.

This technology aims to address several global challenges: environmental conservation, food security, and public health. Running on clean energy and CO₂, the system reduces carbon emissions in food production. It uncouples land use from farming, freeing up space for conservation. Angenent also stresses that it will not outcompete farmers. Instead, the technology will help concentrate farmers to produce vegetables and crops sustainably. The team’s yeast may also help developing nations overcome food scarcity and nutritional deficiencies by delivering protein and vitamin B9.

Summary: Scientists have developed e-Taste, a novel technology that digitally replicates taste in virtual environments. Using chemical sensors and wireless dispensers, the system captures and transmits taste data remotely, enabling users to experience sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami flavors.

In tests, participants distinguished different taste intensities with 70% accuracy, and remote tasting was successfully initiated across long distances. Beyond gaming and immersive experiences, this breakthrough could enhance accessibility for individuals with sensory impairments and deepen our understanding of how the brain processes taste.

Nanozymes are synthetic materials that have enzyme-like catalytic properties, and they are broadly used for biomedical purposes, such as disease diagnostics. However, inorganic nanozymes are generally toxic, expensive, and complicated to produce, making them unsuitable for the agricultural and food industries.

A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign research team has developed organic-material-based nanozymes that are non-toxic, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective. In two new studies, they introduce next-generation organic nanozymes and explore a point-of-use platform for molecule detection in agricultural products.

“The first generation of organic-compound-based (OC) nanozymes had some minor drawbacks, so our research group worked to make improvements. The previous OC nanozymes required the use of particle stabilizing polymers having repeatable functional groups, which assured stability of the nanozyme’s nanoscale framework, but didn’t achieve a sufficiently small particle size,” said lead author Dong Hoon Lee, who completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and The Grainger College of Engineering at the U. of I.

This video shows basically that trash can be turned into treasure. From recycling food waste into dye to so much more. This video shows that basically pollution can be reduced by 95 percent. Also so that all resources from trash can be reincarnated into many new forms leaving no waste and creating a fully circular economy benefiting the environment.

21_21 DESIGN SIGHT in Tokyo’s Roppongi is currently showing a “pooploop” exhibition. Our presenters chat with exhibition directors Satoh Taku and Takemura Shinichi about cycles of waste and excrement around the planet, and explore the potential of environmental design.

This was first predicted by Omni magazine in 1981.

In the world of medicine, the ability to listen to the intricate symphony of sounds within the human body has long been a vital diagnostic tool. Physicians routinely employ stethoscopes to capture the subtle rhythms of air moving in and out of the lungs, the steady beat of the heart, and even the progress of digested food through the gastrointestinal tract.

These sounds hold valuable information about a person’s health, and any deviations from the norm can signal the presence of underlying medical issues. Now, a groundbreaking development from Northwestern University is set to transform the way we monitor these vital sounds.