High school students learn that Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to associate the sound of a bell with getting food. The association was so strong that the dogs would begin to salivate when they heard the bell, before there was even a whiff of food. When they were finally presented with the food, they ate it.
“Artificial conversion of carbon dioxide into food and chemicals offers a promising strategy to address both environmental and population-related challenges while contributing to carbon neutrality,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Bulletin in May.
Reducing carbon dioxide to less complex molecules has proven successful, though the researchers said that generating long-chain carbohydrates – the most abundant substances in nature – has proven to be a challenge for scientists.
“In vitro biotransformation (ivBT) has emerged as a highly promising platform for sustainable biomanufacturing,” the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology wrote.
Scientists have reimagined the meaning of a “light meal,” creating microlasers that use natural products to emit illuminated beams through food. And they’re completely edible. These mini lights, the first demonstration of laser emission from an entirely edible system, could be harnessed for everything from environmental sensors to food safety trackers and bio-barcodes.
Scientists from Slovenia’s Jožef Stefan Institute have successfully created “edible microlasers,” which are exactly what they sound like – tiny optical devices, smaller than a grain of sand, that emit a beam of coherent light like normal lasers. And they’re made out of biocompatible and digestible materials like gelatin, sugar and dyes, including additives already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), meaning they’re perfectly safe to ingest.
Why, you may ask? Because they’re tiny and safe to eat, with fluorescent compounds such as chlorophyll (from olive oil) and riboflavin (vitamin B2), they could be widely applicable for use in food safety to track supply chain data, detect temperature changes and spoilage, prevent counterfeit goods or even act as QR or bar codes.
Tesla’s launch of a robo-taxi network marks the beginning of a significant transportation disruption that will transform mobility, economy, geopolitics, and urban landscapes with the widespread adoption of electric autonomous vehicles ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.
Transportation Revolution.
🚗 Q: How will Tesla’s Robotaxi network impact transportation? A: Tesla’s Robotaxi network in Austin, Texas marks the ignition point for transportation disruption, with multiple companies competing to provide taxi rides without human drivers, potentially capturing 80–90% market share in 10–15 years.
🛢️ Q: What industries will be disrupted by autonomous electric vehicles? A: Autonomous electric vehicles will disrupt the oil and agriculture industries, as vehicles are the number one users of crude oil, and corn is the top agricultural product in the US, used to produce ethanol for gasoline.
🌆 Q: How will urban planning change with the rise of autonomous vehicles? A: Cities will repurpose parking spaces for retail, living areas, and solar panels, transforming urban planning and enabling new forms of transportation, including drones and aircraft.
Environmental Impact.
Parasitic, egg-eating worms might sound like the stuff of nightmares, but they’re simply a fact of life for blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay.
Interestingly, a new study published in the journal PLOS One by researchers at William & Mary’s Batten School & VIMS suggests these worms could serve as a valuable biomarker for managing the fishery.
The most recent Winter Dredge Survey, conducted by the Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences & VIMS in collaboration with Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, recorded historically low numbers of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. The findings have sparked concern among the fishery’s many stakeholders and highlight a need for new tools that can help balance economic and ecological priorities—this study may help with that.
The future of sustained space habitation depends on our ability to grow fresh food away from Earth. The revolutionary new collaborative Moon-Rice project is using cutting-edge experimental biology to create an ideal future food crop that can be grown in future deep-space outposts, as well as in extreme environments back on Earth.
Starting with the question “How does our brain distinguish glucose from the many nutrients absorbed in the gut?” a KAIST research team has demonstrated that the brain can selectively recognize specific nutrients—particularly glucose—beyond simply detecting total calorie content. Their study, published in Neuron, is expected to offer a new paradigm for appetite control and the treatment of metabolic diseases.
Professor Greg S.B. Suh’s team in the Department of Biological Sciences, in collaboration with Professor Young-Gyun Park’s team (BarNeuro), Professor Seung-Hee Lee’s team (Department of Biological Sciences), and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, have identified the existence of a gut– brain circuit that allows animals in a hungry state to selectively detect and prefer glucose in the gut.
Organisms derive energy from various nutrients, including sugars, proteins, and fats. Previous studies have shown that total caloric information in the gut suppresses hunger neurons in the hypothalamus to regulate appetite. However, the existence of a gut–brain circuit that specifically responds to glucose and corresponding brain cells had not been demonstrated until now.
