Lifeboat Foundation

Water scarcity is a major global crisis that already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world’s population, lack access to safe drinking water. Desalination is the answer to long-term water security, but it’s also expensive, energy-intensive, and often inaccessible to isolated regions. This is why sustainable off-grid desalination systems powered by renewable energy are essential.

But thanks to the innovative microbial desalination cell (MDC) technology that follows a green, low-energy process with electro-active bacteria to desalinate and sterilize seawater, desalination is becoming a viable low-cost solution for water resources in many areas of the world and is putting an end to water scarcity even in isolated regions.

Now, researchers from the EU-funded W20 project have developed an off-grid innovative solution – the world’s first wave-driven desalination system – called Wave2O. The new system can be deployed quickly, operate completely off-grid, and supply large quantities of fresh water at a competitive cost. The technology uses the power of the ocean waves, a consistent and inexhaustible renewable energy source.

An internet powered by the weird physics of the quantum world would be virtually unhackable and literally faster than lightning.

Now, we’re one step closer to making that next-level communications network a reality, thanks to a quantum teleportation breakthrough out of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

So, what the heck is quantum teleportation?

The space between the planets in our solar system is filled with a wispy sea of charged particles that flow out from the Sun’s atmosphere. This particle population is augmented by cosmic rays — speedy protons and atomic nuclei accelerated in extreme environments across the universe — which ebb and flow against the 11-year solar activity cycle. This undulating particle background is punctuated by bursts of high-energy particles from the Sun, which can be unleashed suddenly in violent solar storms.

Spacecraft that venture out from the protection of Earth’s magnetic field must navigate this ocean of particles and weather solar storms. And if we someday wish to send astronauts to other planets, we’ll need to know how high-energy solar particles, which pose a risk to the health of astronauts and electronic systems alike, travel through the solar system.

In a new publication, a team led by Shuai Fu (Macau University of Science and Technology), Zheyi Ding (China University of Geosciences), and Yongjie Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences) studied the high-energy solar particles produced in an event in November 2020, when the Sun emitted a solar flare and a massive explosion of solar plasma called a coronal mass ejection.

Thinking Huts intends to increase access to education.

Maggie Grout, who was born in a rural mountain village in China, was adopted rather young. “And I think that largely shaped my outlook through the rest of my life — knowing what poverty looks like, and how it impacts the opportunities you’re able to achieve in life. Having that allowed me to see more clearly what my purpose was in life — helping children gain access to education in underprivileged areas in the world,” she tells *IE* in an interview. Huts rely on additive manufacturing technologies to build sustainable schools. Recently, they built the first 3D-printed school in Madagascar.

Food recalls could be a thing of the past if artificial intelligence (AI) is utilized in food production, according to a recent study from UBC and the University of Guelph.

The average cost of a food recall due to bacterial or microbial contamination, like E. coli, is US$10 million according to study co-author Dr. Rickey Yada, a professor and the dean of the UBC faculty of land and food systems.

We spoke with Dr. Yada about how AI can help optimize the current systems used in the food processing industry, and how it can help make our food supply safer.