Blog

Solid PFAS contamination is an ongoing issue for soil near waste sites, manufacturing sites, and facilities that frequently use firefighting foam. Currently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends incineration to destroy these substances, but concerns remain about whether this energy-intensive method can effectively prevent environmental contamination. Another option is ball milling, a process that mixes …

Farewell to ‘forever’ — Destroying PFAS by grinding it up with a new additive Read More »

“There is more to salt solutions than meets the eye,” said Alexej Jerschow, a professor in NYU’s Department of Chemistry and one of the study’s senior authors. “This was evident when we both measured and modeled the very fast dynamics of sodium chloride ions and surrounding water molecules.” The findings, published in Nature Communications, will …

Simulations and experiments reveal unprecedented detail about water’s motion in salt water Read More »

Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats — such as the forest canopy — are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas. Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, and the company SPYGEN …

Special drone collects environmental DNA from trees Read More »

A team at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), a Bioenergy Research Center (BRC) funded by the U. S. Department of Energy, edited the genomes of three miscanthus species using CRISPR/Cas9 — a far more targeted and efficient way to develop new varieties than prior methods. The results will accelerate efforts to …

Bioenergy: Precision gene editing in miscanthus Read More »

Single bacteria build up an electric potential across their envelope (the membrane), and thus are electrically polarized. For the cell, this polarization is an important energy source for respiration, the uptake of nutrients and for the export of toxins. Recent methodological advances have enabled researchers to examine the dynamics of the membrane potential at the …

Bacterial electricity: Membrane potential influences antibiotic tolerance Read More »

Microbial electrochemical technologies (METs) have recently emerged as a tool for recovering bioenergy and bio-resource from organic waste matter. This can help with long-term energy generation during wastewater treatment. METs, commonly expressed as bioelectrochemical systems (BES), offer maximum resource and energy recovery with minimum energy investment. However, there is currently a mismatch between expectations and …

Strategies for up-scaling of bioelectrochemical systems Read More »

Synthetic biology aims to engineer cells that can carry out novel functions. There are essentially two approaches in use, said Cheemeng Tan, associate professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. One is to take a living bacterial cell and remodel its DNA with new genes that give it new …

Cyborg cells could be tools for health and environment Read More »

Published in the journal Joule, this study from the SUNLAB team in the Faculties of Engineering and Science proposes a characterization method that will improve the measurement of bifacial panels indoors by considering external effects of ground cover such as snow, grass and soil. This will provide a way to consistently test bifacial solar panel …

Harnessing solar energy: New method improves readings of double-sided panels Read More »