An Indonesian company uses seaweed as environment-friendly packaging One potential solution to the massive plastic pollution problem could come from Evoware, which makes seaweed-based packaging that is not only 100% biodegradable, but is edible as well. According to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, some 33% of all plastic is “used just once and thrown away,” which…
Harvard’s remarkable new battery can run for more than a decade Researchers have discovered a way to make the promising flow battery much more practical. Flow batteries store energy in liquid-filled tanks. Prior to this most recent discovery, flow batteries, after a number of charge-discharge cycles, would suffer from rapid storage capacity degradation. In order to…
3D printer technology project makes prosthetic limbs for amputees in Haiti The majority, about 80 percent, of the world’s estimated 33 million people with limb loss live in poor countries and are often without access to prosthetics care. Amputees are victims of war, violent conflict, natural disasters, unsafe working conditions, and lack of healthcare. Haiti has a particularly large…
Germany is now home to the world’s largest wind turbine The German town of Gaildorf is now home to the world’s largest wind turbine. Max Bögl Wind AG constructed the turbine, and its central hub alone measures some 178 meters (584 feet). When the length of the blade is added to that, the turbine’s height is 246.5 meters…
Researchers claim they’ve found a way to reverse type 2 diabetes Researchers from Newcastle and Glasgow Universities believe they have found a way to effectively reverse type 2 diabetes, without requiring a new kind of drug or invasive surgery. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that affects how a person’s body metabolizes sugar, either because…
These electric busses could start cleaning up national park travel Under the Donald Trump administration, the national parks and monuments in the United States have entered into an era of unprecedented threat. Earlier in December, the President moved to slash the size of two national monuments in Utah by a combined total of around 2…
Quark fusion produces eight times more energy than nuclear fusion To reduce the emissions fueling climate change and develop more efficient ways of generating energy, while focusing on the bottom line, governments and private institutions all over the world have been turning to renewable energy. And while solar and wind energy advance and become more…
A new organic material that generates electricity when stressed We all get stressed out. But typically, when we stress, we don’t produce electricity. The same can’t be said of a flexible new material developed by researchers from Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. They’ve created a thin, flexible, rubbery material that generates…
3D-printed human skin models will help end animal testing Carolina Catarino is a young Brazilian scientist who just won a Lush Prize for improving lab-grown skin models. When Carolina Catarino was a teenager, she wanted to be a fashion designer. But her parents, living in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, told her she had…
We could power the world with volcanoes Rifting is the geological process that rips tectonic plates apart, roughly at the speed your fingernails grow. In Ethiopia this has enabled magma to force its way to the surface, and there are over 60 known volcanoes. Many have undergone colossal eruptions in the past, leaving behind immense…