Lifeboat Foundation

With gas prices soaring and food costs pinching family budgets, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at WPI is looking at ways to use food waste to make a renewable and more affordable fuel replacement for oil-based diesel. The work, led by Chemical Engineering Professor Michael Timko, is detailed in a new paper in the journal iScience.

“By creating a biodiesel through this method, we’ve shown that we can bring the price of gas down to $1.10 per gallon, and potentially even lower,” said Timko.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, in 2018 in the United States, about 81% of household food—about 20 tons—ended up in landfills or combustion facilities. Food waste is also a major contributor to climate change: once it’s placed in landfills, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas.

Two celebrated volcanoes—one of them very tall, the other very active—frame this large national park. From glowing lava flows and earth-shaking tremors to wind, rain, and waves, the geological and meteorological forces that shaped our planet are fully on display on the Big Island. While volcanism rules the day, pockets of rainforest and grassland shelter rare Hawaiian flora and fauna.

“Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble.” Shakespeare could just as easily have been describing Hawaiian volcanoes rather than a witch’s brew in Macbeth. No other national park produces so much drama on a regular basis.

Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. Its monthslong 2018 event destroyed hundreds of homes, sent massive plumes of ash rocketing into the air, and collapsed nearly 2,000 feet of the crater’s summit. Its most recent and currently ongoing eruption began in September 2021.

Aviation is responsible for around five percent of human-induced climate change.

Commercial aviation has become a cornerstone of our economy and society. It allows us to rapidly transport goods and people across the globe, facilitates over a third of all global trade by value, and supports 87.7 million jobs worldwide. However, the 80-tonne flying machines we see hurtling through our skies at near supersonic speeds also carry some serious environmental baggage.

My team’s recent review paper highlights some promising solutions the aviation industry could put in place now to reduce the harm flying does to our planet. Simply changing the routes we fly could hold the key to drastic reductions in climate impact.

“This makes agri-PV systems increasingly attractive for agriculture, because it provides a way to keep domestic agriculture competitive with the international market and to enable farmers to earn additional income,” explains Max Trommsdorff, project manager at Fraunhofer ISE. “At the same time, we can drive the expansion of renewable energies, reduce pressure on scarce land and increase resilience to weather extremes and climate change in different farming systems.”

Nevertheless, only a few projects have been realised so far. Those involved in the project see one of the crucial hurdles in the existing legal framework. These include inadequate incentive systems and comparatively complex approval processes. In addition, there are growing concerns about the acceptance of the local population and the attractiveness of the landscape.

Such economic, legal and social hurdles are to be compiled within the framework of the project. Subsequently, the participants want to work out proposals for solutions on how to reduce and overcome these hurdles. The focus should be on the optimal use of the potentials and the avoidance of wrong decisions in the application of agriphotovoltaics.

When you hit the jackpot-or don’t.

Imagine receiving $10.5 million while expecting a $100 refund to be transferred to your bank account and no one, except you, recognizes it until seven months have passed. That’s recently what happened in Melbourne, Australia when a cryptocurrency company bestowed a fortune to a woman, initially reported by 7NEWS. Back in May 2021, Crypto.com, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms, transferred the amount to Thevamanogari Manivel. Upon receiving the money, Manivel and her sister Thilagavathy Gangadory started spending it like greased lightning.

It took the company seven months to realise its mistake. By the time they did, millions had already been spent.

Continue reading “Crypto platform accidentally transfers $10.5m to Melbourne woman — now they want it back” »

Bolts of lightning struck several lightning towers surrounding the Artemis 1 mega moon rocket Saturday (Aug. 27), and there are epic photos showing just how it looked.

A study 29 years in the making shows how bison reintroductions can create richer ecosystems and resilience against climate change in North America.

For the first time, RIPE researchers have proven that multigene bioengineering of photosynthesis increases the yield of a major food crop in field trials. After more than a decade of working toward this goal, a collaborative team led by the University of Illinois has transgenically altered soybean plants to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis, resulting in greater yields without loss of quality.

Results of this magnitude couldn’t come at a more crucial time. The most recent UN report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022, found that in 2021 nearly 10% of the world population was hungry, a situation that has been steadily worsening over the last few years and eclipsing all other threats to global health in scale. According to UNICEF, by 2030, more than 660 million people are expected to face food scarcity and malnutrition. Two of the major causes of this are inefficient food supply chains (access to food) and harsher growing conditions for crops due to climate change. Improving access to food and improving the sustainability of food crops in impoverished areas are the key goals of this study and the RIPE project.

Continue reading “Bioengineering better photosynthesis increases yields in food crops” »

Tropical cyclones are nature’s most powerful storms. Can they be stopped?