Lifeboat Foundation

A recently developed electronic tongue is capable of identifying differences in similar liquids, such as milk with varying water content; diverse products, including soda types and coffee blends; signs of spoilage in fruit juices; and instances of food safety concerns. The team, led by researchers at Penn State, also found that results were even more accurate when artificial intelligence (AI) used its own assessment parameters to interpret the data generated by the electronic tongue.

The researchers published their results today (Oct. 9) in Nature.

According to the researchers, the electronic tongue can be useful for food safety and production, as well as for medical diagnostics. The sensor and its AI can broadly detect and classify various substances while collectively assessing their respective quality, authenticity and freshness. This assessment has also provided the researchers with a view into how AI makes decisions, which could lead to better AI development and applications, they said.

Bioengineers propose “electro-agriculture,” a method that replaces photosynthesis with a solar-powered reaction converting CO₂ into acetate, potentially reducing U.S. agricultural land needs by 94% and supporting controlled indoor farming.

Initial experiments focus on genetically modified acetate-consuming plants like tomatoes and lettuce, with potential future applications in space agriculture.

Revolutionary Electro-Agriculture

The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake by surface area, is experiencing an increasing rate of shoreline retreat following a policy change that shifted more water from the Colorado River to San Diego, according to a newly published study. The resulting dried lakebed is creating more polluted dust from dried agricultural runoff that affects nearby communities, researchers said.

A comprehensive review of the economic impacts of nature-based solutions (NbS), led by the University of Oxford and published this week in PLOS Climate, concludes they can unlock prosperity by boosting local economies, increasing agricultural productivity and creating jobs.

A gene called COLD6 contributes to cold tolerance in rice, potentially offering a pathway to use molecular design to breed a rice variety with higher resistance to cold stress. This work appears October 30 in Molecular Cell.

The acetate would then be used to feed plants that are grown hydroponically. The method could also be used to grow other food-producing organisms, since acetate is naturally used by mushrooms, yeast, and algae.

“The whole point of this new process to try to boost the efficiency of photosynthesis,” says senior author Feng Jiao, an electrochemist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Right now, we are at about 4% efficiency, which is already four times higher than for photosynthesis, and because everything is more efficient with this method, the CO₂ footprint associated with the production of food becomes much smaller.”

To genetically engineer acetate-eating plants, the researchers are taking advantage of a metabolic pathway that germinating plants use to break down food stored in their seeds. This pathway is switched off once plants become capable of photosynthesis, but switching it back on would enable them to use acetate as a source of energy and carbon.

There are rare cells in the gut called enteroendocrine cells (EECs) that could be manipulated in a variety of ways to detect or treat disease.

The trillions of microbes in our gastrointestinal tract, known as the gut microbiome, are crucial to the body; the gut microbiome aids in digestion, nutrient absorption, and influences our health in different ways. But the body also has to be protected from all of those microbes, which are kept behind a tight barrier. But if the intestinal barrier is dysfunctional, or leaky, serious problems can arise.

Continue reading “How Rare Intestinal Cells May Work as a Kind of Therapeutic Sensor” »

Can water be harvested from the air to help mitigate water scarcity across the globe? This is what a recent study published in Technologies hopes to address as a team of researchers from The Ohio State University have developed a novel device that can provide faster and more efficient methods for harvesting water from the air compared to longstanding devices, also called atmospheric water harvesting (AWH). This study holds the potential to help regions around the world mitigate the need for access to clean drinking water, as approximately 2 billion people suffer from lack of clean drinking water in their respective regions.

“You can survive three minutes without air, three weeks without food, but only three days without water,” said Dr. John LaRocco, who is a research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “But with it, you can begin to solve a lot of problems, like national security, mental health or sanitation, just by improving the accessibility of clean drinking water.”

For the device, the researchers designed a nickel titanium-based dehumidifier with temperature-sensitive materials, resulting in harvesting greater amounts of water at 0.18 milliliters per watts per hour compared to 0.16 milliliters per watts per hour for traditional harvesters after 30 minutes. Additionally, the temperature-sensitive materials help regulate the amount of heat used during the harvesting process, resulting in approximately half the power needed to use the harvester. Finally, the reduced size of the harvester provides mobility to be used anywhere in the world, whereas traditional harvesters tend to be large and require significant amounts of energy to operate.

Plastic pollution is everywhere, and a good amount of it is composed of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). This polymer is used to make bottles, containers and even clothing. Now, researchers report in Environmental Science & Technology that they have discovered an enzyme that breaks apart PET in a rather unusual place: microbes living in sewage sludge. The enzyme could be used by wastewater treatment plants to break apart microplastic particles and upcycle plastic waste.

Microplastics are becoming increasingly prevalent in places ranging from remote oceans to inside bodies, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they appear in wastewater as well.

However, the particles are so tiny that they can slip through water treatment purification processes and end up in the effluent that is reintroduced to the environment. But effluent also contains microorganisms that like to eat those plastic particles, including Comamonas testosteroni—so named because it degrades sterols like testosterone.