The world is covered in microplastic, from 27,690 feet up Mount Everest to seven miles deep in the ocean at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. You’re covered, too, inside and out. A synthetic jacket weighing two pounds sheds 400 microplastic fibers every 20 minutes that you’re wearing it, according to a 2020 study. Also,...
Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE
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BEYOND MEAT: LAB-GROWN WOOD IS NEXT
Humanity is cutting down trees—and we and nature burn them—faster than we’re replacing them and we’re going to need those trees more than ever to make oxygen for the growing number of people on the planet. Still, we’re going to want wood to frame houses, make elegant cutting boards, and all those other things we...
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BATTERY CHARGES ITSELF FROM MOISTURE IN THE AIR
According to studies, half the sun’s energy that lands on Planet Earth is used to evaporate water. Australian start-up Strategic Elements is working with the University of New South Wales and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization to lasso some of that energy and put it back to work. The researchers have crafted a...
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WHO NEEDS THE SUN WHEN YOU HAVE THIS TOMATO?
Vitamin D3 may be the “sunshine vitamin,” but what do you do when you can’t get outside much or if you live in the far north, where the sun can disappear for months? Answer: you can drink gallons of milk—or you can eat a tomato genetically engineered by scientists at the John Innes Center, an...
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NSF WILL FUND REGIONAL “INNOVATION ENGINES”
A new National Science Foundation program will fund “innovation engines” in parts of the U.S. that now lack the kind of development and commercialization infrastructure that defines Silicon Valley, Boston’s Route 128, and Raleigh’s Research Triangle Park. “We spin out a dozen companies a year,” vice-chancellor Evan Facher at the University of Pittsburgh told Science...
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IMPLANTABLE POWER CELL RUNS ON THE BODY’S ENERGY
Pacemakers and other medical implants run on electricity. You can’t plug them in, so earlier versions required batteries, which needed to be surgically replaced every so often and could leak toxic chemicals into the patient’s body. In recent years, scientists have dabbled in ways to borrow the body’s own energy to run the devices. Scientists...
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TOYOTA TAKES A DIFFERENT ROUTE TO GREEN FUELS
A long-time skeptic of electric vehicles’ green credentials, Toyota is turning its focus to hydrogen fuel cells. In 2014, the company became the first to introduce a commercially available hydrogen-powered car: the zero-emission Toyota Mirai, a fuel-cell sedan that can travel more than 400 miles on a five-minute pit stop at a hydrogen pump, Toyota...
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NEW FUND TRACKS DOWN IDEAS THAT ARE “OUT THERE”
Science is inherently conservative. Scientists with novel ideas typically can’t get research or development funding until they can show some evidence an idea is sound—and they can’t show an idea is sound until they have funding to chase it down. That’s where Linked-In co-founder David Sanford comes in. Sanford has recruited donors, including his Linked-In...
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PURIFIED DIAMOND CHIP STORES DATA FROM A BILLION BLU-RAY DISKS
Engineers at Japan’s Saga University have revolutionized diamond data storage. Diamonds are important materials in quantum computing, the evolving technology that amplifies computing power and speed by orders of magnitude, which we have highlighted previously in “Computer Completes Billion-Year Task in Three Minutes” (15 Dec 2020) and “Quantum Computing Comes to the Desktop” (19 Oct...
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TWEAKING ALUMINUM TO ACT LIKE RARE, EXPENSIVE METALS
A host of chemical reactions needed to manufacture electronics, industrial chemicals, and similar things depend on rhodium, lanthanum, and other rare, costly metals as catalysts—ingredients in a reaction that make it happen but aren’t changed or consumed in the process. Now researchers at the University of Minnesota have invented a “catalytic condenser” that tweaks plain...
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