It may look like a discarded piece of plumbing or a message in a bottle bobbing about aimlessly in the river, but Queensland University of Technology's humble "Drifter" hides some serious kit with a lifesaving mission for flood-prone regions.
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Sometimes, people want to clean up polluted water, by removing spilled oil from its surface. Other times, they want to purify oil-based fuel, by removing water from it. An inexpensive new "smart" membrane created at Canada's University of British Columbia can switch between doing both.
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When rain water runs down city streets and into storm sewers, it can be carrying a lot of filth with it – filth such as E. coli bacteria, which may end up in rivers. There could be an inexpensive and efficient new way of ridding the water of that bacteria, however, using chips of waste steel.
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Back in 1987, the global community signed an agreement known as The Montreal Protocol, which called for all countries to phase out the production of ozone-layer-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). According to a new study, however, one of the most abundant CFCs is likely still being made.
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A new study has found that third-hand smoke – chemical residue from cigarette smoke – can spread more pervasively than previously thought, even moving throughout a seemingly “smoke-free” building. But despite this compelling research the dangers to human health still remain unclear.
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With a little luck, researchers have happened upon an engineered enzyme with an appetite for some of the most commonly disposed of types of plastic, meaning this waste could conceivably be broken down relatively quickly rather than contaminating the environment for hundreds of years.
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Launched in 2015 and yesterday whittled down to 10 finalists, the Carbon XPrize has now progressed to its final stage. As these teams prepare for this final phase, New Atlas chatted with XPrize's Dr Marcius Extavour about the possibilities that their solutions may bring.
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Cleaning up oil spills is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. That somebody might be the bacterium Alcanivorax borkumensis, which eats the hydrocarbons that make up oil. Researchers at INRS have isolated key enzymes that A. borkumensis uses, and put them to work cleaning soil samples in the lab.
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Through his pollution-fighting projects, Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is bringing to light the importance of clean air, most notably through his Smog Free Towers. And as we learned in our interview with the inventor and artist, his penchant for cleaning up isn't limited to our home planet.
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There is still a lot we don't know about the path of plastic waste through the ocean, though we are learning more all the time. Small fragments of plastic have now been uncovered in seal poo, serving as the first evidence of the material making its way up the food chain to marine predators.
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