Rainy-Day Savings: CSU Studies Stormwater Capture Technology
California State University (CSU) Chancellor's OfficeSee how CSU faculty and students are studying ways to capture stormwater and strengthen drought resilience.
See how CSU faculty and students are studying ways to capture stormwater and strengthen drought resilience.
IAFNS free research webinar on the relationship between dietary sweetness and weight takes place April 20, 10:00-11:00 a.m. ET.
As the world faces increasingly extreme and frequent weather events brought on by climate change – such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, and wildfires – critical civic resources such as food, water, and energy will be impacted.
Access to safe water, proper sanitation and hygiene are essential for human survival. As the United Nations convenes its first major conference on water quality since 1977, researchers at the University of Rhode Island are seeking better ways to provide potable water and stop pollution from contaminating water supplies.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new method that can easily purify contaminated water using a cellulose-based material.
Diners with discerning tastes may be keen to order an entrée featuring shrimp harvested from the waters of the Atlantic. Or perhaps they prefer a Pacific crustacean. But restaurant-goers beware: As the most consumed and highest imported seafood in the U.S., shrimp are vulnerable to food fraud, species substitution and mislabeling.
A team of MIT researchers has come up with a kind of tiny, biodegradable tag that can be applied directly to the seeds themselves, and that provides a unique randomly created code that cannot be duplicated.
Cambridge University scientists have come up with a system of measuring animal welfare that enables reliable comparison across different types of pig farming.
Animal agriculture is a major source of water pollution in the United States, as manure runoff carries excess nutrients into rivers and lakes. Because of their non-point source nature, most farms are not regulated under the federal Clean Water Act. This leaves pollution control up to the states, resulting in a patchwork of different approaches that are difficult to evaluate.
Additive manufacturing of food involves designing, pre-processing, manufacturing, and post-processing, and each step is an opportunity to create innovative foods. In Physics of Fluids, researchers identify factors that affect the print quality and shape complexity of the food created. For example, changing the printing patterns and ingredients of the initial mix or paste can affect the food’s matrix and microstructures and therefore its texture. Accounting for these features can increase food quality, improve control, and speed up printing.
Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridioides difficile, Candida auris, Drug-resistant Shigella. These bacteria not only have difficult names to pronounce, but they are also difficult to fight off. These bacteria may infect humans and animals, and the infections they cause are harder to treat than those caused by non-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat.
Many people keen to reduce their meat consumption are turning to substitutes made of legumes packed with protein, vitamins, and fiber. But allergies to legumes like soy or peanuts are both common and dangerous.
Forget that expiration date on your salmon or yogurt. A graduate student at SMU (Southern Methodist University) has developed a miniature pH sensor that can tell when food has spoiled in real time.
An estimated 53 million people in the U.S. turned to food banks and community programs for help putting food on the table in 2021. In recent decades, food banks have adopted policies and practices to make sure people not only have access to food but also healthy and nutritious food.
A study of chicken farms in the West found that high winds increased the prevalence of Campylobacter in outdoor flocks, a bacterial pathogen in poultry that is the largest single cause of foodborne illness in the U.S.
The Endocrine Society supports a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule which includes provisions to regulate several per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—including PFOA and PFOS—found in our drinking water.
This support expands FAU Harbor Branch’s extensive aquaculture and food security program focused on replenishing queen conch populations throughout the Caribbean. It also enables development of a conceptual master plan for a 25-acre innovation hub on Grand Bahama for researchers working to solve issues of island sustainability.
A recent study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry has revealed the secret behind an evolutionary marvel: a bacteriophage with an extremely long tail. This extraordinary tail is part of a bacteriophage that lives in inhospitable hot springs and preys on some of the toughest bacteria on the planet.
A new CABI-led study has found that mass media campaigns aimed at changing pesticide use to fight crop pests and diseases are more effective when farmers are exposed to multiple forms of communication.
The paper ‘Weaponising microbes for peace’ by Anand et al, outlines the ways in which microbes and microbial technologies can be used to tackle global and local challenges that could otherwise lead to conflict, but warns that these resources have been severely underexploited to date.
Tibet is known as the “Water Tower of Asia,” providing water to about 2 billion people and supporting critical ecosystems in High Mountain Asia and the Tibetan Plateau, where many of the largest Asian river systems originate. This region is also one of the areas most vulnerable to the compounding effects of climate change and human activities. Michigan State University researchers are identifying policy changes that need to happen now to prepare for the future impacts projected by climate models.
The nitrate ingested over the course of a person’s adult lifetime through the consumption of tap water and bottled water could be a risk factor for prostate cancer, particularly in the case of aggressive tumours and in younger men.
SNAP serves as the nation’s and the state’s largest line of defense against hunger and food insecurity. SNAP, formerly called food stamps, provides cash benefits to purchase food to eligible individuals with low incomes. Elena Serrano, director of the Virginia Cooperative Extension Family Nutrition Program, says, “Ending the enhanced benefits will affect households who have the most to lose, those households that qualified for maximum benefits, who will lose an added $95 per month in benefits. On average SNAP participants will lose $82 per month.”
The recent public health emergency declarations in New York and London due to polio infections and detection of the virus in these cities’ wastewater strongly indicate that polio is no longer close to being eradicated. Now, four members of the Global Virus Network (GVN) proposed changes in global polio eradication strategy to get the world back on track to one day eliminating polio’s threat.
The research team of Dr. Yong-sang Ryu at the Brain Research Institute of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) used an electro-photonic tweezer along with metal nanoparticles to concentrate ultrafine nanoplastics within a short period, and they reported the development of a real-time detection system using light.
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Seok Jin Yoon) has announced that Dr. Ji-Soo Jang's team from the Electronic Materials Research Center and Prof. Tae-Gwang Yoon's team from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Myongji University (President Byeong-Jin Yoo) have jointly developed an advanced membrane that can simultaneously provide drinking water and generate continuous electricity from various water resources, such as sewage/wastewater, seawater, and groundwater.
Schools are among the most notable settings people associate with picking up viral infections such as the common cold, various types of the flu or other respiratory viruses.
Midwestern agriculture contributes the vast majority of nitrogen in the Gulf of Mexico, causing an oxygen-starved hypoxic zone and challenging coastal economies. State and federal policies have tried for decades to provide solutions and incentives, but the hypoxic zone keeps coming back.
In the last decade, growing numbers of researchers have studied plastic pollution, one of the world’s most pressing environmental hazards. They have made progress but still face challenges, such as the comparability of results, especially with regard to microplastic particles.
The research groups led by Iowa State's Carmen Gomes and Jonathan Claussen will be part of a new coast-to-coast, industry-university research hub called the Center for Soil Technologies, or SoilTech. Researchers from four universities just launched the center with a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
New funding opportunity for microbes and health research.
Cannabis poisoning is soaring among small children as parents inadvertently leave edibles within their kids’ reach. Our expert explains how to childproof your pot. As marijuana has become legal in more states across the U.S., a recent analysis has found that the drug is accidentally ending up in the hands—and mouths—of children.
Irvine, Calif., Feb. 23, 2023 – People often associate Escherichia coli with contaminated food, but E. coli has long been a workhorse in biotechnology. Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have demonstrated that the bacterium has further value as part of a system to detect heavy metal contamination in water. E.
In Journal of Applied Physics, a team of scientists fabricate sensitive nanostructured silver surfaces to detect arsenic, even at very low concentrations. The sensors make use of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy: As a molecule containing arsenic adheres to the surface, it's hit with a laser and the arsenic compound scatters the laser light, creating an identifiable signature. The technique is a departure from existing methods, which are time-consuming, expensive, and not ideally suited to on-site field assays.
The size, strength and makeup of people’s social networks are key indicators of how they will respond to the health consequences of an environmental disaster, according to a new Cornell University study that focused on the Flint, Michigan water crisis.
Advancing food science for public health benefit through transparency and collaboration.
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found a way to use small shocks of electricity to disinfect water, reducing energy consumption, cost, and environmental impact. The technology could be integrated into the electric grid or even powered by batteries.
Over 44 million people in the United States depend on private drinking water wells that are not federally regulated. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire and collaborating institutions found that current monitoring practices do not accurately reflect groundwater pollution risks because spikes in harmful bacteria, like those from animal and human waste, vary depending on the season—with highest levels observed from testing conducted in summer months when temperatures are over 90°F.
Does the digital sharing economy really reduce harm to the environment? The researchers found that food sharing has significant environmental advantages, but that a substantial part of the benefits of online sharing platforms are offset due to the use of the saved money for purposes that are not necessarily green.
Acesulfame is a sweetener in sugar-free drinks and foods. As it cannot be metabolised in the human body, the sweetener ends up in wastewater after consumption and remains largely intact even in sewage treatment plants. A new study by the University of Vienna shows that the persistence of the sweetener varies with temperature as the concentration of the sweetener in wastewater varies with the seasons.