North Carolina residents and local environmental groups are worried the coming hurricane season will once again unleash massive pollution from the state’s thousands of hog waste lagoons, Environmental Health News reports. In addition to releasing foul odors and ultra-heat-trapping methane gas, the massive open ponds of pig feces are vulnerable … [continued]
The notorious E. coli bacteria plays a role in a “revolutionary” new artificial photosynthesis system that converts waste carbon dioxide into plastic.
The Army Research Laboratory has just achieved a major breakthrough that could lead to transformational equipment for the warfighter of the future. The lab has been credited with creating a new method for identifying synthetic biomolecules that can bind to metal surfaces. That could lead to any number of cutting … [continued]
Justin Gallivan, associate professor of biomolecular chemistry at Emory University, is busy developing new ways to reprogram bacteria to carry out some remarkable new tasks – instructing the E. Coli bacteria, for instance, to eat atrazine, a widely used herbicide that can cause considerable contamination of ground water.
In honor of Blog Action Day on the topic of water, here is a bit of good news about a new low-cost, energy efficient method for purifying drinking water without the use of chlorine. Scientists at Stanford University have developed a new kind of water filter that uses a combination … [continued]
Put this one in the category of every cloud has a silver lining: E. coli, the bacteria notorious for contaminating food products from lettuce to ground beef, could also play a key role in developing the next generation of biofuels. A team of scientists from Rutgers University is working with … [continued]
Waste uranium can apparently be recovered very cheaply from the polluted runoff from uranium mining using E. Coli and a phosphate storage molecule found in seeds, British researchers have found. They used the common bacteria with a chemical parallel of what is already found in agricultural waste: inositol phosphate. Inositol … [continued]
Genomatica, a San Diego-based sustainable chemical company, announced today that it has developed a process to make an important component of plastic without the use of petrochemicals. The chemical, 1,4-butanediol (BDO), has an annual production value of over $4 billion in the automotive, textile, and consumer goods industries.
