Nickel’s role in the future of electric vehicle batteries is clear: It’s more abundant and easier to obtain than widely used cobalt, and its higher energy density means longer driving distances between charges.
However, nickel is less stable than other materials with respect to cycle life, thermal stability, and safety. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and Argonne National Laboratory aim to change that with a new study that dives deeply into nickel-based cathodes, one of the two electrodes that facilitate energy storage in batteries.
“High-nickel cathodes have the potential to revolutionize the EV market by providing longer driving ranges,” said Arumugam Manthiram, a professor at the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Texas Materials Institute and one of the leaders of the study published in Nature Energy.
🌍 New research suggests more than half of global cropland areas could lose suitable crops under a warming scenario of 2C.
📚 The study mapped how climate change could reshape areas suited for 30 major crops across four warming scenarios — from 1.5C to 4C.
🔎 Even at 1.5C, over half of the crops studied could see a decline in suitable cropland, with tropical regions hit hardest. In contrast, areas far from the equator could gain crop diversity — opening doors for climate adaptation.
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More than half of global cropland areas could see a decline in the number of suitable crops under a warming scenario of 2C, new research finds.
The study, published in Nature Food, projects how climate change will modify the areas suited for growing 30 major crops under four scenarios, ranging from 1.5 to 4C of global warming.
Recovered grasslands need more than 75 years of continuous management to regain their biodiversity because specialized pollinators are slow to return. Kobe University’s finding underscores the importance of preserving old grasslands as reservoirs of biodiversity, even if it is just as ski slopes.
Grasslands worldwide are rapidly disappearing due to land-use conversion and abandonment, leading to a well-documented loss of grassland biodiversity. Restoring abandoned grasslands by removing woody vegetation and resuming traditional land management practices has positive effects on biodiversity.
However, it is also known that this diversity lags behind that of old grasslands that have been under continued management for up to several millennia. The Kobe University ecologist Ushimaru Atushi says, “The reasons for this are not really clear and satisfying solutions have not been proposed.”
In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama predicted we were approaching the end of history. He meant that similar liberal democratic values were taking hold in societies around the world. How wrong could he have been? Democracy today is clearly on the decline. Despots and autocrats are on the rise.
You might, however, be thinking Fukuyama was right all along. But in a different way. Perhaps we really are approaching the end of history. As in, game over humanity.
Now there are many ways it could all end. A global pandemic. A giant meteor (something perhaps the dinosaurs would appreciate). Climate catastrophe. But one end that is increasingly talked about is artificial intelligence (AI). This is one of those potential disasters that, like climate change, appears to have slowly crept up on us but, many people now fear, might soon take us down.
In an amazing achievement akin to adding solar panels to your body, a northeast sea slug sucks raw materials from algae to provide its lifetime supply of solar-powered energy, according to a study by Rutgers University–New Brunswick and other scientists.
“It’s a remarkable feat because it’s highly unusual for an animal to behave like a plant and survive solely on photosynthesis,” said Debashish Bhattacharya, senior author of the study and distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers–New Brunswick. “The broader implication is in the field of artificial photosynthesis. That is, if we can figure out how the slug maintains stolen, isolated plastids to fix carbon without the plant nucleus, then maybe we can also harness isolated plastids for eternity as green machines to create bioproducts or energy. The existing paradigm is that to make green energy, we need the plant or alga to run the photosynthetic organelle, but the slug shows us that this does not have to be the case.”
The sea slug Elysia chlorotica, a mollusk that can grow to more than two inches long, has been found in the intertidal zone between Nova Scotia, Canada, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as well as in Florida. Juvenile sea slugs eat the nontoxic brown alga Vaucheria litorea and become photosynthetic – or solar-powered – after stealing millions of algal plastids, which are like tiny solar panels, and storing them in their gut lining, according to the study published online in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
A new device produces ammonia from air and wind energy, offering a sustainable alternative to fossil fuel-dependent methods for agriculture and clean energy applications.
The air we breathe holds the key to more sustainable agriculture, thanks to an innovative breakthrough by researchers at Stanford University and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia. They have created a prototype device that uses wind energy to extract nitrogen from the air and convert it into ammonia—a critical ingredient in fertilizer.
If fully developed, this method could replace the traditional process of producing ammonia, which has been in use for over a century. The conventional method combines nitrogen and hydrogen at high pressures and temperatures, consuming 2% of the world’s energy and generating 1% of annual carbon dioxide emissions due to its reliance on natural gas. This new approach offers a cleaner, more energy-efficient alternative.
In the San Diego suburb of Carlsbad, a new plant to desalinate seawater is almost ready. For about a billion dollars, it will produce 7 percent of the area’s drinking water, courtesy of the Pacific Ocean. But in these times of record drought, two Texas entrepreneurs are advocating another solution: Instead of pulling fresh water out of the sea, they want to pull it out of the air. The machine they’re developing at Trinity University in San Antonio, called an atmospheric water generator, is still in its pilot phrase. But to hear Moses West tell it, if the climate conditions are right, the AWG has the potential to end drought.
West, who’s testing the machine along with business partner John Vollmer, calls himself “a water farmer.” He explains that there are three potential sources of human drinking water: groundwater, rivers and gas. Thanks to NASA’s GRACE satellite system, which measures the abundance and quality of aquifers, we know that the Earth’s groundwater supply is dwindling — and increasingly contaminated by pesticides and runoff. Rivers, at least near any major metropolitan area, are out of the question as sources for drinking water. That leaves water vapor, which West calls “the purest, cleanest, most abundant, recyclable source of water that exists on the face of the earth.”
The atmospheric water generator was first developed in Spain, another country with perpetual drought problems, but according to West, it performs best in high-heat, high-humidity areas. It can reliably produce between 2,000 and 3,000 gallons of water per day, and with the proper institutional support, West says, “I know how to scale this up to produce a million gallons a day, 30 million gallons a month.”
Green hydrogen, produced through renewable energy sources, is considered a crucial element in the transition towards a cleaner energy future. However, current production methods are costly and energy-intensive, limiting their widespread adoption.
This new reactor uses photocatalytic sheets to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using a process powered entirely by sunlight. This innovative process has the potential to drastically reduce production costs and make green hydrogen a more economically viable fuel source.
While the technology is still in its early stages, the researchers have successfully operated the prototype reactor for three years under natural sunlight, demonstrating its potential for real-world applications. Despite the promising results, the researchers acknowledge that further improvements are needed. Enhancing the efficiency of the photocatalytic process and ensuring the safe handling of potentially explosive byproducts are crucial steps towards commercialization.
The team remains optimistic that with continued research and development, this technology can revolutionize green hydrogen production and pave the way for a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. This breakthrough is particularly important for Japan, a country actively pursuing a “hydrogen society” and leading the way in hydrogen fuel technology. It could also accelerate the transition towards a hydrogen-based economy and contribute to global efforts in combating climate change.
A new analysis reveals complex linkages among the United Nations’ (UN’s) 17 Sustainable Development Goals—which include such objectives as gender equality and quality education—and finds that no country is on track to meet all 17 goals by the target year of 2030.
Alberto García-Rodríguez of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One.
In 2015, UN member countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals with the aim of achieving “peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” However, setbacks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and armed conflict have slowed progress, and more research is needed to clarify the underlying obstacles so they can be effectively addressed.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), have developed an innovative solar-powered method to transform sewage sludge—a by-product of wastewater treatment—into green hydrogen for clean energy and single-cell protein for animal feed.
Published in Nature Water, the sludge-to-food-and-fuel method tackles two pressing global challenges: managing waste and generating sustainable resources. This aligns with NTU’s goal of addressing humanity’s greatest challenges, such as climate change and sustainability.
The United Nations estimates that about 2.5 billion more people will be living in cities by 2050. Along with the growth of cities and industries comes an increase in sewage sludge, which is notoriously difficult to process and dispose of due to its complex structure, composition, and contaminants such as heavy metals and pathogens.
