Good News Notes: “Some three quarters of the biomass in hop plants used in beer-making ends up in landfills. But a group of Japanese researchers has developed a technique that ‘upcycles’ that waste hop into cellulose nanofibers (CNFs). A paper describing the technique was published in the journal ACS Agricultural Science & Technology on June 11. In…
Tag: researchers
New prehistoric human unknown to science discovered in Israel
Good News Notes: “A new type of early human previously not known to scientists has been discovered in Israel, Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University researchers announced Thursday as their extraordinary findings appeared in the prestigious academic journal Science. Researchers believe the new “Homo” species intermarried with Homo sapiens and was an ancestor of the…
Goldman Environmental Prize Winner Inspired By Plastic-Bag-Eating Goats
Good News Notes: “For Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, her great awakening to plastic pollution started with goats. She was working for a local environmental nongovernmental organization in her native Malawi with a program that gave goats to rural farmers. The farmers would use the goats’ dung to produce low-cost, high-quality organic fertilizer. The problem? The thin plastic…
This Styrofoam-like packaging is made of popcorn—not plastic
Good News Notes: “Those bits that come inside your packages are called peanuts, but of course they are made from polystyrene, not anything natural. But what if we could send things packaged in popcorn—the actual food, not another plastic-derived counterpart—instead? That’s the hope of researchers at the University of Göttingen in Germany, who have developed the plant-based…
Cement battery could turn buildings and bridges into gigantic energy-storage devices
Good News Notes: “Researchers in Switzerland have come up with a clever way to store energy in cement that could turn entire buildings into batteries. The advance, reported in the journal Buildings, could be a way to reduce the carbon footprint of future infrastructure. Buildings are some of the largest energy consumers in the world. Globally, they use…
Australian researchers show next gen solar cells can beat the heat
Good News Notes: “Australian researchers have demonstrated that new solar panel designs and manufacturing techniques have the potential to solve some of the key challenges of operating in high temperatures, showing that they not only produce more useful electricity but have longer operational lives thanks to their ability to beat the heat. In new research…
Researchers develop breath test for rare inherited disorder
Good News Notes: “Methylmalonic acidemia (MMA) is a rare genomic condition that disrupts the normal metabolism of certain proteins and fats, resulting in a toxic accumulation of methylmalonic acid in the body. This build-up may lead to irreparable kidney impairment, metabolic liver dysfunction, pancreatitis, intellectual disability and eventually, without treatment, death. Researchers at the National…
IU School of Medicine researchers develop blood test for depression, bipolar disorder
Good News Notes: “Worldwide, 1 in 4 people will suffer from a depressive episode in their lifetime. While current diagnosis and treatment approaches are largely trial and error, a breakthrough study by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers sheds new light on the biological basis of mood disorders, and offers a promising blood test aimed…
Coffee pulp helps Costa Rican forests grow back from deforestation
Good News Notes: “Just like us, forests move faster with a little coffee in their system. A recent experiment tested whether coffee pulp, a leftover of the coffee growing process, could help bring Costa Rica’s rainforests back to life. Researchers from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa tested two plots to see how the coffee…
Major League Baseball Teams Up With Stanford Researchers in Fight Against COVID-19
Good News Notes: “Ballparks across the country have shut down but Major League Baseball’s 30 teams are playing a big role in finding out how widespread COVID-19 really is. It’s a first-of-its-kind, nationwide antibody study that could be key to opening up America’s economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. It’s being conducted in the Bay Area…