<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a new way to cook rice: remove arsenic and retain nutrients</h1>
Inorganic arsenic is a class 1 carcinogen with strong toxicity, and the famous arsenic cream is an inorganic arsenic. Inorganic arsenic is easily soluble in water and is easily absorbed by crops with water. Rice growing in arsenic-contaminated soil is prone to accumulate inorganic arsenic.
Arsenic entering the human body can damage almost every organ in the body, which can cause skin diseases, peripheral vascular diseases, lung cancer, bladder cancer and so on. Infants and children are even more vulnerable to arsenic.
To that end, scientists at the University of Sheffield compared a number of different ways of cooking rice and found that a method called "Parboiling with Absorption method" (PBA) can remove most of the arsenic while retaining most of the nutrients in rice. Cooking brown rice with PBA method can remove more than 50% of natural arsenic, and boiling polished rice can remove 74% of natural arsenic.
On how to get a bowl of glowing rice | pixabay
The main steps of the PBA cooking method are as follows:
(1) Bring 4 times the amount of rice to a boil in a pot and bring to a complete boil
(2) Add the rice and bring to a boil for another 5 minutes
(3) Drain the water in the pot, re-add 2 times the amount of water, cover the pot and slow cook over medium-low heat
(4) Cook until all the water is absorbed by the rice
Give it a try tonight.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a new way to fertilize wastewater</h1>
Domestic sewage, industrial wastewater and farmland drainage all contain a large amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and other inorganic salts, which are discharged into natural water bodies without proper treatment and will cause serious pollution. But in fact, these inorganic salts are valuable nutrients for crops, and if they can be recycled, they can kill two birds with one stone.
To this end, researchers at Aalto University have invented a wastewater treatment technology called NPHarvest, which results in a clear solution of ammonium sulfate (which can be used as fertilizer) and a slurry rich in phosphorus and calcium. They first used lime powder to precipitate the wastewater, collected the phosphorus in the water, and then used a special gas permeation membrane to separate the nitrogen in the water in the form of ammonium salts.
Master of Water and Environmental Engineering Ilaria Righetto and NPHarvest Project | Aalto University
NPHarvest not only has a low cost, but it can even produce different products as needed. For example, if you want ordinary fertilizer, you can extract nitrogen in the form of ammonium phosphate; if you want chemical raw materials, you can change to generate ammonium nitrate.
NPHarvest technology has been successfully tested in wastewater treatment plants and landfills.
Hope that the mountains are green and the soil is fertile.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > ultra-white paint without fear of the sun</h1>
As global warming continues to intensify and energy problems become more acute, passive cooling technologies that do not require energy consumption are becoming more important. For energy-efficient buildings, it is a common practice to paint walls white to increase reflection and reduce heat absorption, but existing commercial heat reflective coatings can only reflect about 80% to 90% of solar thermal radiation at the highest.
Recently, scientists at Purdue University have developed an inexpensive ultra-white acrylic coating, which contains many calcium carbonate particles of different sizes and can scatter different wavelengths of sunlight.
Some buildings already use white paint to cool down (although not this new paint) | pixabay
The new coating has been tested to reflect approximately 95.5% of the sun's thermal radiation without affecting the external thermal radiation emitted by the object. In tests conducted in Indiana, it successfully cooled the surface of the object to 1.7°C below the surrounding temperature at noon.
This coating uses materials commonly used in the coatings industry and is thinner, cheaper and easier to mass-produce than ever before. When put into large-scale use, the average household can reduce its refrigeration expenses by $50 per month.
It feels like a good thing that saves money and is environmentally friendly and healthy.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > man-made rope bridge to help endangered gibbons</h1>
The Hainan black-crowned gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), one of China's most endangered animals, once had a population of only 25 animals left and was trapped in an "island" of tropical forest covering less than 2,000 hectares on Hainan Island.
In 2014, a landslide caused by a typhoon tore open a 15-metre-wide chasm in the habitat of the black-crowned gibbon in Hainan, just in time for gibbons to feed. After the trees on the surface were destroyed, gibbons could only use the sloping branches of the large trees on both sides of the landslide to "fly" over the truncated canopy, greatly increasing the risk of falling to the ground and being injured.
Staff from Bawangling Nature Reserve in Hainan and Kadoorie Farm & Botanical Garden in Hong Kong used climbing-level ropes to erect rope bridges for gibbons in the canopy and build a canopy corridor connecting gibbon habitats.
Rope bridges are as long as they are, and there are many ways to cross them| KadoorieFarmBotanicGarden/YouTube
In the months following the erection of the rope bridge, the group of gibbons, although noticing the presence of the rope, took a wait-and-see approach. It wasn't until 6 months later that they first tried to pass over the rope bridge. By 2019, the vast majority of gibbons are used to using rope bridges, and only some adult male gibbons are still insisting on using difficult "flyby" movements — presumably confident in their muscular muscles.
Male gibbons are adventurous and choose to "fly" over landslides | KFBG
Today, the number of individuals of the black-crowned gibbon in Hainan has risen to about 30, and over time, the tree vegetation at the landslide will gradually recover, but the ropes can still help the various animals in the forest to safely cross the habitat.
I hope that all the endangered animals in the world will be safe and happy.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > magic time: water from desert air</h1>
Devices that currently collect water from the air, such as fog collection and condensation systems, can only operate in environments with a relative humidity of at least 50%.
MIT scientists have developed a new water collection device that can absorb water from the air in the desert (about 20% relative humidity).
There is an adsorption material called "zeolite" in the device. Zeolite is very porous and has a large inner surface area that can adsorb small amounts of water contained in almost dry air. At night, water vapor in the air is adsorbed into the zeolite, and during the day, the heat generated by the solar absorber is used to drive the water out of the zeolite for use.
It is such a structure, adsorbing water at night, releasing water during the day | Reference 5
The device weighs about 7 kg and is easy to carry. In tests, the solar absorber generated 0.77 liters of water per square meter per day. The new materials being developed by the research team are also expected to further increase the amount of water adsorbed by the internal materials.
May all people have access to clean, cheap water.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > biobank of 800 species of coral</h1>
In the past five years, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced three major coral bleaching events, and its northern coral reefs have been devastated.
To preserve and protect polyp species, conservation teams from Australia are building a complete biobank of living coral organisms. The project plans to build a dedicated facility in Port Douglas by 2025 to house live corals, collecting and houseing more than 800 species of hard corals from around the world.
Since November, scientists have been collecting live debris, polyp tissue and DNA samples from a variety of corals from the Great Barrier Reef. On the first expedition, they will identify and collect live specimens from 20 species of coral, representing 5 percent of all 400 species of corals in the Great Barrier Reef.
Great barrier reef. May the romance of nature live on. | pixabay
Since polyps themselves can reproduce both sexually and asexually, under suitable feeding conditions, polyps can constantly replicate themselves and are expected to double every six months.
Scientists believe that this biobank is a kind of biodiversity "insurance" that can restore biomes on coral reefs when needed in the future.
It is hoped that such biobanks can be established all over the world. Hopefully, the world of the future will not need them one day.
Well, the good news of the month is over ~ of course, there are still a lot of exciting studies that have not been picked in.
If you have good news, share it with you in the comments section!
bibliography
1. Manoj Menon, Wanrong Dong, Xumin Chen, Joseph Hufton, Edward J. Rhodes, Improved rice cooking approach to maximise arsenic removal while preserving nutrient elements, Science of The Total Environment, 2020, 143341, ISSN 0048-9697, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143341
2. Turning wastewater nutrients into fertilizer, https://phys.org/news/2020-10-wastewater-nutrients-fertilizer.html
3. Li, X., Peoples, J., Huang, Z., Zhao, Z., Qiu, J., & Ruan, X. (2020). Full Daytime Sub-ambient Radiative Cooling in Commercial-like Paints with High Figure of Merit. Cell Reports Physical Science, 1(10), 100221. doi:10.1016/j.xcrp.2020.100221
5. After the typhoon, help you a "rope" power! , https://www.kfbg.org/tc/KFBG-blog/post/After-the-typhoon-Bridging-ravaged-forest-for-the-critically-endangered-Hainan-Gibbon
6. LaPotin, A., Zhong, Y., Zhang, L., Zhao, L., Leroy, A., Kim, H., … Wang, E. N. (2020). Dual-Stage Atmospheric Water Harvesting Device for Scalable Solar-Driven Water Production. Joule. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2020.09.008
7. Zoccola, D., Ounais, N., Barthelemy, D., Calcagno, R., Gaill, F., Henard, S., … Allemand, D. (2020). The World Coral Conservatory: A Noah’s ark for corals to support survival of reef ecosystems. PLOS Biology, 18(9), e3000823. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000823
Author: Ou Shave
Edit: Yakumo
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