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Japan's Shokubutsu Hana, the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, Vetiver Farms Philippines, and agency TBWA\SMP teamed up to create a floating billboard to soak up pollution and discourage people from throwing trash in the river. It was made using vetiver, a type of grass that can absorb toxic materials and help to reduce pollution. Spelling out "Clean River Soon," according to the brand the installation is capable of cleaning between 2,000 and 8,000 gallons of water every day.  Eh, not so sure about that one, but if the plants were selected appropriately, this is an awesome way to market a business while phytoremediating nasty water.

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A book with each sheet of paper acting as a water filter.  Good look Trav!

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Paper making research.  I love to see the waste stream offset typical extraction-based production.  Thanks for the share on this one Ivy!

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Earthworms detoxify pesticides in soil at significant cost.

Earthworms that make their home in contaminated soil do so at a significant cost, according to French and Danish researchers. Results of the study, Acclimation of earthworms to chemicals in anthropogenic landscapes, physiological mechanisms and soil ecological implications, found that earthworms exposed to fungicides in conventionally farmed soil were at a stark disadvantage to worms in land managed organically. Earthworms exposed to the fungicide product Opus, containing active ingredient epoxiconazole, were able to detoxify the chemical, but gained half as much weight as worms from an organic farm, where their population was also two to three times higher.  Whole shebang here.

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Often, agricultural productivity describes how much food a farmer produces with a limited number of resources. The research, published on March 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is instead concerned with “gross productivity” — in other words, the sheer amount of photosynthetic activity happening in a region.

To get a read on the metric, researchers led by Joanna Joiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center looked to the basics of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll in plants mainly absorbs light for conversion into energy, but the cell organs also emit a small portion of that light as a florescent glow invisible to the naked eye.

Joiner’s team realized they could measure that glow from existing satellite data. Research led by Luis Guanter at the Freie Universität Berlin then used the data to estimate the photosynthesis from agriculture.  More here.

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Billboard produces potable water via condensation.  Thanks for the share Carrie Mae Rose!

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Living in concrete pipes in Mexico -- Tubohotel.  Check: http://www.tubohotel.com

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Word.

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Beautiful video!

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Toxic Waste in the Windy City

Last fall, black dust began to blow through residential neighborhoods on the southeast side of Chicago. Only it wasn’t really dust; it was a fine black residue that clung to everything it touched, including noses and throats. Residents eventually learned that it was an oil byproduct called petroleum coke — petcoke for short — and it was being stored in massive uncovered piles at facilities owned by the Koch brothers. VICE News’ Danny Gold traveled to Chicago to see what happens when clouds of toxic oil dust blow through the Windy City.

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3,200 YEAR-OLD TREE SO BIG IT'S NEVER BEEN CAPTURED IN A SINGLE IMAGE UNTIL NOW

“The President” doesn’t have a nickname for just any old reason. This giant sequoia, one of the largest trees in the world, stands 75.3m tall, 8.2m wide, measures 1,274.3 cubic metres in volume, and is an estimated 3,200 years old. And it’s never been completely photographed – until a tree-climbing scientist got involved.

Behold – 32 days of work to take 126 individual photos, stitched together to create one amazing image. Michael “Nick” Nichols worked on the image for National Geographic – with the tree representing 110 generations of human life.

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EDIBLE WATER BOTTLE

Created by London-based industrial design students Rodrigo García González, Pierre Paslier, and Guillaume Couche, the Ooho is a blob-like water container made out of an edible algae membrane.

The design is inspired by how liquid drops form and how egg yolks work. The container is created using a culinary technique called “spherification” and the water is held inside by a double gelatinous membrane. The gel around the water is created from brown algae and calcium chloride.

Because of the double membrane, identification labels can be placed in-between the layers without affecting the water and without the need for adhesive. The size of the sphere can also be controlled when the water is in the form of ice during the “packaging” process.

The designers envision the product as something that people can create in their own kitchens. People can modify and innovate the recipe and CIY (“Cook-It-Yourself”) the Ooho on their own.

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SOLAR-POWERED TOILET GENERATES BIOCHAR FERTILIZER BRICKS

Sol-Char Toilet, created by researchers at the University of Colorado, proves that human waste is anything but useless. Powered by the sun, it transforms excrement into biochar, a material that can be used as fertilizer or fuel. Biochar is not only an ideal fertilizer, but it can help to reduce pressure on the world’s finite natural resources.

The device uses a combination of parabolic mirrors inside fiberoptic cables to concentrate the sun’s energy on a single point, which in turn creates heat of up to 700 degree fahrenheit. This heat is used to scorch and sterilize human waste, which leaves behind a charcoal-like substance that is much easier to transport and put to use on farms around the world.

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3D PRINTED SKULL SAVES PATIENT FROM BRAIN DAMAGE

Surgeons at UMC Utrecht have successfully replaced a young woman’s cranium with a 3D-printed skull.  The woman required the operation because her skull was growing in thickness and causing damage to her brain. The thickening of the skull increased pressure on her brain and affected her eyesight and coordination.

The operation took 23 hours and was a world’s first, according to UMC Utrecht. According to Verweij, skull implants have been performed before, but it was the first time that a whole cranium was replaced with a plastic skull. In a report, Verweij explained that implants used to be made by hand using a cement-like material that was “far from ideal” and 3D printing technology allowed them to create a skull implant in the exact size they needed. He also added that patients’ brain function often recovers better than when the old method was used.

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MAPPING TIME (LEFT TO LIVE) WITH HEARTBEATS

Created by data scientist Jen Lowe, One Human Heartbeat is an experiment that visualizes Lowe’s pulsating heartbeat. Using the Basis watch to track her pulse, Lowe has created a live stream of her beating heart for all of the Internet to see, and even points out how many more days she is expected to live.

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John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his research team have developed a fully biodegradable battery that dissolves inside the body after three weeks in water.  The biodegradable device has several potential uses, including environmental applications wherein the device can be turned into a chemical sensor that assesses an oil spill and simply dissolve afterwards, as well as biomedical implants that deliver drugs as controlled or in response to time-sensitive events like epileptic seizures.  Read more.