Soil microbial fuel cells proven to be capable of creating energy to filter a person’s daily drinking water in Brazil test. Engineers at the University of Bath have shown that it’s possible to capture and use energy created by the natural reactions occurring in microorganisms within soil.

A team of chemical and electrical engineers has demonstrated the potential of cheap, simple ‘soil microbial fuel cells’ (SMFCs), buried in the earth to power an electrochemical reactor that purifies water.

The proof-of-concept design was demonstrated during field testing in North-East Brazil that took place in 2019 and showed that SMFCs can purify about three litres of water...

Centaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae—clouds of dust particles and gas—even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas.

Only 18 active Centaurs have been discovered since 1927, and much about them is still poorly understood...

With insights into a molecular pathway that regulates the activity of Tregs, a type of T cell involved in immunosuppression, new research opens up possibly new avenues for treating inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Immune response is a balancing act: Too much can lead to inflammatory or autoimmune disease; too little could lead to a serious infection...

With a training technique commonly used to teach dogs to sit and stay, Johns Hopkins University computer scientists showed a robot how to teach itself several new tricks, including stacking blocks. With the method, the robot, named Spot, was able to learn in days what typically takes a month.

By using positive reinforcement, an approach familiar to anyone who’s used treats to change a dog’s behavior, the team dramatically improved the robot’s skills and did it quickly enough to make training robots for real-world work a more feasible enterprise. The findings are newly published in a paper called, “Good Robot!”

“The question here was how ...