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IMAGE: Rice Investigation, Communication and Education (RICE) Facility at the University of Delaware where the Seyfferth Lab conducts rice experiments in outdoor rice paddies. view more
Credit: Matt Limmer
When most people hear food contamination, they think of bacteria present on unwashed fruits or vegetables, or undercooked meat. However, there are other ways for harmful contaminants to be present in food products.
Angelia Seyfferth, a member of the Soil Science Society of America, investigates food contamination coming from the soil where the plants grow. It all comes down to the chemistry of the soil, explains Seyfferth.
Most recently, Seyfferth has been studying rice. The elements arsenic and cadmium can be present in the paddies where rice is grown. She presented her research at the virtual 2020 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting.
New research coming out of UBC s Okanagan campus may take the current gold standard for heart valves to a new level of reliability.
A team of researchers at UBCO s Heart Valve Performance Lab (HVPL) has developed a way to improve overall blood flow through the valves, so the design of mechanical heart valves will more closely match the real thing.
Pathogenic bacteria in humans are developing resistance to antibiotics much faster than expected. Now, computational research at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that one reason could be significant genetic transfer between bacteria in our ecosystems and to humans. This work has also led to new tools for resistance researchers.
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Chemical engineers at UNSW Sydney have found a way to make green ammonia from air, water and renewable electricity that does not require the high temperatures, high pressure and huge infrastructure currently needed to produce this essential compound.
And the new production method - demonstrated in a laboratory-based proof of concept - also has the potential to play a role in the global transition towards a hydrogen economy, where ammonia is increasingly seen as a solution to the problem of storing and transporting hydrogen energy.
In a paper published today in
Energy and Environmental Science, the authors from UNSW and University of Sydney say that ammonia synthesis was one of the critical achievements of the 20th century. When used in fertilisers that quadrupled the output of food crops, it enabled agriculture to sustain an ever-expanding global population.
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Skoltech researchers and their collaborators from France, the US, Switzerland, and Australia were able to create and describe a mixed oxide Na(Li1/3Mn2/3)O2 that holds promise as a cathode material for sodium-ion batteries, which can take one day complement or even replace lithium-ion batteries. The paper was published in the journal
Nature Materials.
Lithium-ion batteries are powering the modern world of consumer devices and driving a revolution in electric transportation. But since lithium is rather rare and challenging to extract from an environmental standpoint, researchers and engineers have been looking for more sustainable and cost-effective alternatives for quite some time now.