We've 'taught' plants how to detect things we're interested in and respond in a way anyone can see, to tell us there is something nasty around.

Researchers… have an enhanced understanding of a common freshwater alga and its remarkable ability to remove strontium from water. Insight into this mechanism ultimately could help scientists design methods to remove radioactive strontium from existing nuclear waste.

The findings offer a new source of hope to people in developing countries, where water quality can be poor and the latest water-screening technologies hard to come by.

A group of students at Hong Kong's Chinese University have developed a way to store complex information in bacteria

An analysis of mortar from the 600-year-old city wall in Nanjing confirmed its mortar is a mix of powdered limestone and sticky-rice soup.

Physarum polycephalum had not simply created the shortest possible network that could connect all the cities, but had also included redundant connections that allow the creature (and the real rail network) to have resilience to the accidental breakage of any part of it.

Engineers and plant scientists… have taken their leafy designs to the next, and more practical and playful, level. Pilot projects under way… include streetlamps, gates and playground structures made entirely from trees, as well as hospital park benches that grow their own foliage for shade.

The humble rosemary plant could revolutionise the way that some oil-based products are made, providing a green alternative to the synthetics and fossil fuels presently used. Research scientists (explore) the feasibility of using the environmentally friendly antioxidants (AO) extracted from rosemary plants for the production of cosmetics, plastics and lubricants.

China is the world's largest producer of rice, a crop that leaves behind roughly 230 million tons of rice straw each year — the stem and leaves are left behind after harvesting the grains… All that biological matter, or biomass, could in theory get converted into biofuel with the aid of germs that break it down into useful chemicals