Category: Plants & Technology

The researchers showed that out of five types of lignin tested, organosolv lignin improved the sun protection factor (SPF) of sunblock the most. Sunscreen containing just one percent of this compound had double the lotion’s original SPF — it went from 15 to 30. (Click on title for full story.)

While still early, the researchers think that their findings add to solving the problem of water pollution by using cheap but effective and fully natural-derived adsorbents to remove heavy metal ions from water; an urgent problem for developing countries which struggle with drinking water shortages. (Click on title for full story.)

Now we can really start talking about ‘power plants’ – we can place sensors in plants and use the energy formed in the chlorophyll, produce green antennas or produce new materials. Everything occurs naturally, and we use the plants’ own very advanced, unique systems. As far as we know, there are no previously published research results regarding electronics produced in plants. No one’s done this before, (Click on title for full story.)

Making rocket fuel from plants is not rocket science. It is, however, a notoriously inefficient, multistep process, which has made it difficult to scale up to the level needed to compete with fossil fuels. But researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab think they’ve figured out how to cook it up in one go using genetically engineered bacteria. (Click on title for full story.)

Photosynthesis is a process by which plants convert sunlight into chemical energy that can be later released as fuel. But now, a group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen have found that adding an enzyme called monooxygenase to the process causes sunlight to break down plant material instead of helping create it. They refer to this phenomenon as “reverse photosynthesis.” The discovery could be applied to processes that require the breakdown of chemical bonds, such as the production of bioethanol, which is made from biomass via a fermentation process. (Click on title for full story.)

Not only would windows created out of this transparent wood be a lot less breakable than glass panes, they could also have cool properties such as semitransparency, where light would be let in but privacy would be maintained. And for solar cells, it could bring the cost of manufacture down and improve their footprint by replacing silica-based glass with wood, while still letting in plenty of light. (Click on title for full story.)

Tomatoes, peas, rye, garden rocket, radishes and garden cress were all successfully harvested from simulated Moon and Martian soil—and there was also one surprise in that harvest. (Click on title for full story.)

this current work is the first to analyze cleared leaves or leaf venation for thousands of species from around the world, to learn the traits of evolutionary groups above the species level such as plant families, or to directly visualize informative new characteristics. The variation among the hundreds to thousands of species in a family is many times greater than within a species, and yet, the computer algorithms could learn a set of features and apply it successfully. Because nearly all leaf fossils are of extinct species, family-level identification is usually the first target for paleobotanists. (Click on title for full story)