Tel Aviv University

A self-cleaning device made of wood aims to make small-scale desalination more practical About a billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water. Desalinating salty water into drinkable water can help to fill this dangerous gap. But traditional desalination systems are far too expensive to install and operate in many locations, especially

For the first time, Global Forest Watch unites the latest satellite technology, open data, and crowdsourcing to guarantee access to timely and reliable information about forests. The World Resources Institute (WRI), Google, and a group of more than 40 partners launched Global Forest Watch (GFW), a dynamic online forest monitoring and alert system that empowers people everywhere

By adding the right amount of heat, researchers have developed a method that improves the electrical capacity and recharging lifetime of sodium ion rechargeable batteries, which could be a cheaper alternative for large-scale uses such as storing energy on the electrical grid. To connect solar and wind energy sources to the electrical grid, grid managers

botObjects has announced the ProDesk3D, the world’s first Full Color 3D Desktop Printer The 3D printing industry will take the next evolutionary step forward for the desktop, enabling customers to own an affordable next generation 3D Desktop Printer capable of generating high quality 3D objects in their home or in the workplace. 3D desktop printing has

The experiment generated hydrogen at room temperature without the need for costly catalysts or electrodes In the latest advance in efforts to find an inexpensive way to make hydrogen from ordinary water — one of the keys to the much-discussed “hydrogen economy” — scientists are reporting that powder from high-grade charcoal and other forms of

Utility companies are getting disrupted as people sell each other their energy, without the middleman While communication networks have evolved a lot over the last century, the electricity grid has hardly changed at all. The system still uses the same basic technology and has the same general form: big power plants delivering electrons over long

Construction material manufacturing often produces hazardous byproducts that are either toxic or difficult to recycle, as are many of the materials themselves. Brooklyn based Planetary ONE is experimenting with the idea of grow-your-own construction materials by making bricks from mushrooms. Their latest project, Mycoform, places mushroom roots known as mycelium spores into a mold and feeds

Wi-Fi and cellular data traffic are increasing exponentially but, unless the capacity of wireless links can be increased, all that traffic is bound to lead to unacceptable bottlenecks. Upcoming 5G networks are a temporary fix but not a long-term solution. For that, researchers have focused on terahertz frequencies, the submillimeter wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Proposal could divert a dangerous waste stream while producing low-cost photovoltaics This could be a classic win-win solution: A system proposed by researchers at MIT recycles materials from discarded car batteries — a potential source of lead pollution — into new, long-lasting solar panels that provide emissions-free power. The system is described in a paper