>The developments I find most interesting use no agricultural feedstocks. The microbes they breed feed on hydrogen or methanol – which can be made with renewable electricity – combined with water, carbon dioxide and a very small amount of fertiliser.

>They produce a flour that contains roughly 60% protein, a much higher concentration than any major crop can achieve (soy beans contain 37%, chick peas, 20%). When they are bred to produce specific proteins and fats, they can create much better replacements than plant products for meat, fish, milk and eggs. And they have the potential to do two astonishing things.

Precision fermentation could produce new staple foods, and end our reliance on farming

Precision fermentation is a refined form of brewing, a means of multiplying microbes to create specific products. It has been used for many years to produce drugs and food additives.

But now, in several labs and a few factories, scientists are developing what could be a new generation of staple foods.

The diminished power of the immune system in older adults is usually blamed on the aging process. But a new study by Columbia immunologists shows that decades of particulate air pollution also take a toll.

The study found that inhaled particles from environmental pollutants accumulate over decades inside immune cells in lymph nodes associated with the lung, eventually weakening the cells’ ability to fight respiratory infections.

The findings—published Nov. 21 in Nature Medicine—offer a new reason why individuals become more susceptible to respiratory diseases with age.

>Older people are particularly susceptible to infectious and neoplastic diseases of the lung and it is unclear how lifelong exposure to environmental pollutants affects respiratory immune function. In an analysis of human lymph nodes (LNs) from 84 organ donors aged 11–93 years, we found a specific age-related decline in lung-associated, but not gut-associated, LN immune function linked to the accumulation of inhaled atmospheric particulate matter. Increasing densities of particulates were found in lung-associated LNs with age, but not in the corresponding gut-associated LNs. Particulates were specifically contained within CD68+CD169− macrophages, which exhibited decreased activation, phagocytic capacity, and altered cytokine production compared with non-particulate-containing macrophages. The structures of B cell follicles and lymphatic drainage were also disrupted in lung-associated LNs with particulates. Our results reveal that the cumulative effects of environmental exposure and age may compromise immune surveillance of the lung via direct effects on immune cell function and lymphoid architecture.

A historic deal has been struck at the UN's COP27 summit that will see rich nations pay poorer countries for damage and economic losses caused by climate change

It ends almost 30 years of waiting by nations facing huge climate impacts.

But developed nations left dissatisfied over progress on cutting fossil fuels.

"A clear commitment to phase-out all fossil fuels? Not in this text," said the UK's Alok Sharma, who was president of the previous COP summit in Glasgow.

Major industry groups like the London-based Global Cement and Concrete Association and the Illinois-based Portland Cement Association have now released detailed road maps for reducing the 8 percent that cement-making is contributing to the total of CO2 emissions, to zero by 2050.

Many of their strategies rely on emerging technologies; even more are a matter of scaling up alternative materials and underutilized practices that have been around for decades. And all can be understood in terms of the three chemical reactions that characterize concrete’s life cycle: calcination, hydration, and carbonation.

It was a matter of time. Sooner or later everyone will do it.

When the technology is mature and the adoption rate high enough, cut back subsidies.

Hydrogen is touted as a wonder fuel for everything from transport to home heating — but greener and more efficient options are often available.

The problem is that hydrogen is not freely available. On Earth, it exists mostly in molecules bound to other elements, from which it must be extracted at huge energetic cost.

Policymakers should beware potential unintended negative consequences for both people and the planet from an overwrought dash for hydrogen.

Blood that has been grown in a laboratory has been put into people in a world-first clinical trial, UK researchers say

Tiny amounts - equivalent to a couple of spoonfuls - are being tested to see how it performs inside the body.

The bulk of blood transfusions will always rely on people regularly rolling up their sleeve to donate.

But the ultimate goal is to manufacture vital, but ultra-rare, blood groups that are hard to get hold of.

These are necessary for people who depend on regular blood transfusions for conditions such as sickle cell anaemia.

The summit in Egypt could be the world’s best hope of progress on the climate issue

The latest UN climate summit - COP27 - is reckoned to be the world's best hope of progress on the climate issue.

Progress is certainly needed.

The global effort to cut emissions is "woefully inadequate" and means the world is on track for "catastrophe", the UN warned last week.

But the meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh is shaping up to be a prickly and confrontational affair.

Scientists developed iron oxide nanoparticles with water-resistant coatings. They showed that microplastics in water bind to the particles, which can then be removed with a magnet.

The paper is here.

By the end of the century, Africa will be home to 40% of the world’s population – and nowhere is this breakneck-pace development happening faster than this 600-mile stretch between Abidjan and Lagos.

>When I first started learning about climate change 15 years ago, I came to three conclusions. First, avoiding a climate disaster would be the hardest challenge people had ever faced. Second, the only way to do it was to invest aggressively in clean-energy innovation and deployment. And third, we needed to get going.

>If you are reading this over lunch on a plastic device in your climate-controlled concrete-and-steel office building that you took a bus to get to, you begin to see how more or less every aspect of our lives contributes to the problem.

High-profile initiatives to plant millions of trees are being touted by governments around the world as major contributions to fighting climate change.

But scientists say many of these projects are ill-conceived and poorly managed and often fail to grow any forests at all.

Geothermal systems carry warmth from Earth’s interior up to the surface for heating or electricity. But geothermal power plants are expensive to build, and will get even less economically viable as wind and solar power get cheaper and more plentiful. However, even as wind and solar grow, so does the need to store electricity from those temperamental sources.

A new proposal could solve those issues and bolster all three renewable technologies. The idea is simple—use advanced geothermal reservoirs to store excess wind and solar power in the form of hot water or steam, and bring up that heat when wind and solar aren’t available, to turn turbines for electricity.

>It would allow next-generation geothermal plants to break from the traditional baseload operating paradigm and earn much greater value as suppliers of wind and solar,

says Wilson Ricks, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University.

About 15 years ago, government incentives helped to launch a biofuel boom in the United States. Ethanol factories now consume about 130 million metric tons of corn every year. It’s about a third of the country’s total corn harvest, and growing that corn requires more than 100,000 square kilometers of land.

In addition, more than 4 million metric tons of soybean oil is turned into diesel fuel annually, and that number is growing fast.

Scientists have long warned that biofuel production on this scale involves costs: It claims land that otherwise could grow food or, alternatively, grass and trees that capture carbon from the air and provide a home for birds and other wildlife.

But government agencies, relying on the results of economic models, concluded that those costs would be modest, and that replacing gasoline with ethanol or biodiesel would help to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals.

A clean, plentiful fuel so efficient Earth's entire annual supply could fit in a swimming pool. That's the dream, but the science is there, too

The hottest place in our solar system is not the Sun, as you might think, but a machine near a south Oxfordshire village called Culham. Housed inside a vast hangar, it’s a nuclear fusion experiment called JET, or Joint European Torus.

When operating, temperatures here can reach 150 million degrees Celsius – ten times hotter than the centre of the Sun. On December 21st 2021, JET set a new record by producing 59 megajoules of sustained energy through a process known as nuclear fusion.

59 megajoules isn’t a huge amount; just enough to power three domestic tumble dryer cycles. Nevertheless, as far as humanity is concerned, proof that nuclear fusion works is a very big deal indeed.

Fusion produces energy by fusing atomic nuclei together, the opposite of what happens in all nuclear power stations, where atomic nuclei are split through nuclear fission.

Once harnessed on a commercial scale, fusion could produce so much energy from so little raw material, that it may solve all of humanity’s energy problems in one fell swoop – amongst many other things.