1 . In a Parisian old shoe factory on the city ‘s outskirts, a new kind of life is taking root. Neoplants, a startup from Paris, has developed a special houseplant that could potentially help improve indoor air quality by removing harmful pollutants.

The plant is a modified variety of one of the most popular and low-maintenance houseplants. Its DNA has been altered to enhance its capacity to absorb volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air we breathe inside our homes. These VOCs include substances like formaldehyde, benzene. toluene. ethylbenzene, and xylene, which are commonly found indoors and can be harmful in large quantities.

The genetic tweaking also allows the plant to convert the absorbed VOCs into substances it can use. such as sugars and carbon dioxide, which then fuel its growth. While Neoplants’concept is quite promising, proving its effectiveness is a challenge.

Plant shops often claim their greenery can purify the air, but much of this belief stems from research conducted by NASA back in 1989. They found that houseplants could indeed absorb certain toxins. However, achieving the same level of toxin removal as simply opening a window would require an impractical number of plants—anywhere from 10 to 1.000 per square meter.

So, does Neoplants’genetically modified houseplant offer a better solution? Field tests haven’t yielded definitive results yet, but there is hope for more conclusive testing in the future with the help of a new lab equipped with unique non-absorbent rooms that mimic real-life conditions . Additionally, the company is exploring potential applications for its gene-editing technology in areas such as carbon capture and phytoremediation, where plants are used to clean up contaminated environments

Neoplants is relying on patience and a bit of faith. It takes time for innovations to mature. “This will be the first time such a product exists.” says the company’s CEO. drawing a parallel to the early days of computers, which were not very powerful initially but still represented a significant breakthrough.

With Neoplants’ vision, the old shoe factory on the edge of Paris isn’t just a place where shoes were made; it’s where a novel approach to cleaning our indoor air is being cultivated—one that could someday make our homes healthier and more environmentally friendly.

3 . The Internet’s carbon footprint is as bad as air travel. While it is difficult to measure precisely, estimates place it at over two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions(排放)—the same as the air travel.

Information may appear to spread around the world unseen to our eyes, but it actually passes through enormous data centers placed strategically about the globe, which store, organize and deliver everyone’s data. These centers are extremely energy intensive. In the EU, they consume close to three percent of its total energy usage and also require lots of water to prevent their computers from overheating. In the US, about a fifth of data centers draw water from already stressed water sources.

A typical spam email(垃圾邮件)emits around 0.03g of CO₂ emissions, though longer messages read on a laptop can go all the way up to 26g. Now multiply that by 333 billion(roughly the number of emails that get sent every day in 2022). That puts all those work emails into perspective. One study found if every British adult sent one less “thank you” email a day, it would save 16, 433 tons of carbon a year. It even predicted that the ICT industry could account for up to a fifth of the world’s energy consumption by 2025.

However, there are measures that we can take to reduce our digital carbon footprint. For instance, you can unsubscribe from marketing and other spam emails and only subscribe to newsletters that you still regularly read. Have regular data checks where you delete old contact lists and other documents that no longer have any use. Keep a clean inbox and delete emails you no longer need.

4 . No matter how many times Sandy has rescued an animal, she never gets over the casual cruelty some people display toward unwanted pets. When she lost her own “angel” dog, she started Logan’s Legacy to help other pets in need.

Sandy recently received a phone call about a small dog, possibly a puppy, that had been abandoned on a street. Since she was too far to help on, she called a friend who lives nearby to get there as soon as possible. When her friend Tom arrived, he found a tiny dog curled(蜷缩)in a tight ball with the chain firmly tied to a tree. Someone had left food and water for her, but the puppy was too frightened to eat or drink. Once gathered up in a blanket and placed into the back seat of the car, she began to get weak quickly from dehydration(脱水)and exhaustion.

The moment she got some water and food, the puppy made a rapid recovery, and her lovely and sweet personality could finally shine! “We have named her CiCi,” Sandy added, “She is feeling so much better. She has been observed at my place and she is doing great. This sweet baby girl will never feel fearful again, and won’t ever be abandoned again.” After winning hearts at Sandy’s office, CiCi has been approved for adopting and will soon leave for her new life. Sandy and her fellow rescuers are trying their best to find her the perfect family to love her and treat her with the respect all living creatures deserve!

6 . The opening of California’s commercial crab season, which normally starts in November, is delayed once again to protect whales searching for their prey (猎物) along the coast.

California has been affected by a marine heat wave since May. The Blob, as this mass of warm water has become known, is squeezing cooler water preferred by whales and their prey close to shore, where fishermen set their traps. This crowding can lead to tangle (缠结) between whales and fishing equipment, endangering the animals’ lives and requiring rescue missions.

In a new study, scientists say they can now use global temperature models, commonly used in climate science, to predict up to a year in advance when hot ocean temperatures raise the risk of tangles between whales and fishing equipment.The tool analyzed in the new study, called the Habitat Compression Index, works by feeding sea-surface temperature measurements into an equation (方程式) that estimates the likelihood of whale habitat shrinking closer to shore.Regulators and fishermen agree that the new forecasting research could help them walk the tightrope between protecting whales and protecting local livelihoods (生计).

Mr Ogg, a commercial fishing boat captain, describes himself as a conservationist who doesn’t want to see whales harmed.“Fishermen have a big motivation to protect the natural environment,” he said, “because that’s where they make their living.” Previously, the challenge was adapting to changing conditions and fishing regulations on short notice, especially for smaller business owners and their crews.“One of the biggest problems we had was the unpredictability,” Mr Ogg said, “We were living from week to week then.”

Though scientists have shown the Habitat Compression Index can now forecast months in advance, state officials would probably wait to see conditions in real time before making decisions about the crab fishery, said Ryan Bartling, an environmental scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

8 . The fruit-tree pinhole borer (针孔蛀虫), as its name implies, makes holes in fruit trees. It lays its eggs and raises its young in the galleries thus created . Yet the beetles (甲虫) do not feed directly on the wood they bore into. Instead, they devour fungi (真菌) that grow on the wood thus exposed.

Researchers have long suspected that this is a form of farming, because they have evidence that the beetles carry spores (孢子) of their preferred crop, R. sulphurea, into their smallholdings—in effect, sowing it there.

Observations of natural fruit-tree pinhole-bore r dwellings suggest that R. sulphurea grows in them more abundantly (大量地) than might be expected, given all the fungal competition around—but not why. To check whether the beetles are, indeed, weeding their crop, Janina Diehl and Peter Biedermann of the University of Freiburg did an experiment.

In the laboratory, they had mother beetles of the little wood bore restablish nests, in which the typical fungal gardens formed. But before the beetles had started laying their eggs, they collected all of the beetles and then returned half to their dwellings while leaving the other nests empty. Genetic analysis of the fungal gardens after 40 days showed that the presence of the beetles had greatly changed the fungal community. Twenty days after that, they sampled the gallery walls for fungi.

As they had hoped and expected, R. sulphurea was much more abundant in beetle-tended galleries than in those without residents. In the former, it made up half of the fungal mass extracted. In the latter, less than a third. These beetles are indeed weeding their crop.

“Further research into how exactly the beetles suppress the growth of weed fungi could alsoprovide worthwhile insights for human agriculture, which is struggling with weed resistance, for example,” says Biedermann. “It’s highly exciting for us to see how nature has been doing this for 60 million years. We humans can still learn something from these mechanisms.”