Study—Berkeley soda tax falls flat

A Cornell-University of Iowa analysis of a soda tax passed last fall by voters in Berkeley, California – the first such city ordinance in the country – found the measure so far has fizzled, raising retail prices for high-calorie ...

Project uses crowd computing to improve water filtration

Nearly 800 million people worldwide don't have access to safe drinking water, and some 2.5 billion people live in precariously unsanitary conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Together, ...

Landmark fracking study finds no water pollution

The final report from a landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has found no evidence that chemicals or brine water from the gas drilling process moved upward to contaminate drinking water at one site ...

A new sense of urgency for energy cane and other energy crops

"Energy cane" may sound like a trendy sports drink, but it actually is among a new generation of energy crops that could yield up to 5 times more ethanol per acre than corn. They are the topic of the cover story in this week's ...

The first caffeine-'addicted' bacteria

Some people may joke about living on caffeine, but scientists now have genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to do that—literally. Their report in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology describes bacteria being "addicted" ...

Drinking water from the sea using solar energy

One of the main ways to obtain drinking water in hot, dry countries surrounded by sea or ocean is through desalination. European researchers developed a high-efficiency and low-cost desalination technology by exploiting solar ...

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