Nanoparticles to immunize plants against heat stress

Civil and Environmental Engineering's Greg Lowry and his team are creating nanoparticles (NP) and NP coatings that will revolutionize the agricultural industry. Already, his research has demonstrated that NPs that are coated ...

Egypt could face extreme water scarcity within the decade

Egypt will import more water than is supplied by the Nile, if the population and the economy continue to grow as projected—according to a new study from the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Changes to drylands with future climate change

A research team led by Washington State University has found that while drylands around the world will expand at an accelerated rate because of future climate change, their average productivity will likely be reduced.

Cleaner water through corn

Corn is America's top agricultural crop, and also one of its most wasteful. About half the harvest—stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs—remains as waste after the kernels have been stripped from the cobs. These leftovers, ...

Material may offer cheaper alternative to smart windows

If you've ever blown up a balloon or pulled at a pair of pantyhose, you may have noticed that the more the material stretches, the more transparent it becomes. It's a simple enough observation: the thinner a material, the ...

Self-folding structure could slash energy use in buildings

Princeton student Denisa Buzatu's vision for an environmentally sustainable building is a sort of shape-shifting origami façade. For her senior thesis, Buzatu, a civil and environmental engineering major, is designing and ...

A smarter habitat for deep space exploration

In order to explore the moon or Mars, astronauts need smart habitats that will support life and remain operational when they are vacant. To advance the design of autonomous systems for space habitats, NASA is funding a multi-university ...

Step by step toward more efficient chemical synthesis

Chemical engineering conventionally divides the process from raw materials to finished product into unit operations. EU-funded researchers developed software tools to evaluate integration of two or more units for optimisation ...

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