A startup in the UK is recovering important manufacturing metals without energy-hungry smelting methods.
Using an intense solvent at room temperature, shredded circuit boards can have plastic retaining components left behind, while metals like gold, cobalt, and copper are selectively dissolved and made available for recovery with simple magnets.
It’s one part recycling research, one part national security, as governments around the world attempt to secure long-term supplies of these metals for tech and defense sectors.
Look across the hard news sections from around the world, from the financial pages to politics, conflict, and international development, and these days you’ll inevitably find two alternating terms that stand out for their relative novelty and repetition: ‘critical’ or ‘rare earth’ minerals.
These terms refer to what many Americans and Brits have taken for granted over the years: copper, lithium, nickel; which have now become key components in geopolitical strategies worldwide.
Yet one of the richest sources of these minerals in the West could be the circuit boards embedded in the millions of broken and discarded devices that pile up higher and higher every year.
“What you see with this pile of electricals is actually central to geopolitics at the moment,” Executive Director of nonprofit Material Focus in the UK, Scott Butler, told Reuters in front of a giant mound of discarded electronics, which his organization helps collect and ‘mine.’
“All the shenanigans of 2025 with calls on taking over [Greenland], disputes over land in Ukraine, big mines coming in Latin America, and geopolitical relations with China, this is all about the materials that’s inside this urban mine of tech. It’s lithium, it’s cobalt, it’s nickel, it’s gold, it’s aluminum, and steel. And this is why it’s really, really important. This isn’t just a pile of old tech, a pile of mess, this is the future.”
DEScycle uses deep eutectic solvents to extract metals from the UK’s electronic waste that would normally have been sent to Japan. Once there, the plastic components would be incinerated, and the metals recovered in a molten soup. Not only is there a large emissions impact from shipping it to Japan in the first place, but running the furnace as well.
But this is in a case where the E-waste was recycled, which is hardly the norm. In 2024 alone, the UN estimated that some three-fourths of all electronic waste wasn’t accounted for in recycling streams, leaving an estimated $62 billion worth of natural resources buried or sitting idly in landfills.
According to Reuters, DEScycle is set to incorporate its solvent-based method into the waste processing stream of a leading UK recycler, promising progress where little has been made.
Aware of the E-waste problem in its country, however, the Royal Mint has also been investing and sponsoring ways of extracting gold from discarded circuit boards in the UK, and in 2024 they opened a large processing plant for recovering this gold that boasts the capacity to break down 4,000 metric tons of circuit boards every year, amounting to hundreds of kilograms of the yellow metal.
But the really cool thing about the process is that the British government isn’t pocketing the gold, but rather minting standardized gold coins to back the shares of an electronically traded physical gold fund that allows investors to diversify into gold without any environmentally damaging mining activities taking place. Recyclers Switch from Smelting to Solvents, Recovering Precious Metals from E-waste with Fewer Emissions
More than a century after its invention, illustrators still use a lit bulb to symbolize a great idea. Credit typically goes to inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison, who created the first commercial light and power system in the United States.
But as a historian and author of a book about how electric lighting changed the U.S., I know that the actual story is more complicated and interesting. It shows that complex inventions are not created by a single genius, no matter how talented he or she may be, but by many creative minds and hands working on the same problem.
Thomas Edison didn’t invent the basic design of the incandescent light bulb, but he made it reliable and commercially viable.
Making light − and delivering it
In the 1870s, Edison raced against other inventors to find a way of producing light from electric current. Americans were keen to give up their gas and kerosene lamps for something that promised to be cleaner and safer. Candles offered little light and posed a fire hazard. Some customers in cities had brighter gas lamps, but they were expensive, hard to operate and polluted the air.
When Edison began working on the challenge, he learned from many other inventors’ ideas and failed experiments. They all were trying to figure out how to send a current through a thin carbon thread encased in glass, making it hot enough to glow without burning out.
In England, for example, chemist Joseph Swan patented an incandescent bulb and lit his own house in 1878. Then in 1881, at a great exhibition on electricity in Paris, Edison and several other inventors demonstrated their light bulbs.
Edison’s version proved to be the brightest and longest-lasting. In 1882 he connected it to a full working system that lit up dozens of homes and offices in downtown Manhattan.
But Edison’s bulb was just one piece of a much more complicated system that included an efficient dynamo – the powerful machine that generated electricity – plus a network of underground wires and new types of lamps. Edison also created the meter, a device that measured how much electricity each household used, so that he could tell how much to charge his customers.
Edison’s invention wasn’t just a science experiment – it was a commercial product that many people proved eager to buy.
Inventing an invention factory
As I show in my book, Edison did not solve these many technical challenges on his own.
At his farmhouse laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison hired a team of skilled technicians and trained scientists, and he filled his lab with every possible tool and material. He liked to boast that he had only a fourth grade education, but he knew enough to recruit men who had the skills he lacked. Edison also convinced banker J.P. Morgan and other investors to provide financial backing to pay for his experiments and bring them to market.
Historians often say that Edison’s greatest invention was this collaborative workshop, which he called an “invention factory.” It was capable of launching amazing new machines on a regular basis. Edison set the agenda for its work – a role that earned him the nickname “the wizard of Menlo Park.”
Here was the beginning of what we now call “research and development” – the network of universities and laboratories that produce technological breakthroughs today, ranging from lifesaving vaccines to the internet, as well as many improvements in the electric lights we use now.
Sparking an electric revolution
Many people found creative ways to use Edison’s light bulb. Factory owners and office managers installed electric light to extend the workday past sunset. Others used it for fun purposes, such as movie marquees, amusement parks, store windows, Christmas trees and evening baseball games.
Theater directors and photographers adapted the light to their arts. Doctors used small bulbs to peer inside the body during surgery. Architects and city planners, sign-makers and deep-sea explorers adapted the new light for all kinds of specialized uses. Through their actions, humanity’s relationship to day and night was reinvented – often in ways that Edison never could have anticipated.
Today people take for granted that they can have all the light they need at the flick of a switch. But that luxury requires a network of power stations, transmission lines and utility poles, managed by teams of trained engineers and electricians. To deliver it, electric power companies grew into an industry monitored by insurance companies and public utility regulators.
Edison’s first fragile light bulbs were just one early step in the electric revolution that has helped create today’s richly illuminated world.
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Pink circles show the systems closest to tipping points. Some would have regional effects, such as loss of coral reefs. Others are global, such as the beginning of the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. Global Tipping Points Report, CC BY-ND
As the planet warms, it risks crossing catastrophic tipping points: thresholds where Earth systems, such as ice sheets and rain forests, change irreversibly over human lifetimes.
Scientists have long warned that if global temperatures warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with before the Industrial Revolution, and stayed high, they would increase the risk of passing multiple tipping points. For each of these elements, like the Amazon rain forest or the Greenland ice sheet, hotter temperatures lead to melting ice or drier forests that leave the system more vulnerable to further changes.
Pink circles show the systems closest to tipping points. Some would have regional effects, such as loss of coral reefs. Others are global, such as the beginning of the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. Global Tipping Points Report, CC BY-ND
The term “tipping point” is often used to illustrate these problems, but apocalyptic messages can leave people feeling helpless, wondering if it’s pointless to slam the brakes. As a geoscientist who has studied the ocean and climate for over a decade and recently spent a year on Capitol Hill working on bipartisan climate policy, I still see room for optimism.
It helps to understand what a tipping point is – and what’s known about when each might be reached.
Tipping points are not precise
A tipping point is a metaphor for runaway change. Small changes can push a system out of balance. Once past a threshold, the changes reinforce themselves, amplifying until the system transforms into something new.
The scientific reality of tipping points is more complicated than crossing a temperature line. Instead, different elements in the climate system have risks of tipping that increase with each fraction of a degree of warming.
For example, the beginning of a slow collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which could raise global sea level by about 24 feet (7.4 meters), is one of the most likely tipping elements in a world more than 1.5 C warmer than preindustrial times. Some models place the critical threshold at 1.6 C (2.9 F). More recent simulations estimate runaway conditions at 2.7 C (4.9 F) of warming. Both simulations consider when summer melt will outpace winter snow, but predicting the future is not an exact science.
Gradients show science-based estimates from the Global Tipping Points Report of when some key global or regional climate tipping points are increasingly likely to be reached. Every fraction of a degree increases the likeliness, reflected in the warming color. Global Tipping Points Report 2025, CC BY-ND
Forecasts like these are generated using powerful climate models that simulate how air, oceans, land and ice interact. These virtual laboratories allow scientists to run experiments, increasing the temperature bit by bit to see when each element might tip.
Their nine core tipping elements include large-scale components of Earth’s climate, such as ice sheets, rain forests and ocean currents. They also simulated thresholds for smaller tipping elements that pack a large punch, including die-offs of coral reefs and widespread thawing of permafrost.
The world may have already passed one tipping point, according to the 2025 Global Tipping Points Report: Corals reefs are dying as marine temperatures rise. Healthy reefs are essential fish nurseries and habitat and also help protect coastlines from storm erosion. Once they die, their structures begin to disintegrate. Vardhan Patankar/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Some tipping elements, such as the East Antarctic ice sheet, aren’t in immediate danger. The ice sheet’s stability is due to its massive size – nearly six times that of the Greenland ice sheet – making it much harder to push out of equilibrium. Model results vary, but they generally place its tipping threshold between 5 C (9 F) and 10 C (18 F) of warming.
Other elements, however, are closer to the edge.
Alarm bells sounding in forests and oceans
In the Amazon, self-perpetuating feedback loops threaten the stability of the Earth’s largest rain forest, an ecosystem that influences global climate. As temperatures rise, drought and wildfire activity increase, killing trees and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn makes the forest hotter and drier still.
Rising temperatures also threaten biodiversity underwater.
The second Global Tipping Points Report, released Oct. 12, 2025, by a team of 160 scientists including Lenton, suggests tropical reefs may have passed a tipping point that will wipe out all but isolated patches.
Coral loss on the Great Barrier Reef. Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Corals rely on algae called zooxanthellae to thrive. Under heat stress, the algae leave their coral homes, draining reefs of nutrition and color. These mass bleaching events can kill corals, stripping the ecosystem of vital biodiversity that millions of people rely on for food and tourism.
Low-latitude reefs have the highest risk of tipping, with the upper threshold at just 1.5 C, the report found. Above this amount of warming, there is a 99% chance that these coral reefs tip past their breaking point.
Similar alarms are ringing for ocean currents, where freshwater ice melt is slowing down a major marine highway that circulates heat, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC.
The AMOC carries warm water northward from the tropics. In the North Atlantic, as sea ice forms, the surface gets colder and saltier, and this dense water sinks. The sinking action drives the return flow of cold, salty water southward, completing the circulation’s loop. But melting land ice from Greenland threatens the density-driven motor of this ocean conveyor belt by dilution: Fresher water doesn’t sink as easily.
The Amazon forest has been losing tree cover to logging, farming, ranching, wildfires and a changing climate. Pink shows areas with greater than 75% tree canopy loss from 2001 to 2024. Blue is tree cover gain from 2000 to 2020. Global Forest Watch, CC BY
Other changes driven by rising global temperatures, like melting permafrost, could be reversed. Permafrost, for example, could refreeze if temperatures drop again.
Risks are too high to ignore
Despite the uncertainty, tipping points are too risky to ignore. Rising temperatures put people and economies around the world at greater risk of dangerous conditions.
But there is still room for preventive actions – every fraction of a degree in warming that humans prevent reduces the risk of runaway climate conditions. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions slows warming and tipping point risks.
Tipping points highlight the stakes, but they also underscore the climate choices humanity can still make to stop the damage.
This article was updated to clarify permafrost discussion.
Climate change is the biggest issue of our time. 2024 marked both the hottest year on record and the highest levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the past two million years.
Global warming increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, bushfires, floods and droughts. These are already affecting young people, who will experience the challenges for more of their lives than older people.
It will also adversely affect those not yet born, creating a crisis of intergenerational justice.
Caught in the changing climate
In 2025, children and young people comprise a third of Australia’s population.
Given their early stage of physiological and cognitive development, children are more vulnerable to climate disasters such as crop failures, river floods and drought.
They are also less able to protect themselves from the associated trauma than most older people.
Under current emissions trajectories, United Nations research warns every child in Australia could be subject to more than four heatwaves a year. It’s estimated more than two million Australian children could be living in areas where heatwaves will last longer than four days.
A recent report found more than one million children and young people in Australia experience a climate disaster or extreme weather event in an “average year”.
Those in remote areas, from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and Indigenous children are more likely to be negatively effected. That’s equivalent to one in six children, and numbers are rising.
Anxiety, frustration and fear
The impact of climate change on young people’s health and wellbeing is also significant. Globally, young people bear the greatest psychological burden associated with the impacts of climate change.
Feelings such as frustration, fear and anxiety related to climate change are compounded by the experience of extreme weather events and associated health impacts.
Intergenerational inequality is the term on the lips of policymakers in Canberra and beyond. In this four-part series, we’ve asked leading experts what’s making younger generations worse off and how policy could help fix it.
For young people who live through climate-related disasters, they may experience challenges with education, displacement, housing insecurity and financial difficulties.
All these come on top of other issues. These include increased socioeconomic inequality, rising child poverty, mounting education debt, precarious employment, and lack of access to affordable housing.
Some key policy figures understand how climate change is turbo-charging intergenerational unfairness.
Former treasury secretary Ken Henry described the situation as an “intergenerational tragedy”, referring to the ways Australian policymakers are failing to address the changing climate, among other crucial issues.
Even Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged “intergenerational fairness is one of the defining principles of our country”.
Climate change was barely mentioned in the May 2025 federal election. The major parties largely avoided the subject.
It was also concerning that the first major decision of the newly reelected Albanese government was approving an extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project off Western Australia until 2070.
This leaves a legacy to young people of an additional 87 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year for many years to come.
Raising young voices
Australia’s children and young people are not stupid. Many worked out early that they could not trust governments.
Since 2018, young people have mobilised hundreds of thousands of other children in protests calling for climate action.
Domestically, many young people have turned to strategic climate litigation and collaboration with members of parliament on legislative change. They argue governments have a legal duty of care to prevent the harms of climate change.
Thwarted attempts
Beyond accelerating implementation of the National Adaptation Plan, other legislative innovations will help.
In 2023, young people worked with independent Senator David Pocock to draft legislation addressing these concerns.
This bill required governments to consider the health and wellbeing of children and future generations when deciding on projects that could exacerbate climate change.
It was sent to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. While all but one of 403 public submissions to the committee supported the bill, in June 2024 the Labor and Coalition members agreed to reject it. They argued it was difficult to quantify notions such as “wellbeing” or “material risk”.
Adding insult to injury, both major parties claimed Australia already had more than adequate environmental laws in place to protect children.
Turning around the Titanic
The Australian parliament may have another opportunity to embed a legislative duty to protect children and secure intergenerational justice. Independent MP Sophie Scamps introduced the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill in February 2025. As legislation brought before the parliament lapses once an election is called, Scamps is planning to reintroduce the bill in this sitting term.
The bill would introduce a legislative framework to embed the wellbeing of future generations into decision making processes. It would also establish a positive duty and create an independent commissioner for future generations to advocate for Australia’s long-term interests and sustainable practice.
While this bill does not include penalties for breaches of the duty, if passed, it would force the government of the day to consider the rights and interests of current and future generations.
If nothing else, the Welsh experiment suggests we can take entirely practical steps to promote intergenerational justice, reduce the negative impacts of climate change on young people right now and avert a climate catastrophe threatening our children who are yet to be born.
It may feel like turning around the Titanic, but it must be done.
Six cheetah cubs with their mother –Courtesy of Metro Richmond Zoo
At a zoo in Richmond, a raucous litter of cheetah cubs is delighting onlookers having spent the summer months growing in secret.
One of the largest litters born at the zoo, the three-month-old cubs are hitting milestones and progressing well towards adolescence.
Named after African capitals, such as Lusaka, Kampala, and Cairo, the cubs were born in April but were kept hidden away to develop in peace through their most sensitive period with mother Zuri.
Sprinting, jumping on each other, and investigating every object in their enclosure, they seem well on their way to becoming the world’s fastest land animal.
“Some are shy; one is bold and brave — that’s Lusaka,” said Kristina Coonley, a lead zookeeper at the Metro Richmond Zoo, Virginia. “[Cairo] is always the last one out and the last one to come in.”
Though just the 99th most populated city in America, the Richmond Zoo nevertheless boasts one of the country’s most prolific and successful cheetah breeding program for purposes of conservation. Zuri’s litter of 6 takes the total number of captive-born cubs in the program’s history to 167 since 2013.
Coonley told the Washington Post that the Cheetah Conservation Center looks carefully and genetics and disposition when deciding which of their cats are suitable for breeding. Zuri is 5 years old, and has already mothered one litter. Her partner was Ramses, a 13-year-old sire of 25 other cubs.
Though losing out on conservation column inches to the likes of the lion and tiger, cheetah are considered Vulnerable by the IUCN. With around 6,500 individuals across the whole of Africa, a relic populations in Iran, and a diminishing introduced population in India, they are the most at-risk of the African big cats because of their need for space befitting the world’s greatest sprinters.It’s no bad thing then that the Metro Richmond Zoo has seen even bigger litters than these 6, with a resident female last year bringing 9 little mohawked babies into the world. Six Baby Cheetahs Born in the Richmond Zoo's Prolific Breeding Program – 167 Cats Since 2013 (WATCH)
In South Africa, biologists and scientists have developed a novel way of disincentivizing poaching that will allow rhinos to keep hold of their horns.
Previously it was widespread practice to capture and de-horn rhinos to disincentivize poachers from killing them, but the lack of a horn deeply interfered with the animals’ social structures.
Instead, rhinos at a nursery in the northern province of Limpopo have had radioactive isotopes embedded into their horns. The idea is that the radiation given off by these isotopes will mark out anyone at any border crossing as having handled a rhino horn.
It’s a superior form of tracking because even if the tracker is removed the radiation remains on the horn, as well as anything that touches it.
Nuclear researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Radiation and Health Physics Unit in South Africa injected 20 live rhinos with these isotopes.
“We are doing this because it makes it significantly easier to intercept these horns as they are being trafficked over international borders because there is a global network of radiation monitors that have been designed to prevent nuclear terrorism,” Professor James Larkin who heads the project told Africa News. “And we’re piggybacking on the back of that.”
Larkin adds that innovation in poaching prevention is urgently needed, as all existing methods have limitations, and South Africa still loses tens of rhinos every year.
Professor Nithaya Chetty, dean of the science faculty at Witwatersrand, said the dosage of the radioactivity is very low and its potential negative impact on the animal was tested extensively.While poaching elephants for their ivory yields a unique material for sculpture and craft, rhino horn is trafficked to criminal groups in Asia who sell it for the incorrect belief that it contains therapeutic properties. Researchers Test Use of Nuclear Technology to Curb Rhino Poaching in South Africa
For years, a wasting disease has been turning sea stars to goo off the California coast. Scientists now finally know the cause, and are beginning to fight back.
Whether it has over 20 arms like the sunflower sea star, or just 5, billions of Pacific sea stars were being wiped out by an unknown assailant.
After four years of experiments from a huge collaborative effort led by the Hakai Institute, biologists finally identified the culprit: a kind of bacteria called Vibrio.
Devastating to coral, shellfish, and human beings, this strain of Vibrio has been labeled FHCF-3. The scientists determined it was the cause of the epidemic by examining what might be called the sea star’s blood. It doesn’t have blood as we would recognize it, but a circulatory fluid called coelomic fluid.
As to what is causing the spread of FHCF-3, ranging from Washington state down to the Baja Peninsula, the scientists point to warming waters.
“We have evidence that there is a link between increasing ocean temperatures and this sea star wasting disease epidemic,” said Melanie Prentice, one of the co-authors of the paper published on the discovery in Nature, to CBS News.
Sunflower sea stars, one of the species that’s been most affected, are voracious eaters of sea urchins. This slow motion game of lion and gazelle plays out on the seafloor and on reefs, and is a major cog in the overall machine of marine ecosystem stability.
Themselves voracious eaters of kelp, the urchins were unleashed following the sea star’s decline, and like the bacteria that decimated the sea stars, the urchins devastated the kelp.
With the cause identified, a large collaboration involving Prentice’s Hakai Institute, as well as the universities of British Columbia and Washington, the Nature Conservancy, Tula Foundation, US Geological Survey, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, are beginning to plan strategies for the sea stars’ recovery.
A breeding program for sunflower stars was set up between the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Birch Aquarium, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and the Sunflower Star Laboratory. Hundreds have already been raised, and biologists can now screen for the pathogen routinely.
Some of the juveniles are living in these aquariums, where members of the public can learn about the sea stars’ struggle to survive, and the critical role they play in the ecosystem.
WATCH the story below from CBS News’ ‘Project Earth’ segment…
But freediver Vitomir Maričić recently held his breath for a new world record of 29 minutes and three seconds, lying on the bottom of a 3-metre-deep pool in Croatia.
Vitomir Maričić set a new Guinness World Record for “the longest breath held voluntarily under water using oxygen”.
This is about five minutes longer than the previous world record set in 2021 by another Croatian freediver, Budimir Šobat.
Interestingly, all world records for breath holds are by freedivers, who are essentially professional breath-holders.
They do extensive physical and mental training to hold their breath under water for long periods of time.
So how do freedivers delay a basic human survival response and how was Maričić able to hold his breath about 60 times longer than most people?
Increased lung volumes and oxygen storage
Freedivers do cardiovascular training – physical activity that increases your heart rate, breathing and overall blood flow for a sustained period – and breathwork to increase how much air (and therefore oxygen) they can store in their lungs.
This includes exercise such as swimming, jogging or cycling, and training their diaphragm, the main muscle of breathing.
Diaphragmatic breathing and cardiovascular exercise train the lungs to expand to a larger volume and hold more air.
This means the lungs can store more oxygen and sustain a longer breath hold.
Oxygen is essential for all our cells to function and survive. But it is high carbon dioxide, not low oxygen that causes the involuntary reflex to breathe.
When someone holds their breath beyond this, they reach a “physiological break-point”. This is when their diaphragm involuntarily contracts to force a breath.
This is physically challenging and only elite freedivers who have learnt to control their diaphragm can continue to hold their breath past this point.
Indeed, Maričić said that holding his breath longer:
got worse and worse physically, especially for my diaphragm, because of the contractions. But mentally I knew I wasn’t going to give up.
Mental focus and control is essential
Those who freedive believe it is not only physical but also a mental discipline.
Freedivers train to manage fear and anxiety and maintain a calm mental state. They practice relaxation techniques such as meditation, breath awareness and mindfulness.
A male Montagu’s harrier in a wheat field – credit, Sumeetmoghe CC 4.0. BY-SA
Adrift amongst a sea of wheat on an English farm, 4 extremely rare birds have successfully fledged, and are almost ready to strike out on their own.
The successfully raised chicks are Montagu’s harriers, England’s rarest breeding bird, and the news the young ones were flying was herald as an “incredible” accomplishment.
For months, tall predator-proof wire fencing has surrounded the nest, sat in the middle of a private landowner’s field of milling wheat.
Conservationists from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) have worked hand in hand with landowers for years to ensure the harrier clings on.
For six years, no chicks have survived to fledge; an unsustainable trend as the population is incredibly small. Nesting on the ground in wheat fields puts the chicks at risk of predators like foxes, and machines like combine harvesters and crop sprayers.
Populations are much higher in Spain and France, but on Great Britain, each breeding pair has to be monitored from start to finish of the breeding season. In this case, a pair returning from their wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa were spotted moving into a field in an undisclosed part of the country.
Once it was confirmed via drone that they had nested, RSPB sprung into action, installing predator-proof fencing and monitoring cameras.
Channel 4 reported that the fences are marked out with flags so that combines can steer well clear of the nests and the chicks, which strangely don’t seem to give a tweet about the giant, noisy machines of death passing by.
As for the farmer, one might think they’d take issue with the lost crop, but quite the contrary.
“It’s fantastic to have these amazing birds on the farm and a just reward for the extensive conservation work we have been undertaking for decades,” the farmer who owns the land where this particular nest was located, told the RSPB.
In South Africa, biologists and scientists have developed a novel way of disincentivizing poaching that will allow rhinos to keep hold of their horns.
Previously it was widespread practice to capture and de-horn rhinos to disincentivize poachers from killing them, but the lack of a horn deeply interfered with the animals’ social structures.
Instead, rhinos at a nursery in the northern province of Limpopo have had radioactive isotopes embedded into their horns. The idea is that the radiation given off by these isotopes will mark out anyone at any border crossing as having handled a rhino horn.
It’s a superior form of tracking because even if the tracker is removed the radiation remains on the horn, as well as anything that touches it.
Nuclear researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Radiation and Health Physics Unit in South Africa injected 20 live rhinos with these isotopes.
“We are doing this because it makes it significantly easier to intercept these horns as they are being trafficked over international borders because there is a global network of radiation monitors that have been designed to prevent nuclear terrorism,” Professor James Larkin who heads the project told Africa News. “And we’re piggybacking on the back of that.”
Larkin adds that innovation in poaching prevention is urgently needed, as all existing methods have limitations, and South Africa still loses tens of rhinos every year.
Professor Nithaya Chetty, dean of the science faculty at Witwatersrand, said the dosage of the radioactivity is very low and its potential negative impact on the animal was tested extensively.While poaching elephants for their ivory yields a unique material for sculpture and craft, rhino horn is trafficked to criminal groups in Asia who sell it for the incorrect belief that it contains therapeutic properties. Researchers Test Use of Nuclear Technology to Curb Rhino Poaching in South Africa
Have you ever seen images of dolphins jumping out of the waves and performing impressive acrobatics in the air? Or maybe you’ve seen it in real life?
When a dolphin jumps, it can launch its whole body out of the water. While it looks like fun, it must also be hard work!
So, why do dolphins jump out of the water? There are several possible reasons. Let’s jump in and explore them.
To stay in touch
Dolphins are social animals and live in groups. But it’s hard to see long distances underwater. So, they use the power of sound to stay in contact with each other.
Sound travels much farther underwater than through the air. When dolphins jump, the slap of the landing makes a loud noise, and would be heard some distance away.
Some species, such as spinner dolphins, use jumping to communicate their location to other group members, especially at night. This helps them keep track of each other.
As an aside, spinner dolphins are very skilled jumpers. As the name suggests, they spin up to seven times in the air before landing back in the water!
Spinner dolphins are the acrobats of the sea.
The need for speed
Have you ever tried to walk underwater? You will have felt how hard it is. That’s because water is more dense than air, which creates a “drag”, or resistance.
Dolphins have streamlined bodies to reduce drag, but they still feel it. So, if they want to travel quickly – for example, if they are trying to escape a predator or hunt fish – they sometimes jump.
While in the air, they travel faster than they would through water, and also save energy.
To gather food
Some dolphins weigh less than 50 kilograms, such as the Hector’s dolphin. Others weigh several tonnes, such as an orca.
Either way, when a dolphin crashes back into the water, you can be sure it makes quite a noisy splash.
Some dolphin species, such as dusky dolphins, use this noise to herd fish at the surface to make them easier to capture.
Shaking off hitchhikers
Fish called remoras can attach themselves to dolphins using a sucker on their head. This is good for the fish, because it can keep them safe and they have plenty to eat, such as small parasites and old bits of dolphin skin.
While the remoras don’t hurt the dolphin, they probably slow it down. So dolphins may try to get rid of the little hitchhikers by jumping to dislodge them.
Sometimes, that social behaviour can end in a “fight”. Dolphin experts say two dolphins jumping around together might be actually trying to hit each other!
Dolphins also love to frolic – not just with each other but with other marine mammals such as whales and sea lions, with turtles – or even just a piece of seaweed! So they might jump as some sort of “game”.
As you can see, dolphins may jump for a range of reasons – sometimes just because it’s really fun!
UWM PhD student Joel Roberts is the founder of Shepherd Traffic, a company that uses computer vision, geometry and smart algorithms to capture more detailed and accurate traffic data than what’s currently available. (UWM Photo/Laura Otto)
Joel Roberts really hates sitting at red lights – especially the ones that hold you hostage while not a single car passes in the cross-direction.
“Sitting in traffic bothers me,” said Roberts, a PhD student in civil engineering at UWM. “So, getting drivers through intersections efficiently is interesting to math guys like myself because it’s basically an optimization problem.”
Now, that everyday frustration has fueled something bigger: an award-winning startup.
Roberts is the founder of Shepherd Traffic, a company that uses computer vision, geometry and smart algorithms to capture more detailed and accurate traffic data than what’s currently available. The idea is to let the computer do the watching – and the counting.
When traffic management professionals need to time a light or redesign roads, the initial data they need are object counts and classifications, which you can take from videos.
Traffic lights usually run on fixed timing patterns that do not respond to the small nuances of traffic, Roberts said. Timings get the main gist of traffic, but they can’t optimize every exact situation. A fully adaptive system would.
“The first thing I built was an algorithm that recognizes and calculates the delay for every object – cars, trucks, bikes, pedestrians – at any given point when the light changes,” he said. “It figures out the best moment to switch to minimize everyone’s wait.”
His system doesn’t just count objects. It logs trajectories and could help predict movement.
And unlike many competitors who still rely on manual traffic counting (clipboards and all), Roberts’ approach is automated – making it faster, cheaper and more scalable.
From idea to incubator
The turning point came two years ago when Roberts took his idea to UWM’s Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. Encouraged by friends, he applied to I-Corps, a national program that helps turn university research into startups.
He applied to the program as a community member and met Xiao Qin, UWM professor of civil engineering and an expert in traffic systems. Qin not only agreed to help him but also encouraged Roberts to pursue his graduate studies at UWM, where he also received an assistantship.
As a graduate student in the department, Roberts could work on his startup as part of his academic research.
That turned out to be pivotal to advancing his goals, Roberts said.
“I needed time to work on this project, deeper expertise and a way to support myself while doing it,” he said. “I’m grateful to Dr. Qin, who also is an expert in many aspects of what I’m building my business on.”
The road ahead
Through I-Corps, Roberts learned that it’s not uncommon for 40% of traffic project budgets to be spent just on data collection. That’s a huge opportunity, he said, especially if his system can deliver better results at a lower cost.
Looking ahead, he plans to expand his data capabilities to include pedestrians — often overlooked in traffic studies — and to add the aspect of data involving “near misses,” a topic that Qin has conducted research on.
He hopes his system can one day help forecast risky driving behavior — such as the likelihood of someone running a red light. It’s the kind of insight that could transform how cities plan intersections, adjust signal timing and improve safety.
He’s also exploring two business models: selling the traffic insights directly or licensing the software behind them.For now, the demand may be modest. But as smart cities grow and infrastructure modernizes, Roberts believes his vision for data-driven intersections will be right on time. How math and impatient driving inspired student's award-winning startup
Japanese scientists were thrilled to receive significant interest from the packaging industry over their new seawater-degradable plastic.
Breaking apart into nutritious compounds for ocean-borne bacteria in just 2 to 3 hours depending on the size and thickness, the invention could be a major solution to reducing plastic waste in the environment.
GNN has previously reported that the amount of plastic waste in the ocean is currently overestimated by 3,000%, making the remaining total a much-more addressable challenge.
To that end, researchers at a lab in Wako city near Tokyo used two ionic monomers to form a salt bond for the basis of the polymer plastic. Despite being strong and flexible like normal petroleum-based plastics, the material is highly vulnerable to salt and immersion in salty ocean water dissolves the plastic in short order.
Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the University of Tokyo who developed the plastic don’t have any detailed plans for commercialization, but they have been contacted by members of the packaging industry with significant interest.
The plastic is non-toxic, non-flammable, and doesn’t emit CO2. It won’t leach chemicals and microplastics into one’s body as is the case with normal plastic water bottles, packaging, take-away containers, and so on.
Additionally, because there are small amounts of sodium in most of the world’s soils, the plastic will break down in a matter of weeks if buried.“Children cannot choose the planet they will live on. It is our duty as scientists to ensure that we leave them with best possible environment,” said the research team leader Takuzo Aida. Scientists in Japan Develop Non-Toxic Plastic That Dissolves in Seawater Within Hours
An invention from the UK features diamonds in the first-ever application of the gemstone in battery technology.
Promising to last thousands of years, the microwatt power sources are seen as the perfect solution to devices in environments where neither changing batteries nor carrying around extras are options.
Developed by the University of Bristol in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), the battery contains a radioactive isotope of carbon called carbon-14.
Isotopes are forms of chemical elements with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. Some are stable, but those that aren’t are radioactive and emit radiation as they decay.
In the battery, a radioactive carbon-14 isotope is encased inside a shell of diamond, the hardest substance known to man.
“Diamond batteries offer a safe, sustainable way to provide continuous microwatt levels of power. They are an emerging technology that use a manufactured diamond to safely encase small amounts of carbon-14,” said Sarah Clark, the director of Tritium Fuel Cycle at the (UKAEA), in a statement.
Electricity via the battery is generated in a way similar to a solar panel through the betavoltaic effect—harnessing the electrons emitted by the carbon-14 and captured by the diamond matrix.
Carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5,700 years, meaning that it would be several thousand years before the diamond Duracell bunny inside would start to tire out, making it ideal for spacecraft and satellites which can’t undergo maintenance easily, or in medical devices like pacemakers which have to be implanted and which cannot for the sake of the user have a battery change on the go.
“Our micropower technology can support a whole range of important applications from space technologies and security devices through to medical implants,” Tom Scott, a professor in materials at the University of Bristol, said in the statement. “We’re excited to be able to explore all of these possibilities, working with partners in industry and research, over the next few years.”The idea gives a whole new meaning to that old adage about how diamonds are forever. World's First Diamond Battery Could Power Spacecraft and Pacemakers for Thousands of Years
Hatchlings of Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoise Credit: Philadelphia Zoo
The Philadelphia Zoo is overjoyed to announce the hatching of four critically endangered Galapagos tortoises for the first time in the Zoo’s 150 year history.
The parents, Western Santa Cruz tortoises, are the Zoo’s two oldest residents, each estimated to be around 100 years old.
Additionally, the female named Mommy is considered one of the most genetically valuable of her species in the Survival Plan of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). She is also the oldest first-time mom of her species.
The hatchlings are currently eating and growing normally “behind-the-scenes” inside the Reptile and Amphibian House. The first one hatched on February 27 and the animal care team is still monitoring more eggs that could hatch in the coming weeks.
They will make their public debut on April 23, which is the 93rd anniversary of Mommy’s arrival at the Zoo.
The babies are part of the AZA breeding program to ensure the survival of this species, which are listed as “critically endangered”.
The last clutch of Western Santa Cruz tortoises to hatch in an AZA accredited zoo was in 2019 at Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina. Other zoos with breeding pairs of this species include San Diego Zoo, Zoo Miami and Honolulu Zoo.
Galapagos tortoise egg hatched – Credit: Philadelphia Zoo
“This successful outcome comes from years of hard work studying animal behavior and providing top-level care. Until now, Mommy’s genes were not represented in the AZA population, making these offspring extremely important in the protection of this species,” said Philadelphia Zoo Director of Herpetology Lauren Augustine.
The animal care team worked diligently to provide the right conditions for Mommy to lay her eggs and for them to incubate and successfully hatch
In December 2020, the father of the new hatchlings, Abrazzo, came to the Zoo on a breeding recommendation from Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina. New substrate was purchased—nesting material like sand and soil for Mommy to lay her eggs in—Abrazzo’s behaviors were studied to see how he spent his time. Since 2023, Mommy has laid a total of four clutches of eggs, but the three prior tries did not result in viable eggs.
After Mommy laid her 16 eggs in November 2024, the reptile and amphibian team dug them up to incubate them–expecting the eggs to hatch between four and eight months later.
The hatchlings will remain at the Zoo for at least five years.
Officials will then work with the AZA to determine when and if the hatchlings will move to different facilities. Prior to their arrival, there were only 44 individual Western Santa Cruz Giant tortoises in all U.S. zoos combined, so these newest additions represent a new genetic lineage and some much-needed help to the species’ population.
At one point, each of the Galapagos Islands had its own unique subspecies of tortoise (with the ability to live between 100-200 years)‚ but sadly, several of them are now extinct, although scientists estimate there are currently 13 living species that are native to seven of the islands.
“Hatched in the wild, Mommy arrived at the Zoo in 1932, meaning anyone that has visited the Zoo for the last 92 years has likely seen her,” said Philadelphia Zoo President Dr. Jo-Elle Mogerman.
100-yo Galapagos tortoise named Mommy – Credit: Philadelphia Zoo
“Philadelphia Zoo’s vision is that those hatchlings will be a part of a thriving population of Galapagos tortoises on our healthy planet 100 years from now.”
A sunflower sea star – credit, Ed Bierman CC 2.0.
A male Montagu’s harrier in a wheat field – credit, 
GNN-created image
Hatchlings of Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoise Credit: Philadelphia Zoo
Galapagos tortoise egg hatched – Credit: Philadelphia Zoo
