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Thirsty? Science hops to it

A changing climate is putting more pressure on the world’s supply of clean water. But an amphibian might have the answer.

A team of researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has developed a material that harvests atmospheric water more efficiently than current technologies. And it’s all thanks to a frog.

Listen to the Deep Dive:

Frogs don’t consume food and water the way we do. Food is taken in orally, but the eyeballs fall inward to push it down the throat. Water, however, is absorbed through their skin.

It was this process that inspired a new ultra-absorbent material that came exclusively from studying hydrogels. The gels create a barrier that keeps out contaminants but allows water to pass through.

CAPTION: Jeremy Cho, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
IMAGE: University of Nevada, Las Vegas

“A hydrogel is a soft polymeric material that can swell with water, meaning it is very permeable to water, just like skins in organisms,” says Jeremy Cho, one of the researchers on the team.

A hydrogen membrane and a liquid desiccant was the winning combination that permits rapid capture and large quantity storage for freshwater distillation.

“We observed that it could capture water at incredibly fast rates. We captured two to six liters per day per square meter of membrane area in Las Vegas air — the driest city in the United States,” Cho says.

The liquid desiccant attracts water and absorbs water vapor from the air, even when the relative humidity is as low as 10 percent.

The most challenging obstacle was to filter outside air particulates and contaminants. A hydrogel membrane was added between the desiccant and the air.

It sounds like an easy solution, but finding the just-right hydrogel took two years of experimentation resulting in two published papers. “It took a lot of careful hydrogel synthesis and experimentation to verify our theory,” he tells KUST Review.

| What’s new?

Though atmospheric water harvesting processes have been around for a long time, often repackaging old technologies, the team’s method is based on new tech.

“Our work is different in that we are not creating a new sorbent to be cycled, or relying on an old tech developed for a different application. We are presenting a new membrane-based method where water can be continuously captured into a liquid desiccant and released (distilled) in another location.

The segregation of processes is what’s key here as it allows you to separately optimize and control each process for better overall performance and efficiency. It gives us flexibility in how we can design a complete water-harvesting system. If we want to be solar or waste-heat or electrically powered, we can build different systems that still rely on the same membrane-based capture approach developed because of this flexibility,” Cho says.

| It’s not just for drinking

The majority of the market is focused on drinking water, which is only a fragment of overall water consumption, so the team initiated a start-up company with hopes its tech has a massive impact on sustainability and water sourcing.

Cho adds, “This approach was invented with water-stressed arid regions in mind, and sustainability has been part of the vision from the very beginning.”

This includes considering the current level of water stress and how their tech can impact water usage, conservation and regulation. Regulators are consistently looking toward lower consumption and water reclamation, and companies that look to environmental, social and governance factors when making investment calls are seeking to be water-neutral or water-positive.

Regulators in Nevada sometimes try to put off businesses from setting up there, based on their water-consumption forecasting. Cho and his team are hoping to eliminate this market barrier, enhancing the local economy.

| At what cost?

The problem is that these water solutions are more costly than tap water, but Cho says his team’s goal is to ensure their start-up company, WAVR Technologies, is focused on developing solutions to supply water to make up for these consumptive losses.

| Who is willing to pay the price?

Cho says there are many industries in Las Vegas looking for solutions, including real estate, hospitality, construction and high-tech manufacturing. “We’ve been talking to them, they’re all looking for a solution and are willing to pay for it. And from what we can tell right now, the amount they’re willing to pay seems to be achievable from a technoeconomic standpoint when we scale up our technology.”

“Climate change is real, and whether or not you accept the science that we are causing it, you are paying for it. In arid regions, it is extremely visible through our water resources, our utility bills, and our abilities to do business and live in our communities. We should be more responsible in how we use our water and do what we can to reclaim it. And whatever water we cannot reclaim, let’s consider sourcing that from the air—a hidden resource that surrounds us all,” Cho tells KUST Review.

The team at WAVR Technologies expects its first prototype to be ready by the end of 2025.

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The secret to healthy aging?

Everyone ages. Some of us live to a ripe old age, and many fight the process with anti-aging products. But the important thing is what we’re doing to make sure when we age, we do so well.

That doesn’t necessarily mean what it looks like to age on the outside, it’s also important to make sure our insides are taken care of. This secret may lie with the bowhead whale.

A team of researchers from New York have discovered that these Arctic giants have extremely efficient DNA-repair systems, which could explain their 200-year lifespans and cancer resistance.

For many years, scientists have hypothesized how such enormous animals avoid the health problems that seem to plague humans.

New research published in Nature offers an intriguing answer and it’s all about DNA repair.

Instead of having extra cancer-fighting genes, bowhead whales seem to have a built-in “genome maintenance crew” that keeps their DNA in tip top shape. Their cells fix broken DNA more precisely and quicker than ours, reducing errors that can lead to cancer or aging.

The star of this show is a protein called CIRBP (cold-inducible RNA-binding protein). Bowhead whales have it in spades, which isn’t surprising considering the climate of the Arctic homes. This protein improves the cell’s ability to fix DNA breaks and maintain chromosome stability.

When scientists introduced the protein into human cells and into fruit flies, it boosted DNA repair, slowed tumor growth and extended the lifespan.

More like this: Big mammals equal big impact

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NATURE’S
COOL IDEAS

While we can’t grow larger ears like the desert fox or elephant to radiate heat, we could learn from nature to solve some of the problems of a warming world.

Here are five ways nature has inspired methods to beat the heat.

From beetle to ultra-
white ceramic

Basic physics tells us that lighter colors absorb less light than darker ones, and therefore remain cooler. While ultra-white paints exist and reflect over 95 percent of the sunlight that hits them, regular paint suffers from durability issues when exposed to the elements on the outside of buildings.

Researchers at City University of Hong Kong developed a passive radiative cooling ceramic that can drastically cool buildings by reflecting sunlight and heat. The ceramic makes it tough and hardy, and the team says it should be relatively easy to scale up for mass production.

“Our work on cooling ceramic takes inspiration from the bio-whiteness observed in the whitest beetle,” lead author Zuankai Wang says.

“Nature offers us an abundance of intricate designs, efficient systems and sustainable solutions that have evolved over millions of years.”

The ceramic is based on the exoskeleton of the Cyphochilus, a genus of beetles with unusually bright white scales. The filaments that make the scales are just a few micrometers thick and tightly packed, which scatters almost the entire spectrum of light efficiently. Copying this structure allows the team’s ceramic to achieve a solar reflectivity of 99.6 percent.

Termites invented
air conditioning

If you compare the height of some of the biggest mounds with the termites that build them, it would be the equivalent of four Burj Khalifas stacked on top of each other compared with humans.

Much like the Burj Khalifa would be unbearable in the desert heat without air conditioning, so too would the termite mound. To combat this, the insects build a series of air pockets throughout, creating ventilation via convection.

A shopping mall in central Harare, Zimbabwe, copied the design of a termite mound in its architecture to develop a self-cooling system. The Eastgate Center has no conventional air-conditioning or heating systems and uses less than 10 percent of the energy of a conventional building the same size. As termites constantly open and close a series of heating and cooling vents in the mounds throughout the course of the day, so too does the Eastgate Center as outside air is drawn in through vertical ducts on the first floor and either warmed or cooled by the building mass depending on which is hotter, the concrete or the air.

Petal to
the metal

Anna Laura Pisello, University of Peurgia, Italy, thought the botanical world might offer solutions toward mitigating urban heat island effects.

“We first discovered several similarities between building systems and botanical systems, in particular flowers,” Pisello says. “Galanthus nivalus is a bell-shaped ‘hanging flower’ with white oblong flowers that bend to the ground.”

Pisello says urban geometry plays a particular role in establishing energy consumption and heating and cooling. The denser an area, the hotter it gets.

Flowers and their pollinators benefit from the warm air in the center of the flower, an observation at odds with the experience of residents in an urban heat island at the center of a city, but a study in light-colored flowers found that Galanthus nivalus exhibits a cooling effect. Infrared cameras showed a uniform temperature across the flower of 2.7 degrees lower than ambient. While researchers aren’t sure why this happens, the directional reflective property of the petals has been suggested as a possible contributor.

“A building envelope (all the building components that separate the indoors from the outdoors) is similar to flower petals,” Pisello says.

“Buildings surrounded by buildings in close proximity are like the layout of petals and building occupants interact in and among buildings, while pollinators forage inside flowers.”

Pisello thinks these flowers may have microstructures in the petals that reflect solar radiation out and keep the intra-floral area cool. When she took a picture of the flower, she observed a shiny lighting effect across the curving flower petals from the camera flash and says materials with such optical features could be possible solutions for building applications.

Copy the
chameleon

“Architects spend a lot of time and effort trying to solve their design problems. Actually, they just need to look at and learn from the surrounding environment,” says Yasmin Eid of Sinai University.

In looking at biomimicry, she points to the hexagonal-shaped building façade that drew inspiration from the chameleon and took first place in a competition for a mixed-use office building in Dubai.

Designed by Wanders Werner Falasi consulting architects, the building’s façade is made of hexagons that mechanically adapt to the sun’s trajectory. If they get too hot, they close. Each hexagon has fixed solar nano-cells in the exterior walls that collect sunlight during the day.

Any energy that isn’t used to run the building during the day is used to illuminate thousands of LEDs at night, like a chameleon changing color.

After all, chameleons don’t change color due to their mood, but for thermoregulation and camouflage. Eid says the chameleon can avoid about 45 percent of sun rays simply by changing colors. The cells in the skin that can do this are called chromatophores and are roughly hexagon-shaped, inspiring the hexagon façade of the Dubai office building.

Forestation to
fenestration

Mark Edward Alston’s research draws inspiration from trees and natural systems to improve glass building materials.

Specifically, the University of Salford Manchester researcher’s work focuses on designing intelligent glass surfaces that can manage solar absorbance and fluidic conductivity for better energy management, in a similar way that tree leaves manage sunlight.

His composite glass material absorbs solar energy to reduce heat gain inside buildings in the same way leaves absorb sunlight for photosynthesis but minimize the heat absorbed.

An adaptive layer in the glass dynamically adjusts to different environmental conditions to maximize efficiency.

Just as plants use a vascular system to distribute nutrients and water, the glass uses a fluidic network to manage heat, circulating a cooling fluid in real time based on the external temperature and sunlight intensity.

His approach aims to transform building facades into more adaptive and responsive energy systems, mirroring the multifunctional and self-regulating properties of trees.

“To truly create pioneering smart cities, at the forefront of low carbon production, could we embrace new bio-inspired technology solutions?” Alston asks. “These principles to actively manage the surface temperature of glass could change our buildings into climate modifiers and contribute to city resilience in an increasingly unpredictable climatic world.”

More like this: Looking to nature to improve our grids

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This disinfectant is delicious

That wipe you use to kill microbes on your kitchen counter might be feeding them instead.

A 2024 study out of the City University of Hong Kong suggests the functional abilities of some microbes that exist in built environments — like office buildings, homes, public transport and urban areas — allow them to digest the disinfectants designed to get rid of them.

“Areas with many buildings are low in the traditional nutrients and essential resources microbes need for survival, so these built environments have a unique microbiome,” says Xinzhao Tong of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and lead author of the study.

IMAGE: Unsplash

The study, conducted on samples collected from surfaces across Hong Kong and from the skin of human inhabitants, revealed some interesting facts.

For example, the bacteria Candidatus Xenobia, which is often found in diverse environments like land-based ecosystems and indoor areas, is adaptable to a variety of conditions.

The team found this strain on human palms and indoor surfaces, suggesting its survivability differs from many other microorganisms’.

It can utilize ammonium ions as a nitrogen source; might use alcohols — possibly residuals from cleaning agents — as sources of carbon and energy; and showed potential to metabolize trace gases. This, combined with the residuals from cleaning products, creates a favorable environment for its growth despite low-nutrient conditions.

So where does this leave us when the next pandemic rolls around?

“Microbes possessing enhanced capabilities to utilize limited resources and tolerate manufactured products, such as disinfectants and metals, out-compete non-resistant strains, enhancing their survival and even evolution within built environments. They could, therefore, pose health risks if they are pathogenic,” Tong says.

Earth.com reports that the team is now exploring how pathogenic microbes evolve in hospital intensive-care units. The goals: infection control and safety.

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I think I’ll wear my robot

The world of wearable tech is continually expanding — from heart rate to glucose monitors, but is a wearable robot possible? It seems so.

A group of South Korean scientists have designed an exosuit made of fabric weighing less than half a kilogram to help people with neuromuscular diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy move their arms with ease.

Just like real muscles, the tiny springs made of smart metal inside contract and relax with heat. The suit has the look and feel of real clothing and can be controlled with a smartphone app to adapt support levels.

Eight people have tested the suit and have reported 50 percent improved shoulder movement and 20 percent less difficulty performing daily tasks.

Muscle strain was also reduced, meaning users needed less effort to move.

The research team aims to make the suit smarter and able to naturally respond to the wearer’s motions.

The research was published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

More like this: Wearable tech helps protect workers from heatstroke