Over the last few months, water has become the focus of debate in the United States as ugly details of the Flint water crisis come to light. The problem of water contamination is ubiquitous global. Some 2 million tons of sewage and other effluent drain into the world's waters, according to the United Nations. To explore the issue, students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and New York University (NYU) explored how microbes can both contribute to and diminish water pollution.
Nanotechnology as a discipline is bleeding-edge cool, but so often we hear more about its amazing potential than its practical application. So it's always refreshing to catch wind of a story like this: Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have developed and demonstrated a small, relatively inexpensive, and reusable sensor made of graphene foam that far outperforms commercial gas sensors on the market today and could lead to better explosives detectors and environmental sensors in the very near future.
