Scientists have finally created what might be the only thing that can get meatheads to eat their veggies: protein lettuce.

By literally shooting pig genes into the chloroplasts of lettuce and tobacco cells, an international team of researchers were able to grow produce that contained the animal protein myoglobin, they report in a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

Is this the pathway to the next ridiculous protein-infused snack? (We’re looking at you, protein popcorn.) Not quite. Instead, the scientists say their findings could pave the way to weaning ourselves off of environmentally-destructive meat.

“Our study demonstrates, for the first time, that higher plants can stably produce myoglobin, one of the key proteins responsible for many of meat’s desirable properties,” study lead atuhor Alexia Groff, a plant biotechnology researcher at Imperial College London, told ScienceAlert. “This is very relevant at a time when the demand for sustainable food production platforms is greater than ever.”

To combine pig genes with plant DNA, the researchers used a machine called a biolistic particle delivery system, or a “gene gun.” The nickname is apt: it works by firing microscopic metal particles covered in genes into their target. (Biolistic, by the way, is a portmanteau of “biological ballistics.”)

The target, this time, were the chloroplasts of lettuce and tobacco seedlings. Because of their “bacterial ancestry and their high number of copies per cell,” Groff explained in a statement about the work, “chloroplasts are generally much better at making large amounts of protein than the cell nucleus.”

Their genetic bullets hit the bullseye. In followup tests, the seedlings showed they had incorporated the pig DNA into the chloroplast genome. When the plants grew into adulthood and produced seeds, their offspring still possessed the transferred genes.

In all, the lettuce and tobacco plants yielded about 800 mg and 810 mg of myoglobin protein per kilogram of their dry weight. That’s ten times less than beef, but because growing plants is far more efficient than raising animals, the tradeoff could be worth it.

“Plant cultivation is far more resource-efficient than livestock production; consequently, plant-derived myoglobin could achieve protein yields per hectare that rival — or even potentially exceed — those of animal agriculture,” the authors wrote in the study, “whilst also benefiting from substantially lower water use and greenhouse gas emissions.”

If this gets adopted at scale, these protein-infused plants could be dried up and be used to bolster the protein in plant-based meats.

Other researchers caution that the food still needs to be proven safe to eat and sustainable to produce, but are optimistic about the findings.

“This an important advance on earlier plant and algal research.  Demonstrating stable myoglobin production in plant chloroplasts, including in an edible crop, raises the possibility of using plants as scalable, low-input production platforms alongside microbial fermentation,” Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, director of the ICL’s Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein, said in a statement. “In the longer term, this could diversify how and where these ingredients are produced.”

More on lettuce: Trump’s Explosive Diarrhea Scandal Is Getting Worse and Worse

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Carbon dioxide is best known as a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, but scientists are increasingly exploring ways to turn it into something useful. A new study shows how sunlight and an unusual material called black silicon could help convert carbon dioxide into methane, the main component of natural gas. Researchers at National […]

The post This Black Silicon Catalyst Could Help Turn CO2 From Waste into Fuel appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

A new industrial complex in China’s Shandong province is beginning production rollout with a specific goal. Manufacturing batteries designed to store electricity for longer periods and support increasingly renewable power grids.

HiTHIUM held the production rollout ceremony for its Heze Base on August 7 in Heze Luxi New Area. The company describes the facility as the world’s first integrated industrial park dedicated exclusively to long-duration energy storage (LDES).

Unlike conventional battery plants focused primarily on cells, the Heze project brings together battery-cell manufacturing, materials production and energy-storage system integration. The planned facility covers approximately 80 hectares, with total investment across the industrial chain exceeding RMB 13 billion.

Why long-duration storage matters

Solar and wind power can produce large amounts of electricity when conditions are favorable, but generation does not always coincide with demand. Energy storage allows excess electricity to be stored and released later, helping balance the grid. LDES is intended to extend that capability over longer periods. For example, stored electricity could be released after solar generation falls in the evening or during longer periods of low renewable output. That makes the technology increasingly relevant as power systems add more variable renewable generation.

A battery factory built around LDES

The Heze Base uses a whole-industry-chain approach, covering LFP battery cells, modules and system integration, new materials and upstream raw-material processing. The facility is also designed around very large-capacity battery products. HiTHIUM says its fifth-generation intelligent manufacturing lines can produce more than 15 GWh per production line, while the company is developing thousand-ampere-hour-class cells for LDES applications.

Larger-capacity cells can potentially reduce the number of individual cells and connections needed in a large storage installation, simplifying parts of system construction. HiTHIUM’s earlier LDES products include a 1,175 Ah cell, which the company says entered mass production in 2025.

Automating storage production

The factory itself is designed as a highly automated manufacturing operation. HiTHIUM says its fifth-generation production lines have an automation rate exceeding 95% and incorporate more than 1,000 quality-control checkpoints, including AI-powered visual inspection.

According to the company, the new production system reduces floor space required per GWh by 50%, production manpower by 58%, and manufacturing energy consumption by 13% compared with its previous generation. HiTHIUM also reports a 200% improvement in production efficiency.

These figures are company-reported comparisons, but they highlight an important part of the LDES race: reducing costs will depend not only on battery chemistry, but also on manufacturing efficiency.

From cells to complete storage systems

The Heze Base is intended to take the battery manufacturing process from raw materials all the way through to finished, containerized energy-storage systems. That integrated approach matters because grid-scale storage is more complicated than simply installing large numbers of battery cells. Cells must be assembled into modules and systems, with the finished equipment incorporating the components and controls required for large-scale energy storage.

HiTHIUM says the Heze rollout marks a new phase focused on scaled manufacturing and delivery of LDES products. The significance of the project ultimately goes beyond one factory. As renewable generation expands, electricity grids need increasingly capable ways to shift power across time. The growth of dedicated LDES manufacturing suggests battery companies are now preparing for a market where storing electricity for longer periods could become just as important as generating it.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and his actor buddy Leonardo DiCaprio are catching some heavy flak recently, but for a seemingly bizarre reason: pledging millions of dollars to protect 100 of the world’s most threatened animal species.

The charity initiative, called the Phoenix Species Project, was first revealed on DiCaprio’s Instagram account, where the six-time academy award nominee described it as the “largest single philanthropic initiative ever dedicated to the recovery of Critically Endangered species, across 30 countries.”

“I could not be prouder to announce this,” DiCaprio continued. “Save these species, and we protect everything around them. The forests, the rivers, and the climate itself.”

For such a seemingly altruistic venture, the response to the announcement was strikingly polarized. As the Independent noted, DiCaprio and Bezos were summarily blasted for engaging in “greenwashing,” a negative term given to the strategy employed by massive corporations and the wealthy to cover their outsize impact on the environment with a little eco-charity.

“As soon as people realize and actually feel the effects of what those rich f***s did to our planet they suddenly start their greenwashing campaign,” one Redditor wrote in response to the announcement, per the Independent.

“Uber-wealthy people helping a fraction of the problems that they cause,” another commenter lamented. “For publicity.”

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Bezos has been accused of greenwashing, especially given the immense carbon footprint of his flagship company Amazon. In 2020, for example, the billionaire’s Bezos Earth Fund pledged $10 billion to protect biodiversity, bringing a massive amount of money to the global effort to mitigate climate change — at least on paper.

As the backlash illustrates, your reaction to the those types of efforts probably hinge on your economic and social worldview.

The haters aren’t just being petty, though. As the Journal of Political Inquiry observed, Bezos’s wealth is only possible thanks to his previous position as chief executive of one of the largest corporate polluters on the planet. Between 2020 and 2021 alone, Amazon’s carbon dioxide emissions grew by 18 percent, while his space company Blue Origin is altering the outer atmosphere in ways we’re only starting to understand.

And his empire’s carbon emissions have only skyrocketed since then, as the demand for cloud computing supersedes previous pledges to clamp down on Amazon’s extraordinary excretions of noxious pollutants.

In other words, it’s no wonder the masses are rising up in opposition to the billionaire and his actor friend — if only online, at least for now.

More on billionaires: The Type of Orbital Data Centers That Billionaires Want to Launch Into Space Would Wreak Ecological Catastrophe, Scientists Warn

The post Jeff Bezos Harshly Criticized for $200 Million Pledge to Protect the World’s Most Endangered Species appeared first on Futurism.

NASA is currently targeting August 30 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Florida. The date can move, as launch dates do, but the mission is close enough to the pad that its central idea deserves a clear look: Roman will survey huge stretches of the universe in one exposure, gathering […]

The post NASA Is Targeting an August Launch for Roman. Here’s What the Telescope Will See appeared first on Curiosmos.

Europe is looking to clean its transport infrastructure and make it as sustainable as possible. Obviously, the future

The amount of pollution spilling out of fossil-fuel generators is astounding. In the United States, this explosion of emissions is led by states like Texas, which on a global scale is comparable only to China in terms of new infrastructure powered by dead dinosaurs.

And as more data centers crop up throughout the US, that problem — of rising emissions linked to the accelerating demand for any kind of electricity — is only going to get worse.

According to reporting by the New York Times, the US currently has at least 82 data center-linked gas generators either in development or in the proposal stage. These are massive facilities which rival public electrical generators in size and power, only they’re not managed by the government, and the power they generate isn’t meant for citizens.

Instead, these are private generators, developed by big tech companies like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta or Elon Musk’s xAI. The electricity they’ll supply is intended only for data centers, which grow ever-hungrier for power as new iterations of AI chips and energy-hungry large language models enter into production.

Assuming all 82 of those plants come online as planned, the NYT notes they could spew enough emissions in one year to rival the output of half the passenger cars in the US.

That’s an astonishing amount of pollution, made possible thanks to industry-friendly state regulators in places like Texas and Ohio, where permits for behemoth fossil fuel fired generators are approved in as little as 18 days, often without public disclosure.

It’s possible that moratoriums on new data centers might slow the burn, but unless states begin the unlikely task of banning new gas generators for existing facilities, we can expect US fossil fuel emissions to continue to rise precipitously in the years to come.

More on data centers: The Number of Regular People Being Arrested for Protesting Data Centers Is Astounding

The post AI Data Centers Are Causing Unfathomable Amounts of Air Pollution, and It Gets Worse With Each New One They Build appeared first on Futurism.

When Texas’s privately-run electrical grid collapsed amid a battery of winter storms in February of 2021, it plunged over 4.5 million people into darkness, and contributed to hundreds of deaths due to the lack of water, food, and heat.

A similarly tragic story almost unfolded in July of this year — had in not been for the deployment of a jaw dropping amount of solar power infrastructure that kept the grid from collapsing under the strain.

New reporting by the Texas Tribune details the state’s rapid adoption of solar energy, specifically solar panels and storage batteries. The paper notes that when the organization that manages state’s electrical grid — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) — broke record energy demands on both July 21st and 22nd, it hardly registered as an event, because its solar infrastructure ensured there was a 20,000 megawatt buffer padding the grid’s capacity.

“We hit an all time peak, and we had no issue hitting that peak,” Thomas Gleeson, chair of Texas’s Public Utility Commission, told the Tribune.

Unsurprisingly, those moments of peak demand coincided with oppressive summer temperatures, with the heat index reaching 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Dallas on July 22nd. The Tribune notes that at various points, solar power accounted for over 45 percent of the state’s total electrical generation, breaking state records both for total electricity generated by solar panels and for total electricity discharged from solar batteries.

As the power grid’s capacity grows, so too will the demand. Though ERCOT is standing strong for now, the state estimates that by 2032, statewide electric demand will be nearly double what it was on July 22nd.

To combat that reality, the utility firm says it has some 460 gigawatts of generation cued up for development, around 70 percent of which is made up of solar infrastructure.

Of course, it will also help if Texas governor Greg Abbott sticks to his recently enacted data center moratorium, which put the brakes on over 474 gigawatts worth of impending electrical stress, at least temporarily. Long-term, it’s unlikely that Texas will refuse the nearly 1,800 data center projects looking to call the state home — an unending game of chicken between the tech industry and a utility provider scrambling to keep up with growing demand.

More on Texas: Climate Scientists Shake Their Heads as First US City Running Completely Out of Water

The post Texas Avoids Blackout by the Grace of Solar Power appeared first on Futurism.

London mayor points to ‘terrifying scenes’ this summer amid speculation Burnham may back Jackdaw and Rosebank projects

• Sadiq Khan: This burning summer is the proof: the voices of climate denial aren’t just delusional, they’re deadly

Sadiq Khan has called on the government to commit to revamped climate action and to reduce the UK’s reliance on oil and gas, as the UK endures a summer of drought, wildfires and heatwaves.

Writing in the Guardian, the mayor of London said that Andy Burnham’s administration must reaffirm its commitment to net zero and make clear it will continue to reduce the UK’s reliance on oil and gas “to get Britain back on track.”

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© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

There's two things you should know about me, your intrepid reviewer: I hate the feature creep associated with modern power banks, and I love shaving grams off the gear I carry when backpacking, bikepacking, and trail running. So imagine my delight when Nitecore released a new generation of its ultralight NB10000 battery. After a few weeks with it I can confidently say: Haribo be damned!

The $83.95 NB10000 Gen 4 weighs just 146 grams, according to my scale, and measures 1.45 x 11.6 x 4.68cm (0.57 x 4.57 x 1.84 inches), according to Nitecore's spec sheet. That makes it the lightest and most compact 10,000mAh power bank I can find. Even when …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Residents of Fort Wayne, Indiana may have to say goodbye to over four acres of federally protected wetland — at least if Google has its way.

New reporting by local publication WANE revealed that a company called Hatchworks LLC, a data center developer for the tech giant, is looking to fill in several acres of federal wetlands as part of the third phase of “Project Zodiac,” a $2 billion hyperscale data center project.

As WANE reports, Hatchworks submitted an application to purchase 4.26 acres of forested wetland outside of Fort Wayne. Of that, about 2.13 acres of the land may soon be paved over to build three new buildings, as well as a labyrinth of waste water pipes and electrical infrastructure.

Granted, four acres isn’t the largest footprint in the world — that’s roughly the size of your average Walmart supercenter — but if the application proceeds, it would nonetheless see a private company hoovering up protected land for the sake of wealth accumulation.

And if state authorities decide to go ahead with the data center campus, it would be permanently carving up a slice of Indiana’s all-important floodplains. These wetlands serve many valuable functions, not just as home for diverse plant and animal life, but also as a natural basin for rainwater, protecting nearby communities from flooding and soil erosion.

Much of the incoming data center campus would occupy a parcel of pre-paved farmland, likely geoengineered from its original wetland long ago. Rather than color within those lines, Google’s Hatchworks would rather stick to its original design plans, explaining in its filing with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management that it’s simply impossible to avoid shellacking the marshland.

“It was determined that meeting the project purpose and completely avoiding water resources was not feasible,” the filing reads. “Priority was placed upon avoiding as much of the large woodlots… as possible. Given these constraints, and the required layout and dimensions of the data center buildings, it is not possible to accommodate the development without impacts to the woodlot containing [the wetlands].”

“Environmental stewardship is central to our data center design. Our engineers have intentionally designed the layout of our Fort Wayne campus to avoid more than 75 percent of regulated wetlands — preserving over 32 acres of the highest-quality forested land on the property,” a Google spokesperson said after this story was first published. “To address minimal impacts across approximately nine acres, we’re providing over 18 acres of mitigation credits for a 2-to-1 net gain in conserved and restored wetlands in Allen County and across Indiana.”

The proposal will soon go to a virtual public hearing before it’s approved, though developers already have an anticipated start date of September 14. Given that previous phases of the Google campus are already completed, it’s hard to imagine Indiana officials will prevent the bulldozers from rolling in — though with enough public backlash, anything is possible.

More on data centers: Meta’s AI Data Center Caught Leaking Deadly Bacteria Into Water Town Uses for Irrigation

The post Google Data Center Announces Plans to Pave Over Protected Wetlands appeared first on Futurism.

A Massachusetts man is feeling some buyer’s remorse after securing a $5.5 million mortgage on a mansion poised to fall into the Cape Cod Bay.

The man, John Bonomi Jr, first made headlines five years ago when he purchased the sprawling 5,817-square-foot estate against warnings from area conservationists, who advised that the beach was eroding at a rate of six feet per year as rising sea levels take their toll.

Bonomi’s house, meanwhile, sat just 12 to 14 feet away from the rapidly-disappearing escarpment — and that was 2021.

Fast forward half a decade, and the situation — not to mention the mansion’s foundation — has only deteriorated as the continual lashing of ocean waves takes its toll. According to the Boston Globe, Bonomi is now trying to recoup his costs by filing suit against JP Morgan Chase, the bank that originally serviced his ill-fated mortgage.

As for his legal strategy, the property owner is essentially pleading insanity, saying that he was “acting under an uncontrollable manic psychosis at the time” he agreed to the terms of the mortgage. It’s a fascinating argument, especially because Bonomi has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“No rational person… would have considered purchasing the Property, and certainly not at the full asking price,” the suit argues. “It is a recognized diagnostic fact that a symptom of bipolar disorder is irrational risk-taking and impulsive behavior, including reckless spending.”

While Bonomi may have a point — it’s astonishing that JP Morgan Chase gave him the green light, mental health episode or not — it remains to be seen whether the courts agree.

According to the Globe, the bank originally lobbied to get the case dismissed. It answered Bonomi’s filings in May, however, saying that, “to the extent a response is required, Chase denies the allegations contained therein and leaves Plaintiff to his proofs.”

More on housing: Family Horrified When They’re Forced to Sell Their Beloved Home to Make Way for AI Data Centers

The post Man Sues Bank for Being Stupid Enough to Give Him a Mortgage Even When Experts Were Warning Him It Was About to Fall Into the Ocean appeared first on Futurism.

On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August 2025, when the Department of Defense (DoD) stopped participating in a process that allows it to compel developers to alter projects in order to limit their interference with radar equipment. The court ruled, however, that the DoD's national security claims did not allow it to opt out of a process that is legally mandated.

The Trump administration has made many attempts to block wind development, both offshore and land based. Its attempts to stop offshore wind included the same approach at issue in this case: Claim that drone developments mean that radar interference by wind turbines creates a national security risk. The courts were not sympathetic to this claim, including in cases where judges examined a classified report that the DoD was using to justify blocking offshore wind construction. As a result, the administration has turned to paying companies not to pursue wind development.

In parallel, the government was pursuing a similar approach for onshore wind. Here, a law lays out a process for the DoD to evaluate any problems posed by wind turbines and negotiate changes to planned wind farms with the developers. As laid out in the new decision, the government simply stopped participating in this process in August 2025, first by refusing to sign off on previously negotiated agreements, and later by refusing to draft agreements entirely. Eventually, it simply refused to participate in negotiations at all. This has brought a halt to all wind development in the US.

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On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August 2025, when the Department of Defense (DoD) stopped participating in a process that allows it to compel developers to alter projects in order to limit their interference with radar equipment. The court ruled, however, that the DoD's national security claims did not allow it to opt out of a process that is legally mandated.

The Trump administration has made many attempts to block wind development, both offshore and land based. Its attempts to stop offshore wind included the same approach at issue in this case: Claim that drone developments mean that radar interference by wind turbines creates a national security risk. The courts were not sympathetic to this claim, including in cases where judges examined a classified report that the DoD was using to justify blocking offshore wind construction. As a result, the administration has turned to paying companies not to pursue wind development.

In parallel, the government was pursuing a similar approach for onshore wind. Here, a law lays out a process for the DoD to evaluate any problems posed by wind turbines and negotiate changes to planned wind farms with the developers. As laid out in the new decision, the government simply stopped participating in this process in August 2025, first by refusing to sign off on previously negotiated agreements, and later by refusing to draft agreements entirely. Eventually, it simply refused to participate in negotiations at all. This has brought a halt to all wind development in the US.

Read full article

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A new report found that working veteran underground coal miners in central Appalachia are suffering from black lung at the highest rates in nearly 50 years.

A late entrant in the race to unseat Senator Susan Collins, the Democratic Senate hopeful blends a progressive streak with roots in the timber industry.

Since April, the Defense Department has halted all military reviews for wind projects, stalling dozens of projects nationwide.

Agreement with RWE is fifth deal Trump team has made with energy companies, offering payouts to give up projects.

A pro-renewable energy political action committee was behind Rep. Andy Ogles' primary loss Thursday.

Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer

Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China.

The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy.

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© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images