Bobcat Research Institute 2025

Applying the concept of intelligence to plants can inspire fresh hypotheses about the mechanisms and functions of plant chemical communication, while also shifting people's thinking about what intelligence really means, Kessler said.

"What that means is, the brain in the plant is the entire plant without the need of central coordination," Kessler said.

"They can smell out their environment very precisely; every single cell can do it, as far as we know,"

Using this acoustic method, the presence of species, and a determination of ecological health, can be inferred simply by listening to the natural world without disturbing the environment or harming the plants and animals within it.

Publication: Jack A. Greenhalgh, et al., Diel variation in insect-dominated temperate pond soundscapes and guidelines for survey design, Freshwater Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1111/fwb.14092.

“There are all kinds of social and cultural things that you could propose from a scientific perspective that wouldn’t be welcomed by a community of homeowners.”

It is encouraging that heated insecticide killed highly resistant mosquitoes, says Hemingway, who directs the Infection Innovation Consortium, a public-private effort to find new ways to combat infectious diseases. But, she says, “this is not something we can take and use that tomorrow.”

Kahr and colleagues previously discovered that heating deltamethrin changed its crystal structure, which let it work faster

He was surprised to find almost no literature on blinking behavior in active humans even though under extreme conditions like motor racing or cycling

Nishizono and colleagues mounted eye trackers on the helmets of three drivers and had them drive three Formula circuits

Where the drivers blinked was surprisingly predictable, the team found. The drivers had a shared pattern of blinking that had a strong connection with acceleration, such that drivers tended not to blink while changing speed or direction — like while on a curve in the track — but did blink while on relatively safer straightaways.

“We think of blinking as this nothing behavior,” he says, “but it’s not just wiping the eyes. Blinking is a part of our visual system.”

Nishizono next wants to explore what processes in the brain allow or inhibit blinking in a given moment, he says, and is also interested in how blinking behavior varies among the general population.

The uncomplicated cellular structures and rapid growth of microalgae endow them with CO2 fixation efficiency as higher as 10–50 folds than terrestrial plants

Recently, many research studies have come up showing the positive impact of growing microalgae under high concentrations of Ci in the form of pure gaseous CO2, real or simulated flue gas, or soluble carbonate (bicarbonate), reporting increased carbon bio-fixation and biomass productivity

Despite such remarkable potential, the production of microalgae for low-value bulk products, such as proteins for food/feed applications, fatty acids for nutraceuticals or bulk products such as biofuels, is heretofore, not economically feasible

The microalgal biomass majorly constituted of lipids (7–23%), proteins (6–71%) and carbohydrates (5–64%), depending upon the microalgal specie and culture conditions

Biofuels from microalgae, production system, conversion technologies, life cycle analyses have been extensively reviewed, hence detailed description is not presented in this review.

the lipid content of common microalgae such as Chlorella, Dunaliella, Isochrysis, Nannochloris, Nannochloropsis, Neochloris, Phaeodactylum, Porphyridium, and Schizochytrium, varies between 20 and 50% of cell dry weight

can be augmented to higher levels by manipulating environmental and other growth factors, process optimization and genetic modifications of the production strain. Nitrogen starvation and salinity stress are known to induce an increase in TAG (triacylglycerol) accumulation and relative content of oleic acid in most of the microalgal species

C14:0, C16:0, C18:1, C18:2, and C18:3 fatty acids, yet the relative composition varies from species to species

The lipids can be converted into FAMEs (fatty acid methyl esters) via transesterification for biodiesel production.

The resistance of cell wall to enzyme hydrolysis is one of the prime bottleneck in the Anaerobic digestion (AD) process. The overall economic feasibility of the process depends on the factors affecting AD, microalgal strain, biomass pretreatment, and culture methods (Jankowska et al., 2017). Lately, to make the system economically viable and environmentally sustainable, a closed-loop production scheme is being adopted wherein AD effluents are recycled and used as an input in the first step of AD. Jankowska et al. (2017) have presented a detailed review microalgae’s cultivation, harvesting and pretreatment for AD for biogas production.

Bioethanol The carbohydrate part (mainly glucose, starch, cellulose, and hemicellulose) of the microalgal dry biomass can be used for transforming into bioethanol via fermentation. Although, microalgae accumulate relatively low quantities of sugars, the absence of lignin from microalgal structure makes them advantageous over other feedstock such as corn, sugarcane, and lignocellulosic biomass (Odjadjare et al., 2015; Jambo et al., 2016). Isochrysis galbana, Porphyridium cruentum, Spirogyra sp., Nannochloropsis oculate, Chlorella sp., are mainly exploited microalgae for the production of carbohydrates

Despite having notable significance, limited number of studies have reported laboratory stage work on the fermentation of microalgae biomass to butanol (Cheng et al., 2015; Gao et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2016).

Value-Added Products In the context of biorefinery approach, intracellular compounds and metabolites have gained immense importance owing to their high monetary value. Microalgal pigments: chlorophyll a and b, lutein, astaxanthin, β-carotene, phycobilins, C- phycocyanin have found wide application in dyes, cosmetics, food and feed additives, nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, as natural colors, bioactive components, anti-oxidants, nutritive and neuro-protective agents (Koller et al., 2014; Begum et al., 2016). Microalgae are also exploited as rich source of amino acids (leucine, asparagine, glutamine, cysteine, arginine, aspartate, alanine, glycine, lysine, and valine), Carbohydrates (β1–3- glucan, amylose, starch, cellulose, and alginates), Vitamins and minerals (vitamin B1, B2, B6, B12, C, and E; biotin, folic acid, magnesium, calcium, phosphate, iodine) that are widely used in Food additives, health supplements and medicine. Microalgae, such as Nannochloropsis, Tetraselmis, and Isochrysis are used for extraction of long chain fatty acids popularly known as the omega fatty acids such as DHA (Docosahexaenoic Acid) and EPA (Eicosapentaenoic Acid), have lately gained prime attention as essential for human brain development and health. Other than these, microalgae are also used for production of Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPSs) which have many industrial applications and Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). PHAs can be used for manufacturing bioplastics that are very sought after because of their biodegradability (Markou and Nerantzis, 2013; Koller et al., 2014).

Although many have reported successful utilization of microalgal biomass for the production of bioproducts within a biorefinery framework, the economic feasibility is unrealized and the microalgae biorefinery is way much expensive (’t Lam et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2017). To attain feasibility and sustainability, both upstream processing (USP) and downstream processing (DSP) need to be efficiently simplified and integrated. The efficiency of the USP is determined by microalgal strain selection, nutrient supply (CO2, N, and P) and culture conditions (temperature, light intensity) (Vanthoor-Koopmans et al., 2013). Whereas, the constraints at the DSP level are mainly characterized by harvesting, cell disruption, and extraction methods. DSP, specifically harvesting accounts for 20–40% of the total production costs and for a multi-product biorefinery, the cost increases to 50–60% (’t Lam et al., 2017).

Bioprospecting suitable microalgae is a crucial but time intensive step

mixed diverse community of microalgae, dominated by Desmodesmus spp., could be adapted over a time of many months to survive in 100% flue gas from an unfiltered coal-fired power plant containing 11% CO2

Besides stress manipulation and acclimatization, desirable traits of the microalgal strains can be effectively improved by genetic and metabolic engineering/synthetic biology. Lately, genome editing tools such as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats – CRISPR associated protein 9 (CRISPR-Cas9) and Transcription Activator-Like (TAL) Effector Nucleases (TALEN) are being used in microalgal gene alterations. Moreover, gene-interfering tools, such as CRISPR-dCas9, micro RNA (miRNA), and silence RNA (siRNA) are being explored to alter the gene expression unlike gene modification.

Flocculation is a low-cost alternative. Cationic chemical flocculants and polymeric flocculants are generally used (Brennan and Owende, 2010), but can negatively affect the toxicity of the biomass and output water (Ryan, 2009). Zhou et al. (2012) reported a novel fungi assisted bioflocculation technique, in which a filamentous fungal spores were added to the algal culture under optimized conditions and the pellets were formed after 2 days that can be harvested by simple filtration. Attached culture can also make harvesting simple (Wang et al., 2017).

. Recent technoeconomic analyses and life-cycle assessments of microalgae-based production systems have suggested that the only possible way for scaling up the production is to completely use the biomass in an integrated biorefinery set-up wherein every valuable component is extracted, processed and valorized.

CCS operate over 3 major steps: CO2 capture, CO2 transportation and CO2 storage.

carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Other important plastic types afloat in the sea are polypropylene (PP) and to a lesser degree polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

Solanum ptychanthum or black nightshade, and Solanum carolinense, or Carolina horsenettle, also produce toxic berries and are native to Arkansas.

They found that the presence of the delineated bike lane made a difference: a 28 percent reduction in average maximum speeds and a 21 percent decrease in average speeds for vehicles turning right.

In addition, drivers moving at a perpendicular angle to the bike lane did not slow down.

With pedestrian deaths rising nationally, a study such as this could contribute to the development of new traffic policies or the reversal of older ones, Younes said.