If you put a narrow straw in a glass of water, some of that water will climb up the tube. But without help, that water will climb only a small distance. Now, researchers have come up with a device that can copy trees’ ability to make water climb great heights. That could bring drinking water to communities that don’t now have enough.

Described as a “synthetic (合成的) tree”, this new device could help people more easily tap into groundwater, scientists say. It may also let people in coastal areas mine fresh drinking water from the sea.

Water molecules (分子) find each other really attractive. That’s why large numbers of them come together to form round droplets, Sometimes, however, water molecules are more attracted to other substances than to themselves. That’s why they climb up the sides of a glass. In a very narrow tube water can even climb a few centimeters, notes Jonathan Boreyko, a materials scientist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. The process driving this climb is called capillary action (毛细管作用). But for water to rise more than a few centimeters, that capillary action needs help.

Plants know the secret to helping, Boreyko explains. Throughout the day, water evaporates (蒸发) from a plant’s leaves. This creates suction inside a tissue, which pulls water and nutrients up through the roots to nourish leaves and new growth. Such suction can lift water to the tree tops. Now the “synthetic tree” designed by Boreyko and his teammates, according to them, can help people living in dry areas harvest water from even deep underground.

Copying the way a tree drinks water “is a wonderful approach,” says Xianming Dai, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Dallas. Synthetic trees might be able to tap water as much as 100meters underground and such devices also could be adjusted to help people generate fresh water from salty, according to Dai. How? Place a membrane (薄膜) that removes dissolved salt from water before it enters the lower end of the tubes. That would help prevent salt crystals from forming in the tubes or blocking the leaf as water evaporates, he notes.

Vinisha Umashankar was returning to her home in southern India from school a few years ago when she saw a man throwing away burnt charcoal (木炭) on the side of the street. He worked by ironing people’s clothes for a living-and his main appliance was an old-fashioned iron box, which he filled with hot charcoal that produced a cloud of smoke. Umashankar started thinking about how this was happening across the country, where the ironing vendor (小商贩) is a fixture.

So Umashankar came up with an idea. Instead of using charcoal to heat up the irons, the vendors could use something abundantly available in India: the power of the sun. Over the six months in 2019, when she was just 12 years old, she designed a cart (推车) that had solar panels to power a steam iron. She turned to college-level physics textbooks to get an understanding of how solar panels work. Then, she consulted some engineers about her concept and asked them to assist her in building a model.

And so the Iron-Max was born. It’s a blue-painted cart shaped like an iron box with solar panels fitted on its roof. It’s attached to a bicycle to allow vendors to move through the neighborhood to collect clothes to iron. Five hours of bright sunshine is enough to fully charge and operate the iron for six hours. The energy can be store Dina battery to provide power on cloudy days. The cart also has a coin-operated cellphone and a cellphone charging point where people can pay to recharge their phones to help vendors make extra money.

With her creative invention, Umashankar was invited to give a powerful 5-minute speech at COP26, the UN’s climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in which she urged world leaders to stop talking and start acting.

Last September, Umashankar was named one of 15 finalists for the Earth shot Prize launched by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. She did not win the prize in her category, “Clean Our Air”, but was praised by judges for being the youngest finalist for the award.

China has long been considered as a revolutionary (改革者) when it comes to wind power. Earlier this year, it was reported that the country had begun construction of a wind farm using what were then regarded as the largest turbines (涡轮) ever seen, each with a capacity of 16 megawatts (兆瓦). Now, a new important stage has been reached with the successful switch-on of a turbine.

China Three Gorges Corporation announced that the MySE 16-260 turbine had been successfully fixed at the company’s offshore wind farm near Fujian Province on July 19. Just one of these turbines should be able to produce enough electricity to power 36,000 families of three people each for one year. They claim that wind-powered domestic electricity could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 54,000 tons compared with using coal-fired power stations.

The Fuijian offshore wind farm sits in the Taiwan Strait. Winds of force 7 are a regular occurrence in these waters, which is obviously perfect for producing wind power. Mingyang Smart Energy, who designed the MySE 16-260, was up to the challenge, stating in a LinkedIn post that it could handle “extreme wind speeds of 79.8 meters per second”. Still, it wasn’t very long at all before these claims were put to the test, following the disastrous typhoon Talim that hit East Asia earlier this month. The typhoon threat is ever-present in this region, and the new giant turbine has stood up to the impact.

Buoyed by the success of this installation (安装), China Three Gorges Corporation is already looking to the future. “In the next step, the 16 megawatt unit will be applied in the second phase of the Zhangpu Liuao Offshore Wind Farm Project constructed by China Three Gorges Corporation,” said Lei Zengjuan.