A robot, created by Washington State University (WSU) scientists, could help elderly people with limitations (限制) live independently in their own homes.

The Robot Activity Support System (RAS), uses sensors (传感器) in a WSU smart home to decide where its users are, what they are doing and when they need help with daily activities. It navigates (定位) through rooms to find people on its own, provides video instructions on how to do simple tasks. It can even lead its owner to objects such as his or her medicine or some food in the kitchen.

Now, about 50 percent of adults over the age of 85 need help with every day activities such as preparing meals and taking medicine. Every year the cost for that in the US is nearly 2,000 billion dollars. The number of adults over 85 is expected to double by 2050. Therefore, researchers hope that technologies like RAS and the WSU smart home will cut some of the spending on the health care system by making it easier for older adults to live alone.

RAS is the first robot that researchers have tried to put into their smart home environment. They recently published a study in the journal (专业期刊) Cognitive Systems Research. The study explains how RAS could make life easier for older adults who struggle to live independently.

“While we are still in an early stage (阶段) of development, our results with RAS have been promising,” Minor said, “The next step in the research will be to test RAS’ performance with a group of older adults to get a better idea of this robot.”

Glass bottles have long conveyed (传递) a high-quality image for the wine they carry, but their carbon footprint is sizable. Fossil fuels are used to produce and recycle them. And when it comes to transport, they are also heavy and waste space.

“But Packamama, an Australian packaging start up, has launched a range of flat wine-bottles, the first for the country, promoting them as an environment ally-friendly alternative to traditional glass. The bottles are made from 100 % recycled PET plastic. The slim, flat profile (外形) is 83 % lighter, and allows twice as many bottles to fit into a standard case. “Australia is home to the two most significant successful wine packaging innovations of the last century. Bag-in-box and screw cap (螺旋瓶盖), both from the mid-1960 s,” says Santiago Navarro, Packamama’s co-founder.

Three months after the first bottles hit the shelves, the data suggests flat-bottled wines are becoming popular with drinkers. Packamarna’s first production order was for 65,000 units, a figure that has risen to 90,000. The demand was so strong that they were sold out after the first production. Questions remain, however, about the flat-profile bottle’s suit ability for high-quality wines. The wine maker Nicole Esdaile, of Cent are Vineyard in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, applauds the move but says it is not a workable option for her business, given its focus on classic, collectible wines typically exported to China. “Critically, they are not suitable for storing wine, with the recommended shelf life being no more than two years. The bottles are perfect for quick ‘drink-now’ style.”

The wine maker Tom Wallace wants to see how flat-bottled wines perform over the years ahead. “The priority for us is the quality of the wine going in, so the packaging has to reflect that and allow those wines to mature (酿成) in the best way possible. We will wait and see how the trials and research go before we jump on board.”

Many people are familiar with the horrible images of wildlife—including sea turtles, dolphins and seals—trapped in abandoned fishing nets. The main issue behind Nylon-6, the plastic inside these nets, carpet and clothing, is that it’s too strong and durable to breakdown on its own. So, once it’s in the environment, it exists for thousands of years, littering waterways, breaking corals and killing birds and sea life.

Now, Northwestern University chemists have developed a new catalyst (催化剂) that quickly, cleanly and completely breaks down Nylon-6 in a matter of minutes—without generating harmful byproducts. More importantly, the process does not require poisonous solvents (溶剂), expensive materials or extreme conditions, making it practical for everyday applications.

Current methods to dispose of Nylon-6 are limited to simply burying it in landfills. When Nylon-6 is burned, it produces poisonous pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. Although other labs have explored catalysts to degrade Nylon-6, those catalysts require extreme conditions (such as temperatures as high as 350 degrees Celsius), high-pressure steam (which is energetically expensive and inefficient) and/or toxic solvents that only contribute to more pollution.

To bypass these issues, the researchers looked to a novel catalyst already developed in the lab of Tobin Marks, the leader of the research. The catalyst takes advantage of yttrium—an inexpensive Earth-abundant metal. When the team heated Nylon-6 samples to melting temperatures and applied the catalyst without a solvent, the plastic fell apart—returning to its original building blocks without leaving byproducts behind. In experiments, Marks and his team were able to recover 99% of plastics’ original building blocks.

“Our research represents a significant step forward in the field of polymer recycling and sustainable materials management,” said Marks. After filing a patent for the new process, Marks and his team have already received interest from many potential industrial partners. They hope others can use their catalysts on a large scale to help solve the global plastic problem.