A new analysis by researchers at MIT has found that inactive yeast (非活性酵母) can help remove lead pollution from drinking water supplies. The study shows that this approach works well, even for part-per-billion levels of pollution. The team has calculated that waste yeast abandoned by a single brewery (啤酒厂) in Boston would be enough to treat the city’s entire water supply. The system would not only purify the water but also change what would otherwise be some waste needing to be got rid of.

Lead and other heavy metals in water are a serious global problem that continues to grow. In the U.S. alone, more than 12,000 miles of waterways are suffering the effect of wastewater rich in heavy metals. What’s worse, heavy metals don’t break down, but continuously exist and accumulate. They are either impossible or very expensive to completely remove by conventional methods. Lead is highly poisonous, even at tiny concentrations, especially affecting children as they grow.“We don’t just need to minimize the existence of lead; we need to remove it from drinking water,” says one of the researchers called Stathatou.

The solution found by the MIT team is not a new one. A process called biosorption, in which inactive biological material is used to remove heavy metals from water, has been known for a few decades. But the process has been studied and characterized only at much higher concentrations, at the levels of more than one part per million.“Our study demonstrates that the process can indeed work efficiently at the much lower concentrations of typical real-world water supplies,” another researcher named Athanasiou says.

Designing a practical system for processing the water and getting back the yeast, which could then be separated from the lead for reuse, is the next stage of the team’s research. They are also exploring ways of recovering both the yeast and the lead, “We need to conduct further experiments, but there is the option to get both back. And it will be a blessing for the world.” Stathatou says.

Most of us have looked up at the stars that fill the night sky and wondered whether we’re alone in the universe. Indeed, the question of whether there’ s life out there has been something humankind ’s been asking itself for countless years. But thanks to China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the answer to this question may come a lot sooner than we expected.

The telescope has a huge round reflector, which measures 500 meters across and has a perimeter（周长）of 1.6 kilometers. Because of its great size, it would have been both difficult and inefficient to get FAST to move like a regular telescope. Instead, FAST’s designers came up with a great solution: its surface is made up of 4450 panels which can be individually adjusted. This clever design feature allows scientists to detect radio signals from any angle with a great degree of accuracy. “Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel （关联的） robots. We can control their position with an accuracy of 1 mm,” Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope’s panel project, told Xinhua News Agency.

FAST’s engineers also had the task of finding a suitable location. As any interference would affect its ability to detect distant radio waves, it needed to be built in a remote area. Luckily, the perfect spot was found in the beautiful mountains of Guizhou Province. “There are three hills about 500 meters away from one another, creating a valley that is perfect to support the telescope," Sun Caihong, chief engineer of FAST’ s construction, told Xinhua.

And although it wasn’t yet fully operated, FAST had already made great discoveries by October 2017. Since 1967, only around 2000 pulsars （脉冲星） have been discovered, yet FAST had detected six more by October 2017. Once FAST is fully up and running, we may finally have the answer to one of the biggest questions in history.

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