24 leading academic institutions and inter-governmental agencies have been working together to track current progress on the relationship between public health and climate change, and their implications for governments’ commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement. The Lancet Countdown’s 2017 report was launched on the October 31st.

Clariant, a specialty chemicals company based in Switzerland and with a demonstration plant in Straubing, Germany, will invest in a new full-scale commercial biorefinery for the production of cellulosic ethanol from agricultural residues using its sunliquid® technology. The new plant, with an annual production capacity of 50.000 tons, will be built in the south-western part of Romania.

Climate change and global warming not only decrease air quality and cause rising sea levels, but also affect how plants grow. An international team of researchers headed by the Technical University Munich (TUM) demonstrates for the first time that trees in urban areas grow faster than in rural areas.

Innovations that advance a sustainable economy are not only difficult in their technical realisation, but also require financial support. In order to bring them to the market, oftentimes large investments become necessary. The aim of the new Green Finance Cluster in Frankfurt, which was opened recently, will be to connect innovations and funding possibilities. In the middle of November the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in Hessen, Tarek Al-Wazir said: “A focus on sustainability is indispensable for the financial sector.

Mussels produce and use one of the strongest biobased adhesives known to date, because they live in the tidal and shelf areas of the oceans and must therefore withstand strong currents and salt water. Exactly such a strong and biobased super glue would also be very useful in regenerative medicine: biocompatible adhesives could be used to treat superficial wounds, and could replace plates and screws, which are commonly used to treat bone fractures.

The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to education and competition, the advancement of synthetic biology, and the development of an open community and collaboration.

Forests are a major resource for raw materials but also as a local recreational area. Trees remove carbon from the air and their roots help prevent soil erosion.

Many animals are herbivores. However, the plant cell wall contains cellulose and pectin – both of which are very difficult to digest and require specific enzymes for their break down. Throughout evolution many symbioses between microbes and herbivores have emerged in order to derive the most use out of their vegetable nourishment. The thistle tortoise beetles are an extraordinary example for such a symbiosis.

Wheat is one of the most important cereal species worldwide and its products like bread or pasta are common staples of food. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and international colleagues have decoded the complex genome sequence of goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii), an ancestor of common wheat.

Microbes often live in complex biosystems. Their co-habitation is regulated by a number of chemical signals. Researchers from Jena now identified the mechanism that causes Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, roughly ten micrometer in size, to lose their flagella within minutes of coming close to Pseudomonas protegens bacteria, which are merely two micrometers in size.