Microplastics can go right through wastewater treatment plants, and researchers have engineered bacteria commonly found in there to break down this pollution before it can persist in the environment.

Researchers from the University of Waterloo added DNA to several species of bacteria found in wastewater, allowing them to biodegrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic found in carpet, clothing and containers for food and beverages.

The rise of AI, graphic processing, combinatorial optimization and other data-intensive applications has resulted in data-processing bottlenecks, as ever greater amounts of data must be shuttled back and forth between the memory and compute elements in a computer. The physical distance is small, but the process can occur billions of times per second. Inevitably, the energy and time required to move so much data adds up. In response, computer engineers are designing specialized hardware accelerators with innovative architectures to improve the performance of such applications.