Teaching residents how to grow their own vegetables, plant flowers to attract pollinators and design their yards to mitigate stormwater runoff are among the many ways University of Tennessee Extension supports rural and urban communities alike. In Chattanooga, these efforts by UT Extension and Master Gardeners helped play a role in the community to be named the first in North America and only third worldwide designated as a National Park City. The other cities are London, England, and Adelaide, Australia.

The official recognition was announced in April by the National Park City Foundation. 

As the world’s fourth — and most severe — mass coral bleaching event unfolds, a UNSW Sydney scientist says even Australia’s lesser-known subtropical reef systems are not immune from the impacts of a warming ocean. 

With growing awareness of plastic pollution in soils, biodegradable plastics (BPs) are emerging as an innovative and sustainable solution for protecting soil health. To support this, a global team led by Prof. Yong Sik Ok reveals that BPs may not be as environmentally friendly as assumed. Their latest study, published in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, examines BP degradation in soil and highlights the need for science-based strategies to safeguard soil health and sustainability.

What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? The first thing that might come to mind is a meteorite crashing into the Earth. Assistant Professor Honami Sato, a geology researcher at the Faculty of Science, searches for traces of celestial impacts in geological strata to decipher the mechanisms of environmental changes on the planet. We spoke with Sato about her methods of stratigraphic surveying and her fascination with geology.

Plants produce organic compounds from surrounding inorganic matter, and in turn, animals—including humans—live off the organic matter that these plants create. We spoke to Professor Akiko Maruyama from the Faculty of Agriculture to learn more about the essential nutrients required by plants, which support life on Earth, and her fascination with plant science research.

We've all had the experience of staying up late and not being able to wake up the next morning. This difficulty arises due to a shift in what's known as our biological clock, which is the central theme of Professor Hiroshi Ito's research at Kyushu University's Faculty of Design. We spoke with Ito to explore the advantages of cross-disciplinary studies and to discover how he uses his expertise in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and engineering to understand the true nature of the biological clock.

In Japan, phrases like "sustainable society" and "sustainable development goals (SDGs)" have become buzzwords in recent years. With the numerous challenges facing modern-day societies, which include environmental issues such as air pollution, climate change, and marine plastic pollution, what approaches can be taken to achieve a truly sustainable society?

To explore this question, we spoke with Lecturer Tomoaki Nakaishi from the Faculty of Economics, who is conducting research that merges the fields of economics and data science to achieve what he calls “sustainable consumption and production.”