In remote regions of the world where electricity is hard to come by and scientific instruments are even scarcer, conducting medical tests at a doctor’s office or medical lab is rarely an option. Scientists are now reporting progress toward an inexpensive point-of-care, paper-based device to fill that void with no electronics required. Their study on the extremely sensitive test, which simply relies on the user keeping track of time, appears in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry.

Today’s solution uses the seeds of the miracle tree to produce clean drinking water. The water-treatment process requiring only tree seeds and sand could purify and clarify water inexpensively and sustainably in the developing world, where more than 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water, scientists report.

Today’s development is an inexpensive and easy-to-use urine test for Type 2 diabetes ideally suited for rural India, China and other areas of the world where poverty limits the availability of health care. The report describing the paper-based device, which also could be adapted for the diagnosis and monitoring of other conditions and the environment, appears in ACS’ journal Analytical Chemistry.

A phenomenon first observed by an ancient Greek philosopher 2,300 years ago has become the basis for a new device designed to harvest the enormous amounts of energy wasted as heat each year to produce electricity. The first-of-its-kind “pyroelectric nanogenerator” is the topic of a report in ACS’ journal Nano Letters.

Today’s episode announces that the world’s first “electrified snail” implanted with biofuel cells that generate electricity from natural sugar in their bodies. Scientists are describing how these biofuel cells could someday serve as energy for many electronics devices in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Almost 80 percent of current farmland in the U.S. would have to be devoted to raising corn for ethanol production in order to meet current biofuel production targets with existing technology, a new study has found. An alternative, according to a study in ACS’ journal Environmental Science and Technology, would be to convert 60 percent of existing rangeland to biofuels.

A simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria — even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax — in minutes, protect homes and other buildings in the event of a terrorist attack with anthrax, scientists are reporting in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Today’s finding suggests that eating blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and other berry fruits has beneficial effects on the brain and may help prevent age-related memory loss and other changes.

Today’s solution addresses the development of an inexpensive device used by millions of people with diabetes that could be adapted into a home detector for many diseases.

Today’s finding warns that children may be receiving the highest exposure to nanoparticles of titanium dioxide in candy, which they eat in amounts much larger than adults.

Scientists have developed and implanted into a living insect — the False Death's Head Cockroach — a miniature fuel cell that converts naturally occurring sugar in the insect and oxygen from the air into electricity. They term it an advance toward a source of electricity that could, in principle, be collected, stored and used to power sensors, cameras, microphones and a variety of other microdevices attached to the insects in a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.