Americans love their electronics, but all those TVs, computers, phones and DVD players suck up energy and end up clogging landfills. How can you stay plugged in while minimizing the effect on the environment?

Nanotechnology could be the answer to ensuring a safe supply of drinking water for regions of the world stricken by periodic drought or where water contamination is rife. Writing in the International Journal of Nuclear Desalination, researchers in India explain how carbon nanotubes could replace conventional materials in water-purification systems.

Bladderworts, carnivorous plants of the genus Utricularia, live in water or soggy soil. To snare their snacks, bladderworts set ingenious little traps, sometimes in the hundreds, among their waterborne leaves. The traps maintain an internal pressure lower than that outside; when passing prey triggers an exterior hair, a trapdoor snaps open, and inflowing water carries the prey inside to be digested.