In Bangladesh, 35% of children are chronically undernourished and their diets deficient in vitamins and minerals. Homestead gardening can provide a source of fresh fruit and vegetables to enrich diets. However, land for gardening is often not very fertile and commercial mineral fertilizers are expensive and difficult to dose. Urine is a highly efficient fertilizer, but underused because of odour. Biochar is a porous material with highly adsorptive properties that can soak up urine and transform it into an odourless solid fertilizer that increases soil organic matter, biological activity and water-holding capacity. It can be produced from crop waste in soil-pit kilns at village level. BUNCH2Scale will work with farmers to scale up biochar-based organic fertilizer production to 48 villages in rural Bangladesh. Collaborating with local NGO field workers and research institutions, HKI Bangladesh will evaluate the potential of this novel method for improving soils and increasing garden production.

Through their strong winds and explosions, massive stars enrich the Universe with the building blocks of life, including the carbon in our cells and the oxygen we breathe. However, not every massive star explodes; some form black holes. Moreover, we now know that most massive stars live with close companion stars that can change their fate and could lead to universal signals. With the recent discovery of gravitational waves, stars with invisible companions, and automated observations of exploding stars, astrophysicists can finally test the existence of these signals and better understand the final fate of massive stars.