Energy and Environment
A new NASA mission set to launch later this month will help scientists better understand the most important human-produced greenhouse gas contributing to climate change: carbon dioxide.
THE SCIENCE SHELF NEWSLETTER
News about the Science Shelf archive of book reviews, columns, and comments by Fred Bortz
Issue #29, Back from Hiatus edition, February 2009
After rotting away in fields for hundreds of years, corn “stover” – a quaint term for the stalks, leaves, cobs and husks discarded during harvest – suddenly seems as popular in the biofuel world as the latest hot contestant is on American Idol.
An international team has translated the genetic code that explains the complex biochemical machinery making brown-rot fungi uniquely destructive to wood.
Scientists aboard the U.S. research vessel Laurence M Gould, 10,000 miles from Washington off Antarctica, held their own presidential inaugural celebration on Jan. 20. Stopped in desolate, icy seas for three days to do climate-change research, they dubbed their temporary study area Ocean Station Obama.
Field pennycress may go from weed to "wonderfuel," thanks to studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Peoria, Ill.
A new way of making LEDs could see household lighting bills reduced by up to 75% in five years time, thanks to research at Cambridge University.
A novel technology for synthesising chemicals from plant material could produce liquid fuel for just over €0.50 a litre, say German scientists. But only if the infrastructure is set up in the right way.
Picture a tree in the forest. The tree "inhales" carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, transforming that greenhouse gas into the building materials and energy it needs to grow its branches and leaves.
Taking up valuable land and growing edible crops for biofuels poses a dilemma: Is it ethical to produce inefficient renewable energies at the expense of an already malnourished population?
Physicists have designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use fusion to eliminate most of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants.
A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.
Did a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions drown the shores of the Black Sea 9,500 years ago, wiping out early Neolithic settlements around its perimeter?
I am missing the comments from my last post. Science depends on people who debunk the accepted view. I am well aware that my views do not fall into the accepted category.
Capt. David Williams, founder of the Deafwhale Society, has pounded the table for almost 20 years trying to tell marine mammal scientists and the entire world that pods of whales strand -- 30 days after experiencing a diving-related injury caused by potent pressure changes induce into the water when the seafloor shifts vertically during an undersea earthquake.
