Feb 20th, 2010 | Science & Technology, Today's News | No Comments
(Washington Post) Jess Parker hugs trees. In the woods of Anne Arundel County, he throws his arms around tulip poplars, oaks and American beeches, and holds them so tightly that his cheek presses into their bark. This is not some hiker on a lark: anybody, hopped up on campfire coffee and exercise endorphins, might hug a tree once.
This is science. Parker has done it about 50,000 times. Parker, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has spent the past 22 years on a research project so repetitive, so time-consuming, that it impresses even researchers with the patience to count tree rings. Since 1987, he and a group of volunteers have embraced thousands of trees, slipped a tape measure behind them, and wrapped it around to measure the trees’ girth.
This year, after about 250,000 hugs between them, the work paid off. Parker’s data, which showed the trunks gradually fattening over time, indicated that many of the trees were growing two to four times faster than expected. That raised questions about climate change’s impact on the age-old rhythms of U.S. forests.
Read the rest: Climate change’s impact on forests being measured via expanding tree trunks – By David A. Fahrenthold washingtonpost.com.
Dec 3rd, 2009 | Helping the Environment, Science & Technology | No Comments
Fifteen years have passed since CMD blew the whistle on the Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! scam, but the spin campaign continues unabated. San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission hosts “Compost Giveaway Events” where citizens can pick up free “high-quality, nutrient-rich, organic” compost to spread on their lawns and vegetable gardens, but the popular program may actually be giving consumers more than they bargained for.
The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety warns that the free compost, made from sewage sludge mixed with wood chips and paper by-products, can contain anything that people in a large metropolitan area might intentionally or inadvertently flush, pour or dump into the city’s sewage system — including pharmaceutical drug residues, heavy metals, PCBs, bacteria, endocrine disruptors and radioactive material. San Francisco is just one of many cities across the country using such programs to get rid of sewage sludge, but free compost giveaways are drawing health concerns due to unknowns about the compost’s contents and questions about its safety for use on food crops.
via Green or Mean? Questions Crop Up About ‘Organic’ Toxic Sludge | Center for Media and Democracy.
Jul 22nd, 2009 | Architecture, Economy, Education, Helping the Environment, Innovation, Science & Technology, Sustainibility | No Comments
Lots of cities have farmers markets, but most — if not all — of the produce comes from rural farmers that use oil-intensive methods of transportation to cart around their food. With 80% of all people on the planet projected to live in cities by 2050, food production will have to move into cities if it is to remain cost-efficient. A Swedish-American company called Plantagon has conceived of an incredible solution: a massive urban greenhouse contained within a geodesic dome. The vertical farm, which consists of a spiral ramp inside a spherical dome, is currently in the development stages.
To read complete article by Ariel Schwartz go to inhabitat.com
Jun 26th, 2009 | Alternative Energy, Economy, Education, Helping the Environment, Innovation, Science & Technology, Sustainibility, Today's News | No Comments
Thanks to 15 year old Texan Javier Fernández-Han, we feel a little more hopeful about the next generation’s ability to adapt to a world of limited resources. The high school student developed a fully featured algae-powered energy system that combines a dozen new and existing technologies to treat waste, produce methane and bio-oil for fuel, produce food for humans and livestock, sequester greenhouse gases, and produce oxygen. Dubbed the VERSATILE system, the project is this year’s winner of the annual Invent Your World Challenge $20,000 scholarship.
- To read complete article by Ariel Schwartz go to inhabitat.com
Jun 14th, 2009 | Alternative Energy, Helping the Environment, Innovation, Science & Technology, Solar Energy, Today's News | No Comments
Metropolis’s 2009 Next Generation competition received scores of entries, from which this year’s jury chose one winner and eight runners-up to be recognized in the May issue of the magazine. But there were far more than just nine good ideas in the bunch. The judges also selected 12 “notables”—entries that, for various reasons, fell short of the final selection, but that the jurors felt still deserved recognition. To that end, we will be posting one notable Next Generation proposal every Thursday for the next three months. In doing so, we hope to foster discussion that will help the teams refine their ideas, connect with like-minded readers, and perhaps even implement their projects in the real world.
This week: Emilio Ramirez’s proposal, Feeding the Addiction: The Emergence of the Single Family Power Plant, which envisions a low-cost, renewable energy production and delivery system that could turn homes and businesses into self-sustaining energy producers. How would it work?
According to Ramirez, a private energy company would design, fabricate, and install the mini power plants, which would concentrate solar heat on a collector plate to boil a fluid and create steam. That steam then turns a turbine engine that rotates an alternator for an estimated daily output of 84 kilowatt hours.
To read article by Mason Curry go to metropolismag.com
Jun 11th, 2009 | Economy, Helping the Environment, Press Release, Science & Technology, Sustainibility, Today's News | No Comments
Contact: Brandon MacGillis, 
202-88…
and Andrew McDonald, 202-55…
Washington, DC – 06/10/2009 – The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007, according to a report (PDF) released today by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew developed a clear, data-driven definition of the clean energy economy and conducted the first-ever hard count across all 50 states of the actual jobs, companies and venture capital investments that supply the growing market demand for environmentally friendly products and services.
Pew found that jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007. There was a similar pattern at the state level, where job growth in the clean energy economy outperformed overall job growth in 38 states and the District of Columbia during the same period. The report also found that this promising sector is poised to expand significantly, driven by increasing consumer demand, venture capital infusions, and federal and state policy reforms.
America’s clean energy economy has grown despite a lack of sustained government support in the past decade. By 2007, more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for about 770,000 jobs. → continue reading
Apr 11th, 2009 | Alternative Energy, Education, Helping the Environment, Innovation, Science & Technology, Today's News | No Comments
Filthy coal-fired power plants spew carbon into the air. A mish-mash of 9,200 generators streams vital electrons along 300,000 miles of aging, inefficient transmission lines and one untrimmed tree in the wrong place could plunge a quarter of the country into darkness. This is our electric grid. A whopping 40 percent of all the energy used in the US—be it oil, gas, wind, or solar—is converted into electrons that travel over these wires. Any attempt at energy reform must begin here.
But this keystone of our 21st-century economy has yet to advance much beyond its 19th-century roots. Considering how wasteful, unresponsive, and just plain dumb the grid is, it isn’t surprising that outages—which have been increasing steadily over the past quarter century—cost us $150 billion a year. The real shock is that the damn thing works at all.
Now consider what we will ask the grid to handle in the near future: Demand for electricity is expected to increase by as much as 40 percent in the next two decades—more than twice the population growth rate. To meet that need, we will have to generate an additional 214 gigawatts, a feat that would require the construction of more than 357 large coal plants. We also want to plug in dozens, if not hundreds, of gigawatts of wind and solar power harvested from the most remote corners of the country. And we will want to recharge millions of electric vehicles every night, without fail.
To read complete article by Brendan Koerner go to WIRED.com
Apr 2nd, 2009 | Innovation, Science & Technology, Today's News | No Comments
Soaring above the Mississippi River just east of downtown Minneapolis is one remarkable concrete job.
There on Interstate 35W, the St. Anthony Falls Bridge carries 10 lanes of traffic on box girders borne by massive arching piers, which are supported, in turn, by footings and deep pilings.
The bridge, built to replace one that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people, is constructed almost entirely of concrete embedded with steel reinforcing bars, or rebar. But it is hardly a monolithic structure: the components are made from different concrete mixes, the recipes tweaked, as a chef would, for specific strength and durability requirements and to reduce the impact on the environment. One mix, incorporated in wavy sculptures at both ends of the bridge, is designed to stay gleaming white by scrubbing stain-causing pollutants from the air.
The project, built for more than $230 million and finished in September, three months ahead of schedule, “might have been the most demanding concrete job in the United States in 2008,” said Richard D. Stehly, principal of American Engineering Testing, a Minneapolis firm that was involved in the project. It is a prime example of major changes in concrete production and use — changes that make use of basic research and are grounded, in part, in the need to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint.
To read complete article by Henry Fountain go to the NYTimes.com
Jan 6th, 2009 | Education, Innovation, Science & Technology, Seawater, Today's News | 1 Comment
CORVALLIS, Ore. — As a young geophysicist in the 1980s, Rob Holman attended a conference in San Francisco that included a field trip to a beach. Dr. Holman, who grew up inland, in Ottawa, stared at the ocean, assessing the strengths and vectors of the waves and currents. But when he looked around, everyone else was studying the sand.
He realized, he recalled, that “sand is not the same everywhere.” So he started collecting it. “I collected a few samples and put them in jars,” he said. “Then I had so many I built a rack. Then I built three more racks. Then I built four more.”
To read complete article by Cornelia Dean go to NYTimes.com
Dec 5th, 2008 | Alternative Energy, Helping the Environment, Innovation, Science & Technology, Solar Energy, Today's News | No Comments
POZNAN, Poland (AP) — The first solar-powered car to travel around the world ended its journey at the U.N. climate talks Thursday, arriving with the message that clean technologies are available now to stop global warming.
The small two-seater — made from aluminum and fiberglass — hauled a trailer of solar cells and U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer up to a building in Poznan where delegates from some 190 nations are working toward a new treaty to control climate change.
“This is the first time in history that a solar-powered car has traveled all the way around the world without using a single drop of petrol,” said Louis Palmer, the 36-year-old Swiss schoolteacher and adventurer who made the trip.
“These new technologies are ready,” he said. “It’s ecological, it’s economical, it is absolutely reliable. We can stop global warning.”
To read complete article by Vanessa Gera of Associated Press go to AP.com
