| Uncharted waters: Hydrogen and the "law of unintended consequences" Editor's Note: A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students are traveling up New York's Hudson River this week on the New Clermont , a 6.7-meter boat outfitted with a pair of 2.2-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells to power the boat's motor. Their journey began September 21 from Manhattan's Pier 84 and will cover 240 kilometers (at a projected speed of 8 kilometers per hour). After making several stops along the way, the crew expects to arrive back at Rensselaer Polytech's campus in Troy, N.Y., on September 25. This is the third of Scientific American.com's blogs chronicling this expedition, called the New Clermont Project. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Dolphins, Sea Lions to Serve as Marine Guardians of Naval Base The newest batch of sentries at Naval Base Kitsap–Bangor will not have to wear uniforms. But they won't get to clock out for breaks--and they will be paid in fish.The base near Washington's Puget Sound is slated to receive up to 20 Navy-trained bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions to patrol the shoreline around the submarine base as part of a bolstered security initiative started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Recycling Some Hospital Waste (Not the Really Gross Kind) The food industry leads the nation in pounds of waste produced annually. So, what’s second? It’s health care facilities. They dispose of more than four billion pounds of waste each year. [More] rss.sciam.com |
OBSERVATORY; From Shells, an Insight Into Neanderthal Minds Joao Zilhao of University of Bristol leads study on shells discovered in two caves in southeastern Spain; research, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that Neanderthals were using shells in decorative and symbolic way at least 10,000 years before modern humans migrated to Europe; shells appear to have been strung and painted; photos query.nytimes.com |
A Wet Run for a Dry Planet: NASA Tests Drilling Technology in the Desert with Mars Sample Return in Mind [Slide Show] Under a slate-gray sky, Mono Lake in eastern California seems to be dying as it gradually evaporates to reveal strange, towering rock formations hidden for hundreds, even thousands of years. [More] rss.sciam.com |