| Endangering Species: Listing Can Make Animals Valuable Black Market Commodities [Slide Show] Through most of the last century, Javan hawk eagles ( Spizaetus bartelsi ) flew unnoticed through the dwindling forests of Indonesia's principal island of Java. Their prominent head crest and multi-toned plumage didn't attract attention, bird markets didn't sell them, nor did zoos have them on display. Then in 1993 the Indonesian government awarded Javan hawk eagles special protected status. That's when the bird's fortune turned--for the worse. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Why Bangladesh Water Contains Arsenic It seemed like a good idea--because rivers and ponds in Bangladesh were contaminated with bacteria, Bangladeshis switched to wells. But soon after, in the early ‘80s, researchers realized those wells were harming Bangladeshis with a new poison--arsenic.The underground sediment of the Ganges Delta contains arsenic. In 2002 M.I.T. researchers determined that microbes digesting organic carbon were freeing that trapped arsenic. But where did the carbon come from and how was the arsenic getting into the water supply? The M.I.T. team now thinks they have the answers, which they report in the journal Nature Geoscience . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Are Coyotes or Humans the Perpetrators of Suburban Animal Attacks? A coyote howls, its characteristically pointed muzzle aimed high toward the night sky. But the moon is not visible over this brightly lit Target store parking lot in Matamoras, Penn.--only a glowing globe atop a metal pole casting its electric illumination on the pavement. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Building a Better Biofuel: A New Carbon-Neutral Approach Turns Carbohydrates into Hydrocarbons When Randy Cortright of the University of Wisconsin found an aromatic fluid floating in his beaker that smelled just like gasoline, he thought he had a problem. After all, the chemical engineer wanted to make fuel from plants for the hydrogen economy that was supposed to boom about now. Instead, when he put the fluid in a chromatograph, he found it had all the hydrocarbon components of a high-octane gasoline . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Reinventing the Leaf: Artificial Photosynthesis to Create Clean Fuel (preview) Like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, Nathan S. Lewis has been giving a lecture on the energy crisis that is both terrifying and exhilarating. To avoid potentially debilitating global warming, the chemist from the California Institute of Technology says civilization must be able to generate more than 10 trillion watts of clean, carbon-free energy by 2050. That level is three times the U.S.’s average energy demand of 3.2 trillion watts. Damming up every lake, stream and river on the planet, Lewis notes, would provide only five trillion watts of hydroelectricity. Nuclear power could manage the feat, but the world would have to build a new reactor every two days for the next 50 years.Before Lewis’s crowds get too depressed, he tells them there is one source of salvation: the sun pours more energy onto the earth every hour than humankind uses in a year. But to be saved, Lewis says, humankind needs a radical breakthrough in solar-fuel technology: artificial leaves that will capture solar rays and churn out chemical fuel on the spot, much as plants do. We can burn the fuel, as we do oil or natural gas, to power cars, create heat or generate electricity, and we can store the fuel for use when the sun is down. [More] California Institute of Technology - Energy - Artificial photosynthesis - United States - Technology rss.sciam.com |