TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| R.I.P. hydrogen economy? Obama cuts hydrogen car funding In the newly released budget, the U.S. Department of Energy cuts $100 million from the hydrogen fuel cell program in fiscal year 2010 and transforms its name to "fuel cell technologies." Hydrogen, of course, is just the fuel of a fuel cell--a device that recombines hydrogen and oxygen to produce water and electrical current. Still, the name change distances the Obama administration from the "hydrogen economy" goals of their predecessors. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Can Captured Carbon Save Coal-Fired Power? Like all big coal-fired power plants, the 1,600-mega-watt-capacity Schwarze Pumpe plant in Spremberg, Germany, is undeniably dirty. Yet a small addition to the facility--a tiny boiler that pipes 30 MW worth of steam to local industrial customers--represents a hope for salvation from the global climate-changing consequences of burning fossil fuels.To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as lignite--which is even more polluting than the harder black ­anthracite variety--burns in the presence of pure oxygen, releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). By condensing the water in a simple pipe, Vattenfall, the Swedish utility that owns the power plant, captures and isolates nearly 95 percent of the CO2 in a 99.7 percent pure form. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Wanted: Environmental Crime Fighters U.S. EPA's criminal investigators spend their days targeting myriad domestic and international crimes ranging from illegal dumping to the selling of bogus asbestos-removal training certificates -- along with the occasional armed standoff and sting operation.The agency's criminal division, in conjunction with the Department of Justice's Environmental Crimes Section, has seen an ebb and flow in crime enforcement during the past few administrations, alternately earning praise and condemnation any time it wades into new areas of enforcement. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Inhale or Don't?: Marijuana Hurts Some, Helps Others Clinton didn’t inhale, Obama did--and maybe Reagan should have. New research suggests that THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its mind-bending properties, kills developing neurons, yet oddly, the same chemical saves neurons in adults with Alzheimer’s disease.“Marijuana is not the ‘soft drug’ people like to think it is,” says neuro­pharmacologist Veronica Campbell of Trinity College in Dublin, whose latest study uncovered the harmful effects of THC on young neurons. When Campbell and her co-workers treated brain cells from newborn or adolescent rats with THC, the neurons died, but THC did not have such deadly effects on neurons taken from adult rats. In fact, work from other labs shows that THC benefits adult neurons. “We don’t know why,” Campbell says. Several possi­bilities are being investigated for this “Jekyll and Hyde” effect. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Turning Seaweed into the Fuel of the Future Seaweed holds promise as more than an ingredient in a purifying face mask or a maki roll.So say researchers at E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co ., which alongside Seattle-based Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) has secured $9 million from the Department of Energy to explore seaweed's potential as a feedstock for biobutanol, an advanced biofuel. [More] rss.sciam.com |