| Better Materials Could Build a Green Construction Industry The construction industry consumes truckloads of basic materials, the manufacture of which consumes massive quantities of energy, producing prodigious emissions of greenhouse gases. If materials scientists and entrepreneurs can devise materials that can be fabricated with less energy, climate change could be slowed and many new manufacturing jobs could be created, fulfilling a much-anticipated promise of clean-tech innovation. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Climate change cover-up? You better believe it Was Sen. James Inhofe right when he declared 2009 the year of the climate contrarian ? A slew of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit highlight definite character flaws among some climate scientists--including an embarrassing attempt to delete emails that discussed the most recent report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--while also exposing what looks like a failure of scientists to acknowledge a halt to global warming in the past decade. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Germany Floats New Plans to Keep Hydrogen-Powered Cars in the World's Transportation Mix It's amusing to reduce the development of next-generation electric- or hydrogen-powered cars to a binary paper-versus-plastic decision, but the companies making these cars and the infrastructure to support them are hoping there will be room for both. Hydrogen cars, in particular, have had a bumpy road thus far--the Obama administration has been at odds with Congress over whether to fund hydrogen fuel-cell research. Meanwhile, the first commercial models are not expected to hit the road until 2015, a few years after their hybrid and all-electric counterparts . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Piers on the Hudson: A Carousel World A new expanse of Hudson River Park in Chelsea is an open canvas. How New Yorkers will use it remains to be seen. nytimes.com |
Craving a Cure: A Virtual Meth House Serves as Fodder for Addiction Studies Virtual worlds offer millions of online visitors the chance to ride a dragon or build a fake real estate empire. Addiction researchers have discovered that these communities can also produce something very real--drug cravings--which may help scientists develop and test new treatments for substance abuse.Researchers have struggled for decades with the problem of reproducing so-called environmental cues within the confines of a sterile lab environment. These reminders--a rolled-up dol­­lar bill, the smell of cigarette smoke--make users crave their drug of choice. The investigators stoke powerful cravings in their subjects to better understand the physiology of addiction and to reliably test whether a new drug or behavioral therapy can prevent relapse. [More] rss.sciam.com |