TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Found: Winter hideout of basking sharks You might think it would be hard for one of the world’s largest fish to hide for months at a time. But the whereabouts of the 32-foot (10-meter) long basking shark for half the year have long been a mystery to humans. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Grassoline: Biofuels Beyond Corn By now it ought to be clear that the U.S. must get off oil. We can no longer afford the dangers that our dependence on petroleum poses for our national security, our economic security or our environmental security. Yet civilization is not about to stop moving, and so we must invent a new way to power the world’s transportation fleet. Cellulosic biofuels--liquid fuels made from inedible parts of plants--offer the most environmentally attractive and technologically feasible near-term alternative to oil.Biofuels can be made from anything that is, or ever was, a plant. First-generation biofuels derive from edible biomass, primarily corn and soybeans (in the U.S.) and sugarcane (in Brazil). They are the low-hanging fruits in a forest of possible biofuels, given that the technology to convert these feedstocks into fuels already exists (180 refineries currently process corn into ethanol in the U.S.). Yet first-generation biofuels are not a long-term solution. There is simply not enough available farmland to provide more than about 10 percent of developed countries’ liquid-fuel needs with first-generation biofuels. The additional crop demand raises the price of animal feed and thus makes some food items more expensive--though not nearly as much as the media hysteria last year would indicate. And once the total emissions of growing, harvesting and processing corn are factored into the ledger, it becomes clear that first-generation biofuels are not as environmentally friendly as we would like them to be. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Setting Sail to Study the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Scientists, sailors, journalists and government officials set sail from San Francisco Bay yesterday to start a study of the planet's largest known floating garbage dump, about 1,000 miles north of Hawaii.The goal of the monthlong mission, dubbed Project Kaisei after the 151-foot brigantine that was bought from Japanese sailors in 1991, is to chart the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch and learn about its mysterious vortex of discarded plastic and assess what might be done about it. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Uncharted waters: When hydrogen fails, the students turn to that old standby--Gasoline 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 second 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 |