| Green Shoots from Brown Fields When the Bethlehem Steel mill in Lackawanna, N.Y., finally shut its doors for good eight years ago, it took away thousands of jobs and left behind a polluted and unsightly mess.But in 2006, while the idle grain elevators and coke ovens sat rusting on the banks of Lake Erie, something unexpected happened. Wind turbines began springing up on a 30-acres section of the former Superfund site in this Buffalo suburb. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Some airborne particles pose more dangers than others Mort Lippmann noticed a strange phenomenon in his laboratory mice. For 14 straight days, their hearts were racing. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Is Earth past the tipping point? Biodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Stratospheric ozone. Ocean acidification. Climate change. Chemical Pollution. Aerosol loading in the atmosphere.A team of 30 scientists across the globe have determined that the nine environmental processes named above must remain within specific limits, otherwise the "safe operating space" within which humankind can exist on Earth will be threatened. Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Hudson River Park A reader responds to an article about about the need of the Hudson River Park. nytimes.com |
Rooting Out CO2: Scientists Isolate a Gene That Boosts Plant Root Growth Changes to a single gene in a model organism in plant biology, Arabidopsis thaliana , have been found to promote faster-growing and larger root systems--an application that could help researchers engineer bigger, better crops capable of sequestering more atmospheric carbon. The gene and its operations are described in the November 11 issue of the journal Cell . [More] rss.sciam.com |