TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Smart-Grid Technology Spreading Widely Duke Energy Corp. today tapped Cisco Systems Inc. to test "smart grid" software and hardware that the utility hopes will enable its customers to track and reduce their electricity consumption more efficiently.The Charlotte, N.C.-based utility (NYSE: DUK) will deploy communications architecture based on Internet protocol-based open standards -- an approach Cisco says will permit easier accommodation of new technologies into the grid. The companies plan to start by installing nearly 2 million residential "smart meters," as well as routers, switches and other "distributed automation" infrastructure, throughout Duke's service territory in Indiana and Ohio during the next five years. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Inside This Issue: Neandertals and General Relativity It was August 1856, three years before Charles Darwin would publish On the Origin of Species. Workers in a lime quarry in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany, unearthed a puzzle in a small cave: a number of ancient-looking bones. Thinking the bones were from a bear, the workers saved some of them for a local schoolteacher and amateur naturalist, Johann Carl Fuhlrott. Fuhlrott later worked with anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen to study these bones. The two went on to describe and publish the first findings about Neandertals, launching the field of paleoanthropology--and our enduring fascination with this extinct human relative.Since then, we have learned a lot more about this ancestor from the remains of several hundred additional specimens. Today Neandertals are likely the best known hominid species besides our own--yet they remain mysterious in many ways. Competing theories place them either as an archaic variant of our own species, Homo sapiens, with whom we interbred, or as a separate species altogether. [More] rss.sciam.com |
A Decade of New Species Discoveries in the Himalayas [Slide Show] Deep in the eastern Himalayas , where two continental plates and four countries converge, a treasure trove of new species has kept scientists on the lookout for the past decade. A recent report , assembled by the World Wildlife Fund International (WWF) based in Washington, D.C., gathered the fruits of these labors--completed by various organizations--and lists the 353 new plant and animal species that years of rugged research have now brought to the wider world's attention. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Can Closing the Ozone Hole Also Help Combat Climate Change? Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse culprit in human-generated global warming , most scientists agree, but CO 2 itself, and a handful of other substances, are now being promoted as good alternatives to commonly used refrigerants that threaten Earth's atmosphere and climate. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Is Algae Worse than Corn for Biofuels? Growing algae for use in biofuels has a greater environmental impact than sources such as corn, switch grass and canola, researchers found in the first life-cycle assessment of algae growth.Interest in algae-based biofuels has blossomed in the past year, sparking major investments from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Dow Chemical Co. , and it has gained steam on Capitol Hill, as well. But the nascent industry has major environmental hurdles to overcome before ramping up production, according to research published this week in Environmental Science and Technology . [More] rss.sciam.com |