| Airlines & Recycling: The Not-So-Green Skies Even the infrequent flier might have noticed that when the flight attendant comes around collecting passenger detritus, all the empty cans, cups, bottles, newspapers and napkins usually end up in the same garbage bag. The U.S. airline industry discards enough aluminum cans every year to build nearly 58 Boeing 747s and enough paper to fill a football field–size hole 230 feet deep--that’s 4,250 tons of aluminum and 72,250 tons of paper. The 30 largest airports in the country, with the help of the airlines, create enough waste to equal the trash produced by cities the size of Miami or Minneapolis.Unlike other aspects of the travel business, the airline industry has moved at a snail’s pace to get onboard the green revolution. Although hotels, for instance, have plenty of monetary reasons to encourage patrons not to have their towels changed every day, the airline industry has little economic incentive and even less government pressure to go green. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Heavy Metal: Researchers Try to Get the Lead out of Piezoelectronics Gadget makers often rely on piezoelectricity --the ability that some solids have to produce voltage when pressure is applied to them--to power tiny embedded systems, such as a BlackBerry Storm 2's touch screen or a car's airbag sensor . Whereas lead-based compounds typically have the greatest piezoelectric potential, the heavy metal has fallen out of favor as device-makers push to eliminate it from all electronics in an attempt to reduce toxic waste . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Obama Budget Increases Funding for Energy Research and Nuclear Power Nuclear energy and energy research are among the big winners in the proposed $28.4 billion Energy Department fiscal 2011 budget the White House unveiled today.The almost 5 percent increase in funding from fiscal 2010 covers a $36 billion boost in loan guarantee authority for nuclear power facilities for a total of $54 billion, $300 million for an innovative energy research program, and a $226 million increase in funding for the Office of Science for research and development of "breakthrough" technologies for a total of $5.1 billion. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Arctic Plants Feel the Heat (preview) The year was 1944. World War II was show­ing signs of winding down, but predictions that the Japanese would fight to the bitter end had the Allies gravely concerned that they would run out of gasoline for the war effort. The 23-million-acre Naval Petroleum Reserve in northern Alaska was a prime location for finding new sources of oil, and the U.S. Navy decided to explore. But the navy had a problem: no maps. So it decided to take an exceptionally detailed set of aerial photographs.Basing out of Ladd Field, near Fairbanks, surveyors mounted a massive K-18 camera in the open door of a twin-engine Beech­craft. Over several years, flying low and slow, they took thousands of photographs of Alaska’s North Slope, extending from the Arctic Ocean south to the Brooks Range, and of the forested valleys on the south side of the range--itself a part of the boreal forest of evergreens and deciduous trees that stretches across a large swath of the Arctic. [More] rss.sciam.com |
In Science We Trust: Poll Results on How You Feel about Science Scientists have had a rough year. The leaked “Climategate” e-mails painted researchers as censorious. The mild H1N1 flu out­break led to charges that health officials exaggerated the danger to help Big Pharma sell more drugs. And Harvard University in­vestigators found shocking holes in a star professor’s data. As policy decisions on climate, energy, health and technology loom large, it’s important to ask: How badly have recent events shaken people’s faith in science? Does the public still trust scientists?To find out, Scientific American partnered with our sister publication, Nature , the international journal of science, to poll readers online. More than 21,000 people responded via the Web sites of Nature and of Scientific American and its international editions. As expected, it was a supportive and science-literate crowd--19 percent identified themselves as Ph.Ds. But attitudes differed widely depending on particular issues--climate, evolution, technology--and on whether respondents live in the U.S., Europe or Asia. [More] Harvard University - United States - Technology - Professor - Asia rss.sciam.com |