| As Wood Chippers Whine, Central Park’s Toll of Uprooted Trees Rises After a storm felled about 500 trees, an arboreal trauma team fanned out through sections of Central Park and Riverside Park, mapping the devastation for hard decisions ahead. nytimes.com |
Sustainability in Daily Life Take Action [More] rss.sciam.com |
Genetically Modified Tobacco Could Smoke Other Crops as Energy Source Tobacco plants produce abundant biomass in more than 100 countries and could -- with certain genetic modifications -- be used to produce abundant biofuels, researchers say.Researchers at the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, have successfully tested genetic manipulations to increase oil accumulation in the leaves of tobacco plants, according to a paper published online in Plant Biotechnology Journal . [More] rss.sciam.com |
What the Frack? Natural Gas from Subterranean Shale Promises U.S. Energy Independence--With Environmental Costs [Slide Show] DISH, Tex.--A satellite broadcasting company bought the rights to rename this town a few years ago in exchange for a decade of free television, but it is another industry that dominates the 200 or so residents: natural gas. Five facilities perched on the north Texas town 's outskirts compress the gas newly flowing to the surface from the cracked Barnett Shale more than two kilometers beneath the surface, collectively contributing a brew of toxic chemicals to the air. [More] rss.sciam.com |
How Fast Can Microbes Clean Up the Gulf Oil Spill? These are boom times for oil-eating microbes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to BP's Deepwater Horizon accident that has added some 600 million liters of hydrocarbons to those waters. And now research published online in Science on August 24 shows that an array of new and unclassified oil-eating bacteria are feasting on the newly rich resource of hydrocarbons. [More] Oil spill - Gulf of Mexico - deepwaterhorizon - BP - Microorganism rss.sciam.com |