| 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 |
The Bigger Kahuna: Are More Frequent and Higher Extreme Waves a By-Product of Global Warming? Armand Thibault looked out over the Pacific's rumbling winter waves from his balcony in Neskowin, Ore. "The predicted high tide today is a 10.1 [feet]," he relayed via YouTube on Friday, January 29. "I'm very glad we don't have a storm surge behind this one. Tomorrow is supposed to be a 10.2, so it should be interesting." [More] rss.sciam.com |
Arctic Beauty in Black and White: Alaska Before the Effects of Global Warming [Slide Show] Toward the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy began mapping an area of northern Alaska extending south from the Arctic Sea across the North Slope and down to the forested valleys south of the Brooks Range . In an effort lasting a number of years, surveyors flew low in a small plane, snapping thousands of photographs with a large-format K-18 camera pointed out the craft’s open door. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Student engineers in Tanzania seek government support for stove-design project Editor's Note: Students from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering are working in Tanzania to help improve sanitation and energy technologies in local villages. This series chronicles work being done by the student-led group , known as Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), to design "rocket stoves" in the village of Mwamgongo and top-light updraft design (TLUD) gasification stoves in the village of Kalinzi. The goal is to create a healthier, more energy-efficient cooking apparatus that these villagers will accept and use. HELP students are filing these dispatches from the field during their trip. This is their 11th blog post for Scientific American. [More] Tanzania - Energy - Government - Thayer School of Engineering - Africa rss.sciam.com |