TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Don’t Drive, They Said. But a Few Didn’t Hear. Two entrances to Prospect Park now allow only pedestrians and cyclists. nytimes.com |
Newly Uncovered Enzymes Turn Corn Plant Waste into Biofuel "Visualize three tons of moldy bread." It's not the most appealing image, perhaps, but it's a description of the moist mound of growth media tended by bioscientist Cliff Bradley and his partner, chemical engineer Bob Kearns at their biofuel facility in Butte, Mont., that could help cut ethanol costs at the fuel pump. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Cool roofs are finally cool Editor's Note: Scientific American's George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels and taking other steps to save energy in 60-Second Solar. Read his introduction here and see all posts here.We geeks never seem to get our props as trendsetters. My friends Adam and Joe and I were the first kids in our school to use instant messaging over a 300-baud modem in 1979. But I guess girls preferred guys with the latest bell bottoms. Now the frontier of geekdom is energy conservation, and this time, we’re finally getting some respect. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Uncharted waters: When hydrogen fails, the students turn to that old standby--gasoline Editor's Note: A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students are traveling up New York's Hudson River this week on the New Clermont , a 6.7-meter boat outfitted with a pair of 2.2-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells to power the boat's motor. Their journey began September 21 from Manhattan's Pier 84 and will cover 240 kilometers (at a projected speed of 8 kilometers per hour). After making several stops along the way, the crew expects to arrive back at Rensselaer Polytech's campus in Troy, N.Y., on September 25. This is the second of Scientific American.com's blogs chronicling this expedition, called the New Clermont Project. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Wind Farmers Go To School On Fish The use of wind power continues to soar around the world. In 2008 the U.S. actually surpassed Germany as the world’s top producer of energy from wind. It might seem that there aren’t many improvements to make to what’s essentially a passive technology. But researchers at the California Institute of Technology say the way fish school will help create more efficient designs for wind farms. They presented their research at a meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics.When fish swim, they leave little swirling vortices in their wake. By swimming together in a school, they can transfer energy to one another through these vortices. Wind behaves much as a liquid does. So the engineers have taken wind turbines that spin on vertical axes--these are different from the traditional horizontal wind turbine mostly in use today. On a computer, they’ve positioned the turbines close enough together that as one spins, it then directs the wind to its neighbor. [More] rss.sciam.com |