INSIDE TECHNOLOGY BY JON VAN
www.chicagotribune.com
May 19, 2008
Among the most unusual recruits in the fight against greenhouse gases and global warming may be the microbes that live inside termites.A type of grass called miscanthus may be an optimal source of renewable fuel, suggests research by Stephen P. Long and his colleagues. Related to sugar cane, miscanthus can grow up to 20 feet in a season on land considered marginal for corn or soybeans, said Long, director of the energy biosciences institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Planting miscanthus or a hybrid on acres not being used for corn or soybeans theoretically could yield enough fuel to power most of the nation's cars, Long said at an energy symposium sponsored by Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory. That assumes that processes to convert cellulose to fuel can be done efficiently, and this is where those termite microbes come into play.Scientists are studying these critters to learn how the enzymes they produce can break down and convert the cellulose in wood into fuel.
The same process is at the heart of converting biomass to fuel to run our cars and heat our homes, explained Steve Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."Termites are our friends," said Chu, who in 1997 shared the Nobel Prize in physics.Despite the recent ethanol push-back since food prices began their worldwide rise, biomass fuels still offer a viable alternative to fossil fuels, Long said.Prices for rice and wheat have jumped more than for corn, Long said, even though corn is the only grain used to make ethanol. Other factors such as rising energy prices, growing demand for meat in China and bad weather globally play a bigger role in food price increases, he added, while acknowledging that converting corn to ethanol is an inefficient process.
It takes about 80 percent as much energy to make ethanol from corn than the ethanol will yield, Long said. But other fuels extracted from different plants may require only 20 percent of the energy harvested, he said."Criticizing biomass fuels on the basis of ethanol made from corn would be like judging the value of railroads based on the original, old steam engines," Long said. "We are at the beginning of developing this technology."Watching the computer: Internet videos continue to grow in popularity, but it's not clear when computers might replace TV sets as the home's entertainment focus.In a study this year, ComScore Inc. found a 66 percent jump in online video viewing in a one-year period. The online rating service cannot distinguish precisely the type of video being watched, said Andrew Lipsman, a Chicago-based ComScore analyst, but it seems likely that most were short clips, often made by amateurs."The average online video we found lasted less than 3 minutes," Lipsman said. "So viewing wouldn't be dominated by people going online to catch up on TV shows they missed."The rapid rise in Internet-based-video viewing suggests to Lipsman there may be pent-up demand for people to tap into commercial television using the Internet."It's the sort of thing where you need to get all the relevant technologies aligned, and I think that's happened," he said. "We might have seen a tipping point already, but the strike by TV writers meant that you don't have a lot of fresh new material out there right now. The writers are back at work now, and new content will soon be available."Once that happens, we may see a significant shift in viewing habits."
25.5.08
Greenhouse gases highest for 800,000 years
By Alister Doyle
Environment Correspondent
in.reuters.com
OSLO (Reuters)
May 14, 2008
Greenhouse gases are at higher levels in the atmosphere than at any time in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice on Wednesday that extends evidence that mankind is disrupting the climate.
Carbon dioxide and methane trapped in tiny bubbles of air in ancient ice down to 3,200 meters (10,500 ft) below the surface of Antarctica add 150,000 years of data to climate records stretching back 650,000 years from shallower ice drilling.
"We can firmly say that today's concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are 28 and 124 percent higher respectively than at any time during the last 800,000 years," said Thomas Stocker, an author of the report at the University of Berne.
Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of greenhouse gases were guided mainly by long-term shifts in the earth's orbit around the sun that have plunged the planet into ice ages and back again eight times in the past 800,000 years.
The U.N. Climate Panel last year blamed human activities, led by burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gases, for modern global warming that may disrupt water and food supplies with ever more droughts, floods and heatwaves.
"The driving forces now are very much different from the driving forces in the past when there was only natural variation," Stocker told Reuters of the study in the journal Nature by scientists in Switzerland, France and Germany.
The experts, working on the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, drilled down almost to bedrock in Antarctica. They recovered layers of ice formed by compressed snow, which can be counted much like the rings on trees.
Stocker said Chinese and Australian scientists were examining possibilities for drilling in parts of Antarctica with even deeper ice, in some places 4,500 meters thick, that could yield atmospheric records dating back 1.5 million years.
The study also found big natural shifts in carbon dioxide levels. "We find very conspicuous natural oscillations of carbon dioxide 770,000 years ago that bear the fingerprint of abrupt climate change during ice ages," Stocker said.
And the Nature report also set a new record low for carbon dioxide at 172 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere about 667,000 years ago, about 10 ppm below the previous known low and giving an ancient natural range of 172 to about 300 ppm.
The study suggested that the low might be a sign that the oceans once soaked up more carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide levels are now at about 380 ppm.
Taken together, the data "allow us to learn more eventually about the carbon cycle and its responses to climate change."
Temperatures in an ice age are about 5-6 Celsius (9 to 11 Fahrenheit) colder than now, already a mild period in earth's history. Climate change could add a "best guess" of 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius this century, according to the U.N. panel.
The study also linked variations in methane to monsoons.
"The variations of methane concentration point to a strengthening of the monsoon system in the tropics in the most recent 400,000 years. These monsoon cycles have become stronger in the second half of this long time period," Stocker said.
Environment Correspondent
in.reuters.com
OSLO (Reuters)
May 14, 2008
Greenhouse gases are at higher levels in the atmosphere than at any time in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice on Wednesday that extends evidence that mankind is disrupting the climate.
Carbon dioxide and methane trapped in tiny bubbles of air in ancient ice down to 3,200 meters (10,500 ft) below the surface of Antarctica add 150,000 years of data to climate records stretching back 650,000 years from shallower ice drilling.
"We can firmly say that today's concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are 28 and 124 percent higher respectively than at any time during the last 800,000 years," said Thomas Stocker, an author of the report at the University of Berne.
Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of greenhouse gases were guided mainly by long-term shifts in the earth's orbit around the sun that have plunged the planet into ice ages and back again eight times in the past 800,000 years.
The U.N. Climate Panel last year blamed human activities, led by burning of fossil fuels that release heat-trapping gases, for modern global warming that may disrupt water and food supplies with ever more droughts, floods and heatwaves.
"The driving forces now are very much different from the driving forces in the past when there was only natural variation," Stocker told Reuters of the study in the journal Nature by scientists in Switzerland, France and Germany.
The experts, working on the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, drilled down almost to bedrock in Antarctica. They recovered layers of ice formed by compressed snow, which can be counted much like the rings on trees.
Stocker said Chinese and Australian scientists were examining possibilities for drilling in parts of Antarctica with even deeper ice, in some places 4,500 meters thick, that could yield atmospheric records dating back 1.5 million years.
The study also found big natural shifts in carbon dioxide levels. "We find very conspicuous natural oscillations of carbon dioxide 770,000 years ago that bear the fingerprint of abrupt climate change during ice ages," Stocker said.
And the Nature report also set a new record low for carbon dioxide at 172 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere about 667,000 years ago, about 10 ppm below the previous known low and giving an ancient natural range of 172 to about 300 ppm.
The study suggested that the low might be a sign that the oceans once soaked up more carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide levels are now at about 380 ppm.
Taken together, the data "allow us to learn more eventually about the carbon cycle and its responses to climate change."
Temperatures in an ice age are about 5-6 Celsius (9 to 11 Fahrenheit) colder than now, already a mild period in earth's history. Climate change could add a "best guess" of 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius this century, according to the U.N. panel.
The study also linked variations in methane to monsoons.
"The variations of methane concentration point to a strengthening of the monsoon system in the tropics in the most recent 400,000 years. These monsoon cycles have become stronger in the second half of this long time period," Stocker said.
Fungus Could Be a Fix for Uranium Pollution
By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
sciencenow.sciencemag.org
5 May 2008
Uranium pollution from high-tech armor and munitions is one of the dangerous legacies of the wars in the Balkans and Iraq. But a naturally occurring fungus might help combat the spread of that pollution into local ecosystems. The fungus transforms the uranium into a stable form that shouldn't work its way into the food chain, a new study shows. The findings potentially could help engineers isolate the toxic metal until better ways of cleaning up all but the most heavily contaminated sites can be developed.
Modern warfare has introduced a new and insidious type of pollutant to battlegrounds in the Middle East and Europe: depleted uranium. The compound consists of the nonexplosive uranium-238 that remains after the fissile uranium-235 has been extracted for making nuclear explosives and other purposes, plus a touch of titanium. Depleted uranium's high density makes it extremely useful for armor and munitions. But when shell collides with armor, fine particles scatter, so the military use of depleted uranium has left soil and water tables in battlegrounds polluted. Although less radioactive than natural uranium, the depleted form is nonetheless toxic and as hazardous as lead or mercury.
Researchers at the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom examined whether certain natural fungi could help clean up uranium from sites in the Balkans and Iraq. They knew from past studies that some types of fungi can ingest toxic substances without apparent harm. So in laboratory experiments, they fed depleted uranium to so-called mycorrhizal fungi, which usually live in the roots of plants, taking carbon from the plants and furnishing nutrients in return. Within a few months, the team reports tomorrow in Current Biology, the mycorrhizal fungi had surrounded and chemically transformed the depleted uranium to a stable phosphate compound. Because this compound isn't a nutrient, it doesn't work its way into the food chain.
Even better, this transformational ability of fungi "would work for pollution with any--depleted or not--metallic uranium and its corrosion products," says environmental microbiologist and lead author Marina Fomina. "Our findings could also be applied to cleaning up contaminated liquid wastes, metal leaching, and recycling and recovery," she says.
Soil ecologist John Dighton of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, calls the findings "great work" and an important step forward in identifying how fungi can slow the buildup of uranium in the environment. Understanding the role of fungi in radioactive and heavy-metal interactions in the soil is "important from many perspectives," he adds, particularly their impact on human health and the environment.
ScienceNOW Daily News
sciencenow.sciencemag.org
5 May 2008
Uranium pollution from high-tech armor and munitions is one of the dangerous legacies of the wars in the Balkans and Iraq. But a naturally occurring fungus might help combat the spread of that pollution into local ecosystems. The fungus transforms the uranium into a stable form that shouldn't work its way into the food chain, a new study shows. The findings potentially could help engineers isolate the toxic metal until better ways of cleaning up all but the most heavily contaminated sites can be developed.
Modern warfare has introduced a new and insidious type of pollutant to battlegrounds in the Middle East and Europe: depleted uranium. The compound consists of the nonexplosive uranium-238 that remains after the fissile uranium-235 has been extracted for making nuclear explosives and other purposes, plus a touch of titanium. Depleted uranium's high density makes it extremely useful for armor and munitions. But when shell collides with armor, fine particles scatter, so the military use of depleted uranium has left soil and water tables in battlegrounds polluted. Although less radioactive than natural uranium, the depleted form is nonetheless toxic and as hazardous as lead or mercury.
Researchers at the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom examined whether certain natural fungi could help clean up uranium from sites in the Balkans and Iraq. They knew from past studies that some types of fungi can ingest toxic substances without apparent harm. So in laboratory experiments, they fed depleted uranium to so-called mycorrhizal fungi, which usually live in the roots of plants, taking carbon from the plants and furnishing nutrients in return. Within a few months, the team reports tomorrow in Current Biology, the mycorrhizal fungi had surrounded and chemically transformed the depleted uranium to a stable phosphate compound. Because this compound isn't a nutrient, it doesn't work its way into the food chain.
Even better, this transformational ability of fungi "would work for pollution with any--depleted or not--metallic uranium and its corrosion products," says environmental microbiologist and lead author Marina Fomina. "Our findings could also be applied to cleaning up contaminated liquid wastes, metal leaching, and recycling and recovery," she says.
Soil ecologist John Dighton of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, calls the findings "great work" and an important step forward in identifying how fungi can slow the buildup of uranium in the environment. Understanding the role of fungi in radioactive and heavy-metal interactions in the soil is "important from many perspectives," he adds, particularly their impact on human health and the environment.
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22.5.08
Letter of Intent
Welcome.
All the information that will be on this blog is from the research for my documentary entitled, "The Green Screen". This documentary focuses on the information and/or disinformation of the global industrial complex.
Why is it that when you try and find information on something evolving the environment you find hundreds of websites seemingly dedicated to informing us how uneducated we are for believing that the steps we take to try and make a difference are either economically irresponsible or just downright naive. Then, when trying to counter that argument, almost nothing is available without digging for days.
Some would say that is simply because the information does not exist. But what if it does? Where is it? Is there anyone making an effort to screen us from it? How much money and effort is really going into new technologies? And what practices are in place right now that not only hurt the environment but our bank accounts as well?
Because of the internet, the average user assumes that truthful information is simply at the keyword search of Google or Yahoo. But what is fact? And what is fiction?
- The Green Screen
Environmental Fact? Or Fiction?
All the information that will be on this blog is from the research for my documentary entitled, "The Green Screen". This documentary focuses on the information and/or disinformation of the global industrial complex.
Why is it that when you try and find information on something evolving the environment you find hundreds of websites seemingly dedicated to informing us how uneducated we are for believing that the steps we take to try and make a difference are either economically irresponsible or just downright naive. Then, when trying to counter that argument, almost nothing is available without digging for days.
Some would say that is simply because the information does not exist. But what if it does? Where is it? Is there anyone making an effort to screen us from it? How much money and effort is really going into new technologies? And what practices are in place right now that not only hurt the environment but our bank accounts as well?
Because of the internet, the average user assumes that truthful information is simply at the keyword search of Google or Yahoo. But what is fact? And what is fiction?
- The Green Screen
Environmental Fact? Or Fiction?
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