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X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:16:35 +0000

Lasers fire beams of light that can cut through steel or etch microchip patterns, depending on the power and wavelength. Now one team of scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., led by Nina Rohringer, has created an X-ray laser that fires more energy, with a more precise wavelength, than any previous model. The results are being published in the journal Nature.

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X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:16:35 +0000

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X-Ray Laser Fires Most Powerful Beam Ever

Finding Nature’s Speed Limit

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:41:18 +0000

The speed of light is considered to be the limit at which no object can go faster. But here on Earth, nature has its own speed limit which affects its fastest creatures every day. The speed at which an animal can go, and human aircraft for that matter, is directly dependent upon how far that animal can see. Using complex mathematical equations, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have effectively quantified nature’s speed limit. They found that given a certain density of obstacles, there exists a speed at which a bird can reasonably fly without collision.

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Finding Nature’s Speed Limit

Long Life Is Still (Somewhat) in Your Genes

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:02:27 +0000

Will you live to 100? Last year, scientists published a study proposing a “genetic signature” that could help answer that question. But they retracted the paper when critics discovered errors that invalidated the results. Now the team is back with a revamped study that proposes a different signature; it’s less predictive in most people but, they say, it still underscores that your chance of living a very long life has a powerful genetic component.

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Long Life Is Still (Somewhat) in Your Genes

New Study Predicts Declining Rangeland in California

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:02:26 +0000

Duke University researchers have predicted that climate change in California will result in a declining percentage of rangeland. Such a change will have widespread impact on the state’s large cattle industry of California’s Central Valley. No matter if climate change will cause wetter or drier weather, available pasture will decline. Forage areas, known as one of nature’s free services, may no longer be so free. The grasses will either wither as arid conditions creep north, or be pushed out as inedible shrubs and brush take over.

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New Study Predicts Declining Rangeland in California

Obama administration rejects Keystone

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:29:42 +0000

The Obama administration on Wednesday rejected the Keystone crude oil pipeline project, a decision welcomed by environmental groups but blasted by the domestic energy industry. U.S. President Barack Obama said TransCanada’s application for the 1,700-mile (2,740-km) pipeline was denied because the State Department did not have enough time to complete the review process. “This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Obama said in a statement.

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Obama administration rejects Keystone

Atmospheric Particles causing more rain

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:24:24 +0000

A rise in the atmosphere of aerosols – miniscule particles which include soot, dust and sulphates – has led to more rainfall in certain parts of the world and could provide vital clues for future climate predictions, a scientific study shows. A deeper understanding of rainfall patterns would aid scientists’ ability to predict changing trends in the climate. Aerosols can be produced from burning coal or gas, industrial and agricultural processes or by the burning of forests. As well as being harmful for human health, they are blamed for causing air pollution such as smog and smoke. “For a range of conditions, increases in aerosol abundance are associated with the local intensification of rain rates,” said the study published in Nature Geoscience by scientists from Israel’s Weizmann Institute, NASA, and other institutions.

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Atmospheric Particles causing more rain

The Myriad Planets of the Galaxy

admin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:53:28 +0000

At one time there was serious debates that planets were a rare phenomena, few and far between. Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets, according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three planets located outside our solar system, called exoplanets. The discovery, to be reported in the January 12 issue of Nature, was made by an international team of astronomers, including co-author Stephen Kane of NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. The survey results show that our galaxy contains, on average, a minimum of one planet for every star. This means that it’s likely there are a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth.

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The Myriad Planets of the Galaxy

Sunflowers show how to capture solar energy more efficiently

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:13:42 +0000

by Sarah Laskow. In design, biomimicry — the idea that nature does design best — is all the rage. So it must have been a head-slapping “duh” moment when solar-power designers sought inspiration from sunflowers — a plant that has “sun” in its name, for goodness' sake! It turns out that sunflowers are really good at using the sun (NO WAY), and mimicking their structure can allow designers to seriously reduce the size of concentrating solar power farms. Concentrating solar power facilities use mirrors to focus solar energy at a single point, usually a high tower. But CSP fields of mirrors take up a lot of space, and unlike solar panels, you can’t just stick a CSP generator on top of your house. (For real, they need a LOT of space.) Copying the layout of sunflowers' florets, though, can boost efficiency and reduce the amount of land needed by about 20 percent.

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Sunflowers show how to capture solar energy more efficiently

Europe’s mountains show clear and rapid change to a warming climate

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:33:09 +0000

The decade from 2000 to 2009 was the warmest since global climate has been measured, and while localized studies have shown evidence of changes in mountain plant communities that reflect this warming trend, no study has yet taken a continental-scale view of the situation – until now. With the publication of “Continent-wide response of mountain vegetation to climate change,” scheduled for Advance Online Publication (AOP) in Nature Climate Change on 8 January, researchers from 13 countries report clear and statistically significant evidence of a continent-wide warming effect on mountain plant communities.

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Europe’s mountains show clear and rapid change to a warming climate

This electrical socket spits out your power-sucking plugs

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:29:33 +0000

by Sarah Laskow. The PumPing Tap does not like wasted power. It's an electrical socket with a spring-loaded ejector seat, which pops plugs right out if they're slowly sucking energy when not in active use. The idea is to combat vampire power, the massive amount of energy slowly sapped by idling gizmos, like microwaves that aren’t cooking or chargers that aren’t charging anything. The PumPing Tap (which is still in the design stage, sadly) monitors the flow of energy, and if you don't use a device for 10 minutes — ptooie! — it's unplugged. Ten minutes seems like a pretty short window in which to use the device, and as Mother Nature Network's Matt Hickman points out, isn't the plug using a small amount of power to monitor the power use of the bigger appliances? Considering that most people leave their microwaves plugged in all the time, it's probably an energy saver in the end. But pity the poor people who might install these devices, forget, and then wonder why their coffee machine won't turn on in the morning.

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This electrical socket spits out your power-sucking plugs

Nature is trying to reabsorb the exurbs

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:06:40 +0000

by Greg Hanscom. Great news for folks who have watched the value of their exurban McMansions circling the drain over the past few years: These fringe habitations can be returned to nature to find new life as wildlife habitats. It’s basically the real estate version of composting. Okay, so there's not really an official effort to make subdivisions into sanctuaries, but apparently nobody told bears that. In Hopatcong, N.J., a cable TV repairman recently descended into 85-year-old Frank Annacone's basement and found a 500-pound black bear slumbering there. The folks at Gothamist dubbed it the “Reverse Goldilocks Bear,” and in a true case of lopsided justice, it was quickly tranquilized and subjected to an “examination” (yikes) before being released back into the wild. (What did Goldilocks get, a good scare and a few hours of community service?) It’s not the first time wild animals have done the “creative reuse” thing on the outer edges of civilization. BldgBlog has dredged up tales of bobcats lounging around foreclosed exurban mansions , bees that turned a California home into a honey factory, and a pack of coyotes that squatted in a burned-out house in Glendale, Calif. Someone needs to tell these guys that the long commute back to the forest will ruin their marriages .

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Nature is trying to reabsorb the exurbs

How climate change shows up in ancient, Tolkien-esque myths

admin — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:42:19 +0000

by Christopher Mims. The Vernagtferner glacier in the portion of the Alps falling within the borders of Austria is said to be cursed. In ancient legend, it buried the cities Onan

Exploring Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture

admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:05:52 +0000

The type of agriculture practiced in a given region depends heavily on the climate and weather that region receives. So naturally, with climate change, agriculture will be forced to change. Certain crops will have to be discarded for alternative crops which may grow better in the new climate. In other cases, agriculture will simply be no longer sustainable. Farms may have to close down or move to different latitudes or elevations. The unpredictable nature of climate change will make this quite a conundrum for farmers and the world at large.

Exploring Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture

admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:05:52 +0000

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Exploring Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture

Challenges to Wine-making in a Warming World

admin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:19:26 +0000

Perhaps the largest impact of global climate change will be on agriculture, and there is no crop more sensitive to changes in climate than wine grapes. As temperatures rise and average precipitation levels change, the signature wine-making regions such as those in France and California will be forced to adapt. There have been studies conducted analyzing the influence of weather and climate on wine since long before climate change made the headlines. Recently, studies have modeled climate change’s effects up to 100 years into the future. The expected impacts are not bad at first, but in the end, they are not good.

Infographic: World’s tallest buildings OF THE FUTURE

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:15:09 +0000

by Christopher Mims. (click to embiggen) Buildings are getting to be so tall that the Council on Tall Buildings came up with a new name for their most extreme versions: Megatall . This is density taken to an extreme that may not be all that helpful. For one thing, people, goods, and water have to be moved all the way to the top of these things, and that requires a lot of energy. In addition, above a certain height, structural elements take up more and more of a building's interior space, reports Sun Joo Kim at SmartPlanet . Here's the full list of the world's tallest buildings in 2020 — and these are just the ones that look like they'll actually be built, vs. those that are on the drawing board. 1. Kingdom Tower, Jeddah: 1,000+ meters (3,280+ feet) 2. Burj Khalifa, Dubai: 828 meters (2,717 feet) 3. Ping An Finance Center, Shenzen: 660 meters (2,165 feet) 4. Seoul Light DMC Tower: 640 meters (2,101 feet) 5. Signature Tower, Jakarta: 638 meters (2,093 feet) 6. Shanghai Tower, Shanghai: 632 meters (2,073 feet) 7. Wuhan Greenland Center, Wuhan: 606 meters (1,988 feet) 8. Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel, Makkah: 601 meters (1,972 feet) 9. Goldin Finance 117, Tian Jin: 597 meters (1,957 feet) 10. Lotte World Tower, Seoul: 555 meters (1,819 feet) 11. Doha Convention Center and Tower, Doha: 551 meters (1,808 feet) 12. One World Trade Center, New York City: 541 meters (1,776 feet) 13. Chow Tai Fook Guangzhou, Guangzhou: 530 meters (1,739 feet) 14. Tianjin Chow Tai Fook Binhai Center, Tian Jin: 530 meters (1,739 feet) 15. Dalian Greenland Center, Dalian: 518 meters (1,699 feet) 16. Pentominium, Dubai: 516 meters (1,693 feet) 17. Busan Lotte Town Tower, Busan: 510 meters (1,674 feet) 18. Taipei 101, Taipei: 508 meters (1,667 feet) 19. Kaisa Feng Long Centre, Kaisa: 500 meters (1,640 feet) 20. Shanghai WFC, Shanghai: 492 meters (1,614 feet)

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Infographic: World’s tallest buildings OF THE FUTURE

Methane in the Arctic: the end of the world, or what?

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:04:10 +0000

by Christopher Mims. Russian scientists have discovered that the Arctic is releasing hundreds, perhaps thousands , of enormous plumes of methane from the seafloor directly into earth's atmosphere. The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years. This has some people messing their drawers because it’s strongly reminiscent of what is probably the worst possible climate scenario imaginable, a feedback loop so humongous and destructive that it would lead to runaway warming that makes today's runaway warming look tame by comparison. The last time this happened, it poisoned 90 percent of all life on earth with hydrogen sulfide gas , in a process described by paleontologist Peter Ward as ” life killing itself off. ” Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, up to 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide, depending on how you measure it. It’s long been known that reduced ice cover in the Arctic could trigger massive methane releases, warming the planet even further. That threat has led some to call for radical geoengineering of the Arctic by 2013, though most scientists say that's premature . (Or at least, they said that before.) A 2010 paper in Science led climate scientist David Archer to declare that Arctic methane shouldn't scare us , because our most immediate climate threat comes from the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. CO2 is plenty to be frightened of, while methane is frosting on the cake. Imagine you are in a Toyota on the highway at 60 miles per hour approaching stopped traffic, and you find that the brake pedal is broken. This is CO2. Then you figure out that the accelerator has also jammed, so that by the time you hit the truck in front of you, you will be going 90 miles per hour instead of 60. This is methane. Is now the time to get worried? No, you should already have been worried by the broken brake pedal. Methane sells newspapers, but it’s not the big story, nor does it look to be a game changer to the big story, which is CO2. Another paper in 2010 from the Journal of Geophysical Research asserted that even under the worst warming scenarios, the methane coming out of the Arctic ocean couldn't have anything to do with planetary warming . (h/t Colin Schultz ) But it’s not like we know everything there is to know about Arctic methane. Science moves slowly, perhaps too slowly to deal with a planetary emergency. Already, this discovery has blown at least one hypothesis out of the water — the idea that even if there were large releases of methane from the arctic, they would be contained in the ocean by a cap of cold water and methane-consuming microbes . So much for that. Cow farts and the occasional Arctic plume aside, so far it seems like humans remain the dominant source of methane in the atmosphere. But new methane emissions have got nothing on the malign methane genie bottled up in the permafrost . If global warming releases that huge store of greenhouse gas, it could — pardon the expression — snowball out of control.

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Methane in the Arctic: the end of the world, or what?

Green Christmas suggestions from IzzitGreen

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:48:06 +0000

Just in time for our readers’ last minute Christmas Shopping, our friends from IzzitGreen have come up with five great eco-friendly Holiday gifts. As an additional eco-incentive 50% of the proceeds earned for any purchase of the Get to Know Nature bag will go directly to the Get to Know organization and help support their mission to keep the National Parks of the U.S. and Canada vibrant. Enjoy! Get to Know NatureBag The NatureBag is packed full of fun activities designed to support Get to Know’s main mission to connect kids with the great outdoors. The all-weather activity booklet and other accessories encourage exploration and natural awareness through lead experiential activities. Pack up all the eco-friendly tools made from recycled materials into the unique fair trade, organic cotton shoulder bag and away you go! Last year the Get to Know NatureBag received the Gold Medal Award from Parent’s Choice as an eco-friendly and socially sound choice. http://www.gettoknow.ca/store/naturebagGrowBottles Everything you need to grow fresh herbs and gain the culinary respect (or envy) of your friends is packaged into these beautiful recycled GrowBottles, and they’re made completely with sourced and re-purposed materials. With a little water and love the GrowBottles can continue to produce year after year with your own seeds or one of the refill kits. Thanks to brilliant design and the power of hydroponics, growing fresh herbs indoors has never been so easy. Available in Oregano, Chives, Basil, Parsley and Mint certified organic seed varieties.

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Green Christmas suggestions from IzzitGreen

Brits make disused landfill into wildlife sanctuary

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:36:16 +0000

by Sarah Laskow. There are a few options of what to do with an old landfill: cover it over and leave it alone; turn it into a field for solar panels; convince people t o play soccer on top of it . One town in England is going a step further and returning a decommissioned landfill to nature. The 16-acre spot in Stourpaine (how do British places names always sound so British?) was taken out of active use in 1993. Now, the town is planting trees and shrubs over the area in the hopes of attracting woodland animals and birds. The new forest will also be harvested (responsibly, of course) for firewood, which, one assumes, will be burnt in the hearth of a local pub, to which we will all go round on a winter's day. Anyway, this is a nice project, and more people should copy it.