The future of biofuel may lie in one word: algae. The tiny primitive plants can produce a lot of oil in a little space. Solix Biofuels has a pilot plant in the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colo., that uses the excess carbon dioxide from beer making to feed algae growing in indoor tanks. Global Green Solutions has a test facility in El Paso, Tex., that grows algae in tall, thin, sunlit bioreactors....
Why do I keep hearing about the California drought, if it’s the Colorado River that we’re “killing”? Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years. California’s is a severe, but relatively short-term, drought. But the Colorado River basin—which provides critical water supplies for seven states including California—is the victim of a slower-burning catastrophe entering its 16th year....
Michael Phelps is red, white, and black and blue all over this Olympics thanks to a scientifically questionable technique known as cupping. Phelps and other athletes are turning to cupping therapy in hopes of healing their sore muscles. It’s a procedure based in ancient medicine in which cups are placed on top of the skin. The cups create a vacuum, pulling up the skin in an effort to stimulate blood flow to the area....
Consciousness is a peculiar, even supernatural idea. From three pounds of flesh emerges an awareness of the body that houses it and the world around it. We all recognize consciousness when we see it, but what is it, really? And where does it go when it’s gone? Neuroscience doesn’t have the tools to answer these questions—if they’re really possible to answer at all—but in a hospital, doctors need to be able to diagnose consciousness....
Ten ferrets, some bird flu and swabs. That is all, according to a presentation last summer, one needs to concoct a virulent strain of influenza that could start a deadly pandemic among humans. These initial findings were presented last September in Malta at the European Scientific Working group on Influenza meeting to an auditorium packed with fellow scientists and policy makers. Ron Fouchier, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, himself a bit sniffly at the time, calmly explained that he and his team had discovered that without the help of another virus, the deadly avian flu (H5N1) could easily mutate in mammals to become transmissible through the air, like a true pandemic strain, through a sneeze or a cough....
By Quirin SchiermeierHow much of the Netherlands lies below sea level? It seems an innocuous question– but it sparked a major review of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).The investigation, commissioned by the Dutch government, focused on the contribution of Working Group II–on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability–to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. The Dutch report’s conclusions, released on July 5, highlight a number of mistakes–some trivial, others more egregious–and suggest ways to minimize errors in the future....
Name: Hilary Mason Title: Chief scientist, bit.ly Location: New York City I joined bit.ly as chief scientist in October of 2009. The company is a URL-shortener and content-sharing platform; we provide tools for people to share and track links on the Internet. People might not imagine that there are scientists working at Internet start-ups, but bit.ly was a bit ahead of the trend of recognizing the value of data. Approximately one third of my day is spent doing pure research—looking at data about what people click on, trying to figure out what it says about human behavior and communication....
This is not Google’s version of Siri. It’s a result of the company’s push to use data it collects from you in novel ways that could be helpful, or unsettling. “That’s not something I want my computer telling me. It’s creepy,” said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy organization located in San Francisco. “Google has always collected information. That hasn’t changed,” Opsahl said....
When Nick was a toddler, he struggled to make sense of language, coordinate his own limbs and orient himself in the world. His mother, Brigid Day, got some sympathetic advice from his neurologist. It was permission, essentially, to soothe her child into sleep by lying next to him in bed. “His pediatric neurologist even said, ‘That is something you can do to make his life calm and easy for him when a lot of things are hard,’” Day says....
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the world’s leading cause of disability, affecting some 300 million people worldwide. Traditional treatments, developed in the 1960s and 70s, fail many patients. One in every three patients derives no benefit from medication, and about one of every five people with MDD is classified as having treatment-resistant depression. At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, scientists are pursuing several lines of research that could open new pathways for treatment of MDD....
NASA’s New Horizons probe has officially begun to execute its sequence of Pluto flyby observations as it zooms toward its closest approach to the dwarf planet on July 14. Mission representatives say New Horizons is “back on track” after it experienced an anomaly on July 4 that caused it to go into a temporary “safe mode.” The anomaly was later shown to be the result of too many commands being executed at once....
Money took center stage in Doha, Qatar, yesterday as vulnerable countries declared that $100 billion annually by 2020 is insufficient to protect them from the impacts of climate change. Speaking on the second day of U.N. climate change negotiations, diplomats from Malawi and Zimbabwe demanded more transparency from developed countries claiming to deliver money. And, they said, a clear blueprint for ramping up aid between 2013 and 2020 is a must....
People who undergo bariatric surgery to help them lose weight may face an increased risk of self-harming behaviors in the two to three years following the surgery, a new study from Canada reports. In the study, researchers looked at more than 8,800 people who’d had weight-loss surgery, monitoring them for three years before their surgery and three years after their operation. There were 62 reports of self-harm in the three years prior to people’s surgeries, compared with 96 reports of self-harm in the three-year period after these people had weight-loss surgery—an increase of 54 percent....
ARCHITECT: Eva Jiricna STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING FIRM: Techniker HEIGHT: 62 feet CANTILEVERED STEPS: 104 CONCRETE SHRINKAGE: Up to 0.15 percent HIGH-PERFORMANCE CONCRETE SHRINKAGE: Less than 0.06 percent The Miles Stair is a 12-foot-wide helix of white concrete that winds through five stories of Somerset House, a cultural center in London. Staircases typically use surrounding walls for support, but the Miles Stair relies on a core built from a latticework of lightweight stainless steel....
By Brendan Borrell Adult mouse cells can now be reprogrammed to a stem-cell-like state with the help of a single genetic insertion – rather than the multiple gene insertions required in the past. The advance also enables reprogrammable mice to be maintained in the lab generation after generation.Three years ago, Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University and his colleagues made a splash by creating the first induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which can develop into any of the body’s cell types....
HAMBURG, Germany—Sitting in an ordinary shed in a side hall just off the main grounds of this city’s massive sewage treatment plant is a pilot plant, launched last month, that has the recycling world abuzz with excitement. The process, developed by Remondis, a global recycling company, could pave the way for what many in the industry see as the wastewater treatment facility of the future, one that can derive energy, clean water and valuable chemicals from sewage....
Like many paediatricians, Dani Dumitriu braced herself for the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus when it first surged in her wards. She was relieved when most newborn babies at her hospital who had been exposed to COVID-19 seemed to do just fine. Knowledge of the effects of Zika and other viruses that can cause birth defects meant that doctors were looking out for problems. But hints of a more subtle and insidious trend followed close behind....
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Climate change may have “serious, pervasive and irreversible” impacts on human society and nature, according to a draft U.N. report due for approval this week that says governments still have time to avert the worst. Delegates from more than 100 governments and top scientists meet in Copenhagen on Oct 27-31 to edit the report, meant as the main guide for nations working on a U....
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said on Friday it would lead the effort to recover four unarmed bombs it was forced to drop in Australia’s World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef marine park.The U.S. 7th Fleet would take the lead in recovering the bombs, coordinating with Australian authorities to ensure “the environment is protected with the greatest care”, it said in a statement.“We are fully committed to redressing any potential adverse environmental impact in a timely manner,” the Navy said, adding it would announce more detailed plans as they were finalized....
Some people, such as Judith Curry, raise questions about the way climate policy is conducted and criticize specific aspects of climate science, but scientists–including Curry herself–broadly agree on the fundamentals: that the climate is warming, and that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity is the leading cause. Scientific American has covered aspects of this issue for 50 years, starting with an article in July 1959 (“Carbon Dioxide and Climate,” by Gilbert N....
