Many little parasites add up to one big biomass

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 3 weeks (environment.newscientist.com)

Parasites are small, but they punch above their weight in terms of their effects on other life forms. Now it turns out that the amount of parasites in an ecosystem physically weighs more than the top predators.

It was previously thought parasites did not contribute much biomass when put against that of other animals and plants. To check this, Armand Kuris of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues painstakingly estimated the biomass of animals, plants and parasites in three estuaries in California and Baja California

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Could global gardening fix climate change?

jane2007 submitted, created time 10 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

According to a new analysis, using biomass fuel on a massive scale in combination with carbon sequestration could return atmospheric carbon dioxide to pre-industrial levels within decades Peter Read calls his proposal global gardening. Is it will work, I doubt.

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Energy Boost Helps Microbes Make Hydrogen

Eric wu submitted, created time 1 year 1 week (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

This article is on energy. It describes that microbes can make hydrogen by giving a little energy boost. The process comes out ahead in efficiency. That is because the hydrogen producing in the process contains nearly three times as much energy as added from the external power supply to get the electrons and protons to combine. It gives us a particular way to develop new energy, not only turning biomass to ethanol. So I commend the article.

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The race for biofuels driving alternative sources of biomass

elliot submitted, created time 1 year 3 weeks (www.eurekalert.org)

Research presented on Nov. 6-7 at the ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meetings will examine the future of biomass for biofuel production and will look at how several regional species could be grown for biofuels.

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Pulling plastics from pulp -- biomass-based plastics become practical

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.sciam.com)

Turning plant matter into new plastics has been possible for many years; it just hasn't been practical. The processes used to convert glucose to a base for plastics yields chunks of impurities. Using metal chlorides instead of acid catalysts, writes Scientific American, is up to 70% effective on glucose and 90% effective on fructose, both at temperatures of only 100C, as opposed to the 600C used in oil refining.

Full commercialization is still a few years off. This study comes out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington

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