Clear skies, but not because the skies were cleared

Darkfrog submitted, created time 6 days 21 hours (www.nature.com)

After the September 11 grounding of commercial traffic over the U.S., scientists and the public alike toyed with the idea that contrails and other side effects of air travel could affect the weather. New analyses, however, suggest that we may have jumped the gun and that the variations in temperature that were recorded on those days could be accounted for by other factors.

It isn't that contrails don't have an effect on climate, say scientists, but that their effect on those three particular days may have been exaggerated

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Engineered bacteria create high-energy biofuel

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 week 1 day (www.sciencenews.org)

Researchers have designed an entire molecular assembly line in bacterial cells that pieces together a kind of alcohol that isn’t normally made by known living organisms. This alcohol could serve as a biofuel that, unlike ethanol, has a high energy density and could be used in gasoline and jet fuel

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Greenhouse gases hit modern-day highs

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 week 3 days (www.nature.com)

Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2007, according to the most recent analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — which together contribute 88% of the anthropogenic global-warming effect — were last year 37%, 156% and 19% above pre-industrial levels, respectively.

Since 1990, total radiative forcing — the re-radiation of heat back towards Earth's surface — by all long-lived heat-trapping gases has increased by 24%, the WMO reports

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Surgeon uses human fat to run his cars

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 weeks 6 hours (www.independent.co.uk)

A leading Beverly Hills plastic surgeon claims to have found an environmentally friendly way to combine two of America's great obsessions – after converting his 4x4 to run on fat removed from clients during liposuction operations.

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Carbon dioxide levels may put the squeeze on squid

Researchers find the first vertebrate eye to use mirror instead of lens

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 weeks 1 day (www.newscientist.com)

The deep sea is full of surprises, and the four-eyed spookfish is up there with the best of them. It is the first vertebrate found with eyes that use mirrors, rather than a lens, to focus light.

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Mapping Renewable Energy, Rooftop by Rooftop

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 weeks 2 days (www.time.com)

The sun shines on everyone — but not in equal measure. That reality has long slowed the spread of solar power. Depending on where you live in the country — or even where you live in your city — the same array of photovoltaic solar panels can produce enough electricity to power your house with watts to spare, or barely cut a nickel from your utility bill. It all comes down to the precise amount of sunlight that hits your roof

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Honey bees on cocaine dance more, changing ideas about the insect brain

piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 2 days (www.eurekalert.org)

In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate.

Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they've found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a "round" or "waggle" dance, on a specialized "dance floor" in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food

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Sucking carbon out of the air

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 weeks 5 days (www.nature.com)

In a Commentary in this week's Nature, science policy experts Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University in Tempe and Richard Nelson of Columbia University in New York argue that removing carbon dioxide directly from the air is an effective way to tackle climate change. Nature News asks how advanced the plans to do this are.

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Ancient Insect Hails from Sunken Island

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 weeks 1 day (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Which came first: the tree lobster or the island? You may not have been asking that odd question, but researchers have nonetheless answered it with a report indicating that one species of this flightless insect is apparently older than its native home, Lord Howe Island off the coast of Australia. The find suggests that the bug originally evolved on an older island, one now submerged under the Pacific Ocean.

Stretching up to thirteen centimeters long, tree lobsters look like a cross between a grasshopper and a cockroach

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Nobel physicist to run energy agency

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 weeks 5 days (www.nature.com)

By choosing Nobel-prizewinning physicist Steven Chu to head the Department of Energy (DoE), US President-elect Barack Obama has sent a clear message: solving climate issues in a world dependent on fossil fuels will depend on science coming up with new energy technologies.

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Solar energy hits new efficiency record

Darkfrog submitted, created time 4 weeks 2 days (www.nature.com)

The biggest problem with solar panels and solar cells, more than the expense of making them, has been that they just don't create as big of a return as fossil fuels.

Luminescent solar contractors (LSCs) look like glass panels with colored edges (although this might be artists' license). They are embedded with light-absorbing dyes to catch photons. When the photons are re-emitted, they bounce around inside the glass by total internal reflection (the same principal used in fiber optics) and eventually hit the solar cells mounted along the edges of the panel

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Methane bursts from frozen tundra

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 2 days (www.nature.com)

As the autumn cold begins to bite in the Arctic tundra, the freezing ground releases a large and unexpected burst of methane into the air. The emissions, thought to be squeezed out by the growth of surface frost, match up with an atmospheric methane surge that had previously gone unexplained.

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TIger conservation can be bad for your health

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 month 3 days (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that villagers in Nepal restored damaged tiger habitats as part of an international buffer zone initiative and that the big cats are recovering. The bad news is that they are eating the Nepalese villagers.

University of Minnesota experts recommend educating the villagers about tiger behavior (read: "Stop gathering firewood right where the tigers live.") and fitting "problem animals" with radio collars.

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Antidepressants make for sad fish

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 1 week (www.sciencenews.org)

The drugs are becoming more common in river waters and can play dangerous head games with fish.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: water pollution pollution ecology fish Antidepressants