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Written by Philip Proefrock on 07/11/12
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Like the plot of a low-budget spy movie, this past July, roughly 100 tons of iron sulphate was dumped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean by a "controversial American businessman." The program was not part of any governmental- or consensus-based program, but is instead a private project to effect large-scale change to the planet.
The rationale for this is a belief that it will promote growth of plankton, which will grow (in a plankton bloom) and absorb carbon dioxide before sinking to the ocean bed. The CO2 will remain sequestered if the plankton do not subsequently break down on the sea floor. However, earlier tests have not proved successful.
Tests caried out a few years ago showed only limited succes with ocean fertilization. Critics point out a number of potential unwanted side effects to this approach:
"It is difficult if not impossible to detect and describe important effects that we know might occur months or years later," said John Cullen , an oceanographer at Dalhousie University. "Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired."
The California-based businessman behind this dumping has been involved in previous failed projects do similar things near the Galapagos and the Canary Islands. His earlier efforts are also credited as part of the incentive for the United Nations to pass an international moratorium on ocean fertilization experiments.
image: Public Domain - US EPA
via: Guardian
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Written by Philip Proefrock on 15/11/12
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A grant of $3 million from Google to the US Green Building Council (USGBC) was announced during the annual Greenbuild conference which is taking place in San Francisco this week. Google has been a leader with the greening of its own facilities and has taken a very proactive step in avoiding the use of "red list" construction materials in its own facilities.
The grant is meant to be used for furthering green building materials research and the promotion of communications in and around the green building process. "The grant supports three related efforts: research on building materials and their effect on health, development of new building transparency tools, and encouraging conversation between industry stakeholders." More specific detail about how this grant will be applied by USGBC remains to be announced.
Google's grant gives the USGBC some leverage of its own since some credits in the LEED building rating system have been targets of objection by strong monied interests. These include the credit for use of certified sustainable wood and the proposed materials credits that incorporate open reporting of chemical content of products and "for selecting products for which the chemical ingredients in the product are inventoried using an accepted methodology and for selecting products verified to minimize the use and generation of harmful substances."
via: Eco-Structure
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Written by Philip Proefrock on 21/02/13
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Is there anything that lasers can't do? The latest breakthrough comes from a team of researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) who have developed a method for cooling semiconductor material (cadmium sulfide) with lasers. In an article published in Nature, NTU reserachers report on cooling a semiconductor from 20 degrees C (68 degrees F) to -20 degrees C (-4 degrees F) as an initial proof of concept.
Heat is an unwanted side effect of most energy-using devices. In many cases, ranging from portable electronics to medical magnetic resonance imagery equipment to scientific research equipment, the need for keeping the equipment cooled is vital to continued function. At present, equipment such as MRI systems require liquid helium for cooling, but with laser cooling, the system could be made smaller and would not require the extensive cooling hardware that is currently needed.
Cooling gasses with lasers is a known technology, but cooling a solid has not been done previously, although the theory behind it is decades old. "Our initial results published in Nature, have shown that it is possible to laser-cool a semiconductor to liquid nitrogen temperature, so we are aiming to reach an even lower temperature, such as that of liquid helium," said Prof Xiong Qihua, a member of the NTU team.
Other cooling technologies for computers have been proposed which could lead to significant energy savings. But if laser cooling eventually became widely used for other applications, it would make this even more beneficial. Laser cooled equipment could be more energy efficient, and portable electronic equipment with this technology would also potentially prolong battery life.
In addition to the energy benefits, wide-scale development and application of this technology would also drastically reduce the amount of refrigerants needed in industry and technology. Many of the chemicals used in refrigeration equipment are harmful to the Earth's ozone layer or have a significant global warming potential (and many are both). Reducing the need for these chemicals would be an added benefit laser cooling might someday offer.
image: CC BY 2.0 by Jeff Keyzer/Wikimedia Commons
via: Science Daily
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Written by Philip Proefrock on 28/11/12
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The need for water is important in many parts of the world without the infrastructure to provide safe drinking water. There are many personal technologies that can be used water purification or water gathering. While the idea of a self-filling water bottle may at first sound like magic, it's based on nanotechnology and biomimicry.
NBD Nano is named for the Namib Desert Beetle, whose shell functions to collect water for the insect, and which served as the inspiration for the technology. The technique behind this uses hydrophilic (water retaining) and hydrophobic (water repelling) coatings to concentrate moisture in the air onto the hydrophilic surfaces, and then, as the droplets become big enough, the water runs into a central collector. A small fan is used to move air over the surface to improve collection.
The company is pursuing a variety of possible applications for the technique. While it is not yet a commercial product, this offers a possibility of making water scarcity less of a problem in an increasingly water-dependent world.
image: Public Domain by Moongateclimber/Wikimedia Commons
via: PRI
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Written by Sarah Rich on 22/02/13
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If UCLA researchers are correct, a new supercharger could transform both the way we power our electronics and recycle their old sources of energy. Bringing together the quick-charging qualities of a capacitor and the energy-holding capacities of a battery, graphene supercapacitors could replace the often toxic batteries we currently use to power our electronics.
Batteries and capacitors are relatively similar devices, functionally speaking. Standard batteries consist of two chemicals that react with each other, separated by a barrier, and have a circuit between them; capacitors are composed of two oppositely charged metal plates, separated by an insulator, with a circuit between them. When electrons flow through the circuits of batteries and capacitors alike they provide electricity. Although capacitors can be charged very quickly, they don’t hold nearly as much energy as batteries.
Graphene supercapacitors would solve the energy holding problem of capacitors. Graphene conducts electricity better than any other common substance, and the one-atom thick material has more going for it than capacity: it’s also thinner, lighter, and can be turned into cheaper energy-holding devices than batteries. Because it’s carbon-based, it’s also biodegradable. Considering the care we need to take when disposing of batteries that are often made of toxic metals, how much would it rock to be able to compost our disposable charge holders instead?
Extremely flexible and stronger than steel, graphene has been notoriously difficult to work with, as the Focus Forward video describes. The researchers who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their work with graphene created the substance by carefully peeling graphite with scotch tape--not a method that’s easy or quick to replicate. However, researchers at UCLA claim they have found a better method to craft the substance in a delightfully MacGyver-like way: by using a consumer-grade DVD drive. After pouring graphite oxide onto CDs, popping the CDs into the drive and using the drive’s laser to beam light on the material, the graphite oxide deoxygenates and becomes graphene. Miles ahead of scotch tape, this DVD drive method produces the essentially two-dimensional material easily and quickly. Imagine what could be done with a machine designed to create sheets of graphene on a larger scale.
Graphene supercapacitors have immense potential to revolutionize the efficiency and environmental-friendliness of our electronics. Especially after listening to the researchers discuss graphene’s potential, it’s difficult not to be excited for the future of this technology. Graphene supercapacitors could charge electronic devices, but further research will determine just how much these supercapacitors can charge (are electric car charging stations really a possibility?), and if and when they'll be available for consumers. In any case, here’s hoping the technology can take off.
image: CC BY-SA 2.0 by CORE-Materials
via: Boing Boing
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