Scientific American - Alternative Energy Technology

Can Cleaner Cooking and Solar Power Help Solve Energy Poverty in Africa? [Slide Show]

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:01:00 EST

KWADUKUZA, South Africa--A Zulu crowd's ululations welcomed Jacob Zuma, president of the Republic of South Africa, back to KwaZulu–Natal, his home province. He had come to tell them of his commitment to bring them, and the rest of the nation, better access to energy--as well as to announce the distribution of solar-powered hot water heaters and LED lighting systems as well as clean-burning cookstoves.

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How Much Energy Do You Waste Charging Your Cell Phone?

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:00:08 EST

How many chargers do you own? One for your cell phone? Another for your laptop? Yet another for your tablet, podcast player or even electric toothbrush? It adds up.

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Micro-Bubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:47:08 EST

Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil.

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Hydrogen and Kinetic Energy Will Keep Phones Ringing

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:53:08 EST

Carmakers learned years ago it's not easy to make a practical hydrogen fuel cell. Yet hydrogen fuel cells do work, and they're greener than batteries. So how about using a mini hydrogen fuel cell to recharge something small--like your mobile phone battery?

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Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:31:00 EST

Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel for oil consuming nations.

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State of the Union: Research, Technology and Energy

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:00:08 EST

Welcome to the Scientific American podcast Science Talk, posted on January 25th, 2012. I’m Steve Mirsky. Last night, President Obama delivered the State of the Union Address. Here is a little more than six minutes of it, the sections dealing with research, technology and energy. Anywhere I’ve made an edit in the audio, you’ll hear a musical interlude. And I’ve lowered the volume on some of the applause for the sake of all of our ears. I think science-interested listeners across the political spectrum can find points of both strong agreement and major disagreement in these few minutes of the talk:

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Worried about Air Pollution? Don't Hide Indoors

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:00:08 EST

You need to get out more. Whether it's smog or tiny particles of pollution , Americans face the bulk of their health risks from bad air inside. Why? We spend most of our time indoors.

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The Evolving Truth about Fracking for Natural Gas [Updated]

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:36:00 EST

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Genetically Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed into Ethanol

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:01:00 EST

Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin--a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel .

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Biofuels Land Grab: Guatemala's Farmers Lose Plots and Prosperity to "Energy Independence" [Slide Show]

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:01:00 EST

POLOCHIC VALLEY, GUATEMALA--Echoes from armed raids still seem to resound in this valley, eight hours north of the capital city. In early 2011 military and paramilitary forces forcibly evicted 13 communities of indigenous Mayan peasants--some 300 families were dispossessed of disputed land they had been living on for three years to secure the property rights of one powerful local family, the Widmanns, and its agribusiness company Chabil Utzaj.

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How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:01:00 EST

Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases .

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Craig Venter Explains How Pond Scum Will Save the World

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Name: J. Craig Venter [More]

How to Buy a Better Lightbulb

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Contrary to rumor, the incandescent lightbulb is not going away--at least not right away. New U.S. regulations, starting January 1, cap energy consumption of a roughly 1,600-lumen bulb (equivalent to a standard 100-watt incandescent bulb) at 72 watts--which means the workhorse of home lighting will have to become about 30 percent more efficient overnight. The law will expand in the next two years to cover 75-, 60- and 40-watt bulbs. There is room for improvement: incandescent bulbs currently waste 90 percent of their energy as heat. Halogen incandescents provide a more efficient, if pricier, alternative and will give compact fluorescents a run for their money. A light-emitting-diode replacement for 100-watt bulbs is expected to reach market this year; dimmer LEDs are already available. Consumers will be able to check federally mandated labels that give performance specs, similar to nutrition labels on food, but here we illuminate the essential facts.

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50 Years Ago: Bottling the Atomic Incubus

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:40:00 EST

JANUARY 1962

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Gingrich Tops Scientific American 's Geek Guide to the 2012 GOP Candidates

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:00:00 EST

The contenders for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election may appear to be a fairly uniform group of middle-aged white conservatives, but when it comes to issues of science, technology and overall geek cred, none of these candidates is cut from the same cloth. In fact, Newt Gingrich nudges out Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in Scientific American 's overall ranking, based on the former Congressman's engagement in issues related to energy, the Internet and military weapons, combined with his mastery of top online tools such as Twitter and a healthy appetite for science nonfiction.

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Welcome to the Year of the Lightbulb

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:00:08 EST

Happy New Year! And welcome to the year of light…bulbs. Why you ask? Well, it's not just because LEDs lit up the iconic New Year's ball drop here in New York City again. No, it's because this is the year that lighting will finally become more efficient .

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Solar Paint Converts Light to Electricity

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:41:08 EST

Instead of installing solar panels on your roof--how about just giving your house a new paint job? Of course you’d have to be sure to use solar paint. That’s what a group of Notre Dame researchers has created, detailing the recipe in the journal ACS Nano . [Matthew P. Genovese, Ian V. Lightcap, and Prashant V. Kamat, " Sun-Believable Solar Paint. a Transformative One-Step Approach for Designing Nanocrystalline Solar Cells "]

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What Are the Chances of a White Christmas?

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 09:00:08 EST

I am dreaming of a white Christmas. Certainly, they were rare in Saint Louis where I grew up.

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North Korea's Nukes: Does the Death of Kim Jong-il Mean Trouble for the U.S.?

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST

As the body of North Korea's "dear leader" Kim Jong-il lies in state at his palace in Pyongyang, his youngest son Kim Jong-un takes control of the country's nuclear weapons program. Despite being named Kim's successor in 2009, Kim Jong-un remains a bit of a mystery to the West. One unanswered question: How much power does the younger Kim wield over the country's military? [More]

Speaking Out on the "Quiet Crisis" (preview)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

When Shirley Ann Jackson was in elementary school in the 1950s, she would prowl her family’s backyard, collecting bumblebees, yellow jackets and wasps. She would bottle them in mayonnaise jars and test which flowers they liked best and which species were the most aggressive. She dutifully recorded her observations in a notebook, discovering, for instance, that she could alter their daily rhythms by putting them under the dark porch in the middle of the day. The most important lesson she took away from these experiments was not about science but compassion. “Don’t imprison any living thing for very long,” she says in a mellow drawl that belies her reputation as a lightning-fast thinker and influential physicist. “I have never been a fan of dead insect collections.”

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