Scientific American Topic - Green Technology

Floor Plan: Linoleum May Be Green, but Is There an Ecofriendly Way to Keep It Clean?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST

Dear EarthTalk: I have a new linoleum floor, which I chose partly for its ecofriendliness. How do I clean and maintain it without using harsh or toxic chemicals? --A. J. Maimbourg, via e-mail

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Will the Clean Tech Bubble Burst?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:45:00 EST

BOSTON--Economic bubbles are now famous, and the collapse of the dot-com business a decade ago made the bursting of bubbles infamous. A panel of experts here at the Going Green East conference yesterday ended up in a lively, entertaining and, at times, contentious debate over whether the growth of so-called clean tech--renewable energy and environmentally friendly technologies--has entered the bubble stage, if that bubble is bursting...or if a bubble has ever existed.

Lucky for anyone reading these words, the conference organizers at Always On videotaped the panel and have already posted it online for viewing. (Use this link then scroll two thirds down the page to the embedded session title "The Cleantech Bubble?".) The first 10 minutes have some of the best fireworks from two pioneers of major technology ramp-ups, including Bob Metcalfe , who invented the Ethernet and drove the vast growth of the Internet, and George Gilder , whose prognostications about hot telecomm technologies and the darling companies behind them greatly pumped up the dot-com bubble. If you listen even longer you'll hear all four panelists ultimately bash subsidies for technology of all kinds, itself worth the price of admission--which in this case, is free.

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Auto-dicted: Sans a Major Diversion of U.S. Transportation Dollars to Mass Transit, Urban Traffic Congestion May Not Ease

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST

Dear EarthTalk: Short of massive efforts to build a public transportation infrastructure, which doesn’t appear likely anytime soon, what is being done to address traffic congestion, which is reaching absurd levels almost everywhere? --John Daniels, Baltimore

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Sunshine is free, so can photovoltaics be cheap?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:35:00 EST

Here's how to make a solar cell from silicon : take one solid block of doped silicon, saw it into thin wafers, layer said semiconductors beneath a panel of transparent glass, connect them to a metal electrode that can channel away the electrons knocked loose by incoming photons and turn it into a photovoltaic device. That process has at least two flaws: such silicon is expensive, contributing more than half to the final price of a solar photovoltaic, and sawing it turns as much as half of that silicon into wasted grit.* [More]

Invasion of the Drones: Unmanned Aircraft Take Off in Polar Exploration

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST

A multinational, robotic air corps is quietly invading the polar regions of the earth. Some catapult from ships; some launch from running pickup trucks; and some take off the old-fashioned way, from icy airstrips. The aircraft range from remote-controlled propeller planes--of the type found at Toys “R” Us--to sophisticated, high-altitude jets. All are specially outfitted, not with weapons but with scientific instruments.

Unmanned aircraft have made headlines in the mountains of Afghanistan, but the technology has quickly trickled down to scientists seeking a less expensive, safer way to study the earth’s poles. Researchers have begun to put unmanned aerial systems, or UASs, to a variety of tasks, from monitoring the ozone layer to counting seal populations. Thanks to lower costs and improved technologies, “it’s absolutely exploded in the past couple of years,” says Elizabeth Weatherhead, who is an environmental scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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PET project: Using organic catalysts to make more biodegradable plastics

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST

Whereas most discarded plastic water and beverage bottles (those imprinted with a number 1 within a triangular arrow) can be recycled , the resulting second-generation plastic is generally unusable for making new plastic bottles. This is because the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) thermoplastic polymer used to make the original bottles is often made with the help of metal oxide or metal hydroxide catalysts that linger in the recycled material and weaken it over time. [More]

Storing megawatts: Liquid-metal batteries and electricity

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:31:00 EST

Making aluminum requires a lot of electricity. That's because the metal bonds tightly to oxygen and it takes a lot of energy to break that bond. In essence, the process of making aluminum is a giant battery with the silvery metal being reduced to purity at the cathode while oxygen bonds with the carbon anode to make, you guessed it, CO2. It takes roughly 15 kilowatt-hours of electricity to make just one kilogram of aluminum via electrolysis. [More]

Smokestash Industry: ARPA-E Seeks Breakthroughs in Carbon Capture Technology

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:01:00 EST

WASHINGTON--Every second, our bodies capture carbon dioxide in our tissues, transport it via the blood, and dump it in the lungs from where it is exhaled. This unconscious process is yet another way humans contribute to the accumulation of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere--albeit in a minuscule volume compared with burning fossil fuels . The key to this metabolic process is an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase and it's efficiency at capturing and releasing CO2 is what human engineers want to mimic at the power plant scale. [More]

Seeking Transformational Energy Technologies

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:01:08 EST

[ This special issue podcast is longer than the usual 60 seconds. ]

Last week, the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy held its inaugural conference in Washington, D.C.--a direct response to a growing sense that the U.S. is losing its technology lead when it comes to the race for cleaner ways to produce and use energy. "We have a Sputnik moment right now. We are losing our technology leadership and we are falling behind."

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Can solid-oxide fuel cells like the Bloom box remake the energy landscape?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:34:00 EST

The fuel cell has a long history. Various types of fuel cells have been part of the NASA space program, and the basic science of how fuel cells work--an energy carrier comes in, creates a flow of charge in the anode, which migrates to the cathode creating a current, and separated by some form of electrolyte--has been known for more than a century. Yet, Bloom Energy believes the time is finally right for one of the more promising fuel-cell technologies--solid-oxide fuel cells, so-called because the electrolyte is a solid rather than the more common liquids--to produce electricity on a grander scale. [More]

A need for new nukes? "Modular reactors" for energy attract interest

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:31:00 EST

The entire budget of the U.S. Department of Energy branch that covers today's energy mix--from cleaning up energy generation's environmental aftermath to energy efficiency programs and renewable energy development--is $10 billion. That's enough to "either build one supercollider on the basic end or one nuclear power plant on the applied end," said Kristina Johnson, the undersecretary in charge of the branch, at the ARPA-E conference on March 3. In other words, nuclear power ain't cheap. [More]

The Brain and the Written Word (preview)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST

Stanislas Dehaene holds the chair of experimental cognitive psychology at the Collège de France, and he is also director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit at NeuroSpin, the most advanced neuroimaging research center in France. Dehaene is best known for his research into the cerebral basis of numbers, popularized in his book The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 1999). In his new book, Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention (Viking Adult, 2009), he describes his quest to understand an astounding feat that most of us take for granted: translating marks on a page (or a screen) into language. Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook recently talked with Dehaene about how the art of reading reveals the fundamental relationship between our cultural inventions and our evolved brain.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND : How did you become interested in the neuroscience of reading?

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Recycling Some Hospital Waste (Not the Really Gross Kind)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:03:08 EST

The food industry leads the nation in pounds of waste produced annually. So, what’s second? It’s health care facilities. They dispose of more than four billion pounds of waste each year. [More]

Shift happens: Will artificial photosynthesis power the world?

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:31:00 EST

One drinking- water bottle could provide enough energy for an entire household in the developing world if Dan Nocera has his way. A chemist from M.I.T. and founder of the company Sun Catalytix, Nocera has developed a cobalt-based catalyst that allows him to store energy the same way plants do: by splitting water. [More]

Is ARPA-E Enough to Keep the U.S. on the Cutting-Edge of a Clean Energy Revolution?

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:01:00 EST

WASHINGTON, D.C.--At the inaugural summit of ARPA–E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy , no less an august personage than Norman Augustine declared that we were possibly witnessing an inflection point--a turn from old thinking to new. As an aerospace business pioneer, Augustine certainly knows when trajectories change and escape velocities are attained. Indeed, a host of speakers regarded ARPA–E's effort as an Apollo project, a Manhattan project, and Mike Splinter, CEO of Applied Materials, even called for ARPA–E to be part of a potential Marshall Plan for energy--a road map to a future of clean power, complete with the Hoover Dam of solar, or the like. [More]

Next-Gen Scientists Honored for Evolving Medicine and Renewables [Slide Show]

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST

The more mysteries that scientists unlock, the more opportunities emerge for the next generation of researchers to transform newfound knowledge into tomorrow's breakthroughs that serve society. The Lemelson–M.I.T. Program recognized several potential breakthroughs Wednesday in awarding four of its $30,000 Lemelson–M.I.T. Student Prizes to those from California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.), and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (U.I.U.C.). [More]

Toxic Gas, Lifesaver (preview)

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST

Imagine walking into a hospital emergency room, with its hand-sanitizer-adorned walls and every surface meticulously scrubbed free of contaminants, only to encounter the stench of rotten eggs. Distasteful though this juxtaposition might sound, the toxic gas synonymous with that smell--hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S)--may well become a fixture in such settings in the future. Over the past decade scientists have discovered that H 2 S is actually essential to a number of processes in the body, including controlling blood pressure and regulating metabolism. Our findings indicate that if harnessed properly, the gas could, among other benefits, help treat heart attack patients and keep trauma victims alive until they can undergo surgery or receive a blood transfusion.

A Whiff of Poison [More]

Jailhouse Plot: Some Correctional Facilities Put Prisoners to Work Growing Produce

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST

Dear EarthTalk: We’ve all heard about the abysmal food served in prison, as well as the economical, nutritional and even therapeutic value of growing one’s own food. Are there any agricultural programs or garden projects in U.S. prisons? --Jerry Mullins, Tennessee Colony, TeXx. [More]

World's Mightiest Solar Boat Unveiled

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST

Nearly 500 years after Juan Sebastián Elcano completed the first circumnavigation of the globe using nothing but renewable power, Swiss engineer Raphael Domjan and French sailor Gerard D'Abouville are preparing to repeat Elcano's journey in an all-electric boat powered by the energy gathered by 470 square meters of solar panels. [More]

Can greener gadgets save us from e-waste?

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

One laptop per child seems a simple slogan, chock full of benefit. What could go wrong when you put the power of the Internet and solar cells into the hands of children in the developing world? After all, not only does it train the global underclass in the tools of modern production, it also unleashes a creativity that may allow them to leapfrog the old, dirty, industrial development that has fouled the planet. [More]