Scientific American Topic - Green Technology

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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Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:15:00 EST

Editor's Note : Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development , Anastas played a key role in many important decisions and issues, including the use of dispersants during the Gulf oil spill and the agency's long-awaited analysis of dioxin.--Marla Cone, Editor in Chief [More]

Is Space Digital? (preview)

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:12:00 EST

Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth and continuous, a glassy backdrop to the dance of fields and particles. Hogan’s noise arises if space is made of chunks. Blocks. Bits. Hogan’s noise would imply that the universe is digital.

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Gee Whiz, Why Not Recycle Urine for Drinking Water?

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:32:08 EST

Americans produce 32 billion gallons of sewage every day. And we need to start drinking it. After treating it, of course. So argues a report from the U.S. National Research Council . Why drink reprocessed pee? Because freshwater supplies are getting squeezed .

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EPA Sees Risks to Water, Workers in New York State Fracking Rules

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST

New York's emerging plan to regulate natural gas drilling in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale needs to go further to safeguard drinking water, environmentally sensitive areas and gas industry workers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has informed state officials.

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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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Scientists Tweak Photosynthesis in Pursuit of a Better Biofuel

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

For years researchers have been trying to figure out the best ways of making plants produce biofuels. But there is a fundamental problem: photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into stored chemical energy, is highly inefficient. Plants turn only 1 to 3 percent of sunlight into carbohydrates. That is one reason why so much land has to be devoted to growing corn for ethanol, among other bad biofuel ideas. And yet plants also have many advantages: they absorb carbon dioxide at low concentrations directly from the atmosphere, and each plant cell can repair itself when damaged.

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Doomsday Clock Moved 1 Minute Closer to Midnight

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:15:00 EST

In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future , scientists today set the hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" forward one minute from two years ago.

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Can Mountain Dew Really Dissolve a Mouse Carcass?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:00:00 EST

An attempt to win a small court battle this week has put Mountain Dew in peril of losing a much larger war. PepsiCo, the soft drink's parent company, defended itself against a man who claimed he found a dead mouse in a can of the citrus soda . Experts called in by PepsiCo's lawyers offered a stomach-churning explanation for why it couldn't be true: the Mountain Dew would have dissolved the mouse, turning it into a "jelly-like substance," had it been in the can of fluid from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff opened it, 15 months later.

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Devastating Drought Seems Inevitable in American West

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

Australia experienced the worst and most consistent dry period in its recorded history over much of the past decade. The Murray River failed to reach the sea for the first time ever in 2002. Fires swept much of the country, and dust storms blanketed major cities for days. Australia’s sheep population dropped by 50 percent, and rice and cotton production collapsed in some years. Tens of thousands of farm families gave up their livelihoods. The drought ended in 2010 with torrential rains and flooding.

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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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How to Make the Food System More Energy Efficient

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

For more than 50 years fossil fuels and fertilizers have been the key ingredients in much greater global food production and distribution. The food-energy relationship has been a good one, but it is now entering a new era. Food production is rising sharply, requiring more carbon-based fuels and nitrogen-based fertilizers, both of which exacerbate global warming, river and ocean pollution, and a host of other ills. At the same time, many nations are grappling with how to reduce energy demand, especially demand for fossil fuels.

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Readers Respond to "Bigger Cities Do More with Less" and Other Articles

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:30:00 EST

WHY CITIES SUCCEED [More]

The Top 10 Science Stories of 2011

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST

Inevitably, year-end lists invite plenty of debate and criticism, and Scientific American 's is no exception. Certainly, we could have included the discovery of new worlds beyond our solar system, including Kepler 22 b, an exoplanet in the "Goldilocks" zone of habitability, as well as the first known Earth-size exoplanets . Or noted the accumulating evidence suggesting that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to retrieve natural gas is likely to contaminate water supplies. (Final New York State regulations, expected in mid-2012, could determine the future of fracking in the U.S.)

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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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Brominated Battle: Soda Chemical Has Cloudy Health History

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:18:00 EST

MARIETTA, Ga.--It's Monday night at the Battle & Brew, a gamer hangout in this Atlanta suburb. The crowd is slumping in chairs, ears entombed in headphones, eyes locked on flat-screen monitors and minds lost in tonight’s game of choice: "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

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Cities Adapt to Extreme Weather Despite Federal Inaction (preview)

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

For a century workers flocked to Dubuque, Iowa, as they raised new generations of laborers, they built houses, shops and streets that eventually covered over the Bee Branch Creek. The water gurgled through underground pipes out of sight and largely out of memory.

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Climate Talks Prove Growing Need for Carbon Capture and Storage Globally

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:30:00 EST

DURBAN, South Africa--The roughly 3,000 fossil fuel–fired power plants in North America--Canada, Mexico and the U.S.--emit 6 percent of global greenhouse gases , or nearly as much as all of the European Union. In fact, coal-fired power plants around the globe are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Bio-Jet Fuel Struggles to Balance Profit with Sustainability

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:45:00 EST

DURBAN, South Africa--My share of the carbon dioxide my flight to Johannesburg emitted over 15 hours amounted to 1,391.3 kilograms, according to the helpful information provided by South African Airlines. Add a dollop of 53.8 kilograms of CO2 for the jet jaunt to Durban and you can see that the aviation industry--and the Durban climate talks --have an emissions problem.

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Which Nations Conform Most?

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:30:00 EST

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Volume 205, Number 6 of Scientific American in December 1961.

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