adapted to their environment and evolved to fight disease. Despite previous reports that the German group's Neanderthal samples may have been contaminated with DNA from modern humans1,
The government agencies Environment Canada and Health Canada will use the data to make risk assessments for the materials
The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (DEFRA) ran a two-year voluntary reporting programme from September 2006,
Anne Mitchell, executive director of the Canadian Institute for Environmental law and Policy in Toronto expects a mandatory scheme to work more effectively than voluntary programmes,
#Rising air pollution clouds climate debate: Nature News Air pollution that is harmful to human health has increased over all populated continents except Europe since 1973, according to an extensive survey.
The results play into a longstanding debate over whether the Earth's skies are dimming
or brightening, how this affects the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface and what that means for climate change.
Two studies published in Science in 2005 concluded that a global dimming trend that began in the 1950s has been replaced since 1990 by global brightening1,
2. The likely effect of all that extra solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface would be faster global warming.
and his colleagues based their conclusions on visibility measurements, a good proxy for aerosol pollution, from 3, 250 meteorological stations around the world.
now that air pollution is a serious health risk, "says Wang.""But attempts, such as China's, to regulate air quality have not yet borne fruit."
"Significant questions remain about what these results means for climate change, because soot and different kinds of aerosols can affect cloud formation in very different ways.
meaning that the net effect of aerosol pollution on global temperatures is worryingly uncertain. Another complication is that soot from burning biofuels,
"The issue of global dimming versus global brightening is not just a question of aerosols, "agrees Martin Wild, an atmospheric scientist at The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich,
They will be awarded every two years starting in 2014, to global leaders in the fields of sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Chinese studies and the rule of law.
I wanted to found a prize to reflect the new challenges faced by humanity#such as climate change, energy shortages, emerging diseases, clashes of cultures and ideas,
Bawa speculates that other factors may also be contributing to the decline of the fungus#in particular, rising temperatures and less snow in the eastern Himalayas as a result of climate change.
researchers analysed air samples from a six-week hurricane-research mission by NASA in 2010.
"This is clearly a harsh environment.""One of the next challenges is to figure out the role of these organisms,
and after two hurricanes also allowed researchers to study the effects of extreme weather on the atmospheric microbiome.
Fierer says that understanding more about the bacterial ecology of the sky represents an exciting new frontier for natural history."
as is evident from the recovery of readable DNA from long-extinct animals.""The experiment was done 60,000 years ago
a satellite that will monitor natural disasters and measure atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The extra cash will keep it on schedule for launch before April next year.
He adds that he believes South korea should spend its resources on technologies that have the potential to provide a nearer-term impact on carbon emissions and climate change.
But they quickly wear away in harsh environments, such as the insides of power-station turbines, where condensation reduces efficiency.
#Liquid storage could make hydrogen a feasible fuel A process for extracting hydrogen from a liquid fuel could remove one of the biggest hurdles to a'hydrogen economy,
burning to leave behind only water vapour as waste. It cannot be mined in large amounts, but proponents of a hydrogen economy say that it could be produced in vast quantities from water using excess electricity from wind turbines and solar plants.
Unfortunately, because hydrogen is a gas it is difficult to store and transport safely unless compressed or liquefied,
keeping carbon emissions from the process low. Despite the drawbacks, says Tsang, the conversion from methanol to hydrogen is worth pursuing:
#Tagged seals help find missing piece in global climate puzzle By tracking the voyages of elephant seals off Antarctica,
and with the help of satellite imaging and undersea sensors, researchers have discovered a long-elusive source for the deep ocean streams of cold water that help to regulate the Earth's climate.
In particular, water samples from an area called the Weddell gyre contain atmospheric pollutants known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS),
The new finding fills a gap in researchers understanding of the Southern ocean s role in global climate,
the resulting changes in cold-water circulation could have important effects on global climate, letting the ocean depths warm
if the cells had encountered two environments and in what order. Voigt says that there is another advantage to this system."
Sustainable development Technology Canada, a foundation that supports clean technology startup companies, will get Can$325 million over 8 years.
Demerse said in a statement that it would be a"lifeline for the country s estimated 700 clean technology companies.
"To manage the environmental impacts well we really need excellent information. Cindy Van Dover, director of the Duke university Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North carolina, has worked on assessments of deep-sea mining impacts.
the shortening does support the idea that the birds are adapting to disturbed environments, as other organisms presumably are.
The White house has argued that energy innovation is not only good for cutting carbon emissions to tame global warming,
The oceanic crust is formed at ridges between tectonic plates, where rising lava meets sea water and cools.
#Wildlife trade meeting endorses DNA TESTING of seized ivory If you go into a bar in Bangkok tonight,
the states party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) took the unprecedented step of granting protection to sharks and various species of tropical timber tree in their final vote today.
Tom Milliken, who works for the wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC, which is headquartered in Cambridge, UK and has been involved heavily in the debates about elephant poaching,
so harder implants that don bend with their surrounding biological environment can easily shift and move to a different area than they were implanted,
On this platform, the researchers reconstructed a large-scale simulation of human brain activity in a 3d virtual reality environment.
Researchers surveying Lake Neuchâtel for evidence of past earthquakes spotted the craters near the lake northwestern shore near the Jura Mountains.
The team was using ship-based sonar to search for sediment that had been disturbed by earthquakes.
The swiss Alps occasionally shake from earthquakes of up to magnitude 6, studies have shown. Scientists are also investigating the risk of earthquake
-and landslide-triggered tsunamis in Alpine lakes. In the past decade researchers have discovered that tsunamis wiped out villages along the shores of both Lake Geneva and Lake Lucerne in the past 1, 500 years.
But instead of ancient quake or tsunami deposits, Reusch and her colleagues stumbled upon an enormous feature they dubbed Chez-le-Bart crater (razy crater. never expected anything like this,
Reusch said. he craters were so interesting that we simply had to take a closer look at this phenomenon,
she added. No one knows for sure how the craters formed, but the pits appear to occasionally spill over, perhaps violently, the researchers reported.
At least one crater directly overlies a major earthquake fault. For instance, water inside Crazy crater is 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8. 4 degrees Celsius),
and pollution particles in the sky left behind by jet aircraftctually are signs of a clandestine government effort to modify the weather.
and designed to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. Pivac new company, Fastbrick Robotics, recently posted an animated video of Hadrian in action n
Late last year, hi-tech waste management company Bigbelly upgraded two of its waste recycling stations in downtown Manhattan with Wireless internet hubs.
Bigbelly streetside trash and recycling bins are already pretty smart they use solar power to compact certain materials
and have embedded sensors that communicate with the city waste management fleet. The Wireless internet option essentially turns the trash cans into free public Wi-fi hotspots,
#Smog Harvested from Tower Made into Jewelry A Smog Free Tower that stands 23 feet tall is being built to scrub pollution out of the air in parks and other public outdoor spaces in Rotterdam, The netherlands.
plans to transform the pollution comprised mostly of carbon into rings and cufflinks. Inspired by the idea that diamonds are made of carbon that has been subjected to high pressure,
the company believes that transforming pollution into jewelry will prove desirable to many. Each accessory will be made from scrubbing 35
One tower alone is capable of cleaning 123 million cubic feet of clean air per day.
says he woke up one day obsessed with the idea of pollution. Holding up a bag of pollution particles in this video, he explains that it hard to believe that we accept this pollution as waste
when it can take on other forms. After its Netherlands debut, the company hopes to set up towers in other cities as well, including India, Mexico city and Beijing i
It part of a strategy to access an untapped source of new antibioticshe estimated 99%of microbes in the environment that refuse to grow in laboratories.
#In surprise, Dutch court orders government to do more to fight climate change In a ruling that came as a surprise to many legal experts,
a court in The netherlands today ordered the Dutch government to dramatically intensify its fight against climate change.
The district court in The hague ruled that by 2020, The netherlands must cut CO2 EMISSIONS by 25%from 1990 levels.
The case framed global warming as a human rights violation that the Dutch government must do more to prevent.
The Dutch government did not dispute the international scientific consensus on climate change. The verdict (in Dutch) relies heavily on quotes, tables,
and graphics from reports by the Intergovernmental panel on climate change and other international bodies. The court adopted the growing consensus that drastic reductions in CO2 EMISSIONS are necessary to prevent a temperature rise of more than 2°Ctarting with a reduction between 25%and 40%by 2020.
The government had argued that The netherlands cannot make such major cuts on its own, a line of reasoning that the court did not accept.
That The netherlands is responsible for less than 0. 5%of global greenhouse gas emissions isn a valid argument either
a lawyer, argued that the legal community should become much more active in the fight against climate change,
Purdy for instance advised on a case in which illegal waste incineration had ruined a large chunk of pristine land.
#Spot ET's waste heat for chance to find alien life RATHER than searching for aliens phoning home scientists are looking for signs of the homes themselves.
This article appeared in print under the headline Spot ET's waste heat for chance to find alien lif f
This caused the gold to emit an avalanche of X-rays that bombarded the stone triggering powerful compression waves inside it.
or deforestation he says. And with an open software interface anyone will be able to develop apps that use the imagery.
But it did not yet have an ozone layer to shield the surface from the sun's harshest ultraviolet rays.
if any of these cells would remain viable in that type of environment. Asteroid and comet impacts are ubiquitous in the solar system
Established in the 1960s India's space programme has focused so far on aiding the country's development building satellites to spot potential sources of groundwater and monitor deforestation.
A study published this week suggests a form of natural geoengineering was partially responsible for the red planet's global cooling.
Our own sun and the Earth and all of us are made up of atoms that came out of other stars'stellar winds long ago says Mccomas. There's a big recycling process that occurs
#Dust devils around stars may help planets grow A dusty tornado around a young star could help solve a lingering conundrum:
We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably
#Rover finds first life-friendly environment on Mars Microbes could have lived on Mars . Though we don't know yet
This is probably the only definitively habitable environment that we've described and recorded said David Blake principal investigator for the rover's Chemistry
a non-acidic environment; enough water for microbes to thrive in; and minerals that could act like batteries allowing electrons to flow
More importantly they found calcium sulphate salts which form in non-acidic water. They also found sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide two forms of sulphur that have lost respectively
We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably
. But now that they've found a habitable environment the team will keep the rover in place a
Color IQ also has a positive environmental impact, which earned the company the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the U s. Environmental protection agency in October.
000 gallons of toxic solvents and 100 kilograms of toxic cadmium waste in U s. production each year.
As an analogy Weitzner says imagine trying to shape environmental policy without any way of measuring carbon levels in the atmosphere
andhow to achieve regional and even global agreements on both privacy and security norms in online environments.
The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education the environment global development and population performing arts and philanthropy as well as grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San francisco bay Area.
Such particles could help scientists to track specific molecules produced in the body monitor a tumor s environment
We think we may be able to reveal information about the tumor environment with these kinds of probes
and a company can use that to help set up an environment where everybody s going to succeed.
Bacterial sensorsenvironmental applications for this type of sensor include monitoring the ocean for carbon dioxide levels acidity or pollutants.
Spielberg even sees the technology as a potential tool in military environments. t totally a convenience thing,
the researchers can also project landscapes to simulate an outdoor environment. In test scenarios, the group has flown physical quadrotors over projections of forests,
Toward this end, the researchers will simulate urban environments by creating street view projections of cities,
you can look at the environment from different angles, and what it sees will be quite similar to
Omidshafiei points out that testing such robots in a virtual environment may be the next best thing.
In fact, the sky the limit as far as the types of virtual environments that the new system may project. ith this system,
you can design any environment you want, and can test and prototype your vehicles as if theye fully outdoors,
and validation in the real environment, says Alberto Speranzon, staff research scientist at United technologies Research center,
he says testing autonomous systems in virtual environments could ready such designs for outdoor testing.
and testing in closer-to-reality environments, says Speranzon, who was involved not in the research. t will also enable the testing of decision-making algorithms in very harsh environments that are not readily available to scientists.
For example, with this technology, we could simulate clouds above an environment monitored by a high-flying vehicle
and have the video processing system dealing with semitransparent obstructions
#Beating battery drain Stream video on your smartphone or use its GPS for an hour or two and you ll probably see the battery drain significantly.
and a shoebox-size module (for base stations) based on nearly a decade of MIT research to essentially switch gears to adjust voltage supply to power amplifiers as needed cutting the waste.
And ultimately it could impact the environment: If all midsized carrier networks were to replace current radio amplifiers with Eta Devices technology he says the reduction in greenhouse gases would be equivalent to taking about 5 million cars off the road.
the team now aims to conduct studies in complex 3-D settings to make sure the process works effectively in situations that more closely resemble a real cellular environment.
#Nanoparticles get a magnetic handle A long-sought goal of creating particles that can emit a colorful fluorescent glow in a biological environment
which is broken into particles by chemical reactions with both the substrate and the environment. Then they expose the array to a plasma rich in carbon.
By augmenting the yeast s environment with potassium chloride and increasing the ph with potassium hydroxide the researchers were able to dramatically boost ethanol production.
Multiple uses for quick changes While troops and vehicles often move from one environment to another,
they are limited presently to fixed camouflage patterns that might be effective in one environment but stick out like a sore thumb in another.
Zhao says. odern warfare requires troops to deploy in many different environments during single missions.
This system could potentially allow dynamic camouflage in different environments. Another important potential application Zhao says,
How drastically could cab-sharing reduce traffic fares and carbon dioxide emissions? Authoritatively answering that question requires analyzing huge volumes of data
The optimal combination of trips would have reduced total travel time by 40 percent with corresponding reductions in operational costs and carbon dioxide emissions.
Over a four-day period he says ride sharing saved $18000 in fares and operational costs and more than 1000 pounds in carbon emissions.
#Recycling old batteries into solar cells This could be a classic win-win solution: A system proposed by researchers at MIT recycles materials from discarded car batteries a potential source of lead pollution into new,
long-lasting solar panels that provide emissions-free power. The system is described in a paper in the journal Energy and Environmental science,
co-authored by professors Angela M. Belcher and Paula T. Hammond, graduate student Po-Yen Chen,
and that could cause a lot of environmental issues, Belcher says. Today, she says, 90 percent of the lead recovered from the recycling of old batteries is used to produce new batteries,
but over time the market for new lead-acid batteries is likely to decline, potentially leaving a large stockpile of lead with no obvious application.
limiting the risk of lead contamination of the environment. When the panels are retired eventually, the lead can simply be recycled into new solar panels. he process to encapsulate them will be the same as for polymer cells today,
says, ow, what an interesting paper, that turns the waste of one system into a valuable resource for another!
I think the work demonstrated here can resolve a major issue of industrial waste, and provide a solution for future renewable energy.
In the desert environment dust is present on a daily basis says co-author Numan Abu-Dheir of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Saudi arabia.
steam-powered applications. team is important for desalination, hygiene systems, and sterilization, says Ghasemi, who led the development of the structure. specially in remote areas where the sun is the only source of energy,
Because the process relies on condensation it requires a humid environment as well as a source of temperatures colder than the surrounding air such as a cave or river.
and weak interaction with the rest of the environment including nonmetallic materials and humans. In fact they demonstrated that they could light the bulb at roughly 45 percent efficiency with all six researchers standing in between the two coils.
and more importantly not discharging the produced water into the environment. Tiny droplets of water colored blue are suspended in oil on top of a membrane developed by the MIT team.
and react to their environment. Most of the natural opsins now used for optogenetics respond best to blue or green light.
In addition to their potential for dangerous explosions, leaking gas pipes can be a significant contributor to global warming:
Methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, is a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Gayeski says. nd that data can be liberated from its local environment to the cloud, Grace adds.
where students from across departments plan businesses around clean technologies. Throughout the class, she says, teams learn the crucial steps of gathering customer feedback, meeting technological milestones,
The BAT could also provide power to places blacked out by natural disasters as well as at amusement parks festivals and sports venues.
Altaeros remains headquartered in cleantech incubator Greentown Labs (which Rein co-founded) in Somerville Mass. where its first rotor is displayed proudly near the entrance along with enlarged photos of the first trial run.
Open to students at any U s. university and now partnered with Cleantech Open, the competition aims to promote clean energy innovation
#Brewing up sustainability Each day, breweries and wineries produce thousands of gallons of wastewater, which is poured either down the drain
The company which aims to leverage biotechnology as a way to solve environmental issues is also modifying their system to generate value from wastewater in agricultural and military fields,
raising the cost of waste disposal and causing environmental harm. But a more cyclical approach where waste is used as an energy source could provide higher profit yields
and liminate the tension between the environment and economics, says CEO Matt Silver SM 5, Phd 0, who co-founded Cambrian with Justin Buck Phd 2,
now the company chief technology officer. he treatment of wastewater, for example, consumes over 3 percent of the electricity in the United states,
consume the wastewater remaining organic pollutants and, in the process, generate electricity. This electricity travels through a circuit and onto cathodes coated with separate microbes that consume that electricity
This process enhances naturally occurring anaerobic digestion in wastewater Silver says, as it stabilizes treatment, improves biogas quality,
Treated wastewater exits the reactor with 80 to 90 percent of pollutants removed, so it can be used for irrigation, equipment washing,
At that rate, a winery would shave about 2 pounds of CO2 per case off of its carbon footprint
where aerobic microorganisms degrade pollutants consume a lot of energy and generate biosolids (organic materials) that are managed at cost.
Processes where anaerobic microbes eat pollutants, while producing small amounts of burnable methane, have gained popularity in the last few decades
and wastewater pollution is rising, causing many companies to consider water risk in their overall strategy.
By the time they entered the 2010 Cleantech Open competition and won they had shifted focus to the food and beverage industry.
Silver says. he challenge of supporting astronauts in space is very similar to sustainability On earth,
is to leverage biotechnology to advance a sustainable ndustrial ecology, where the waste of industry is recycled to create energy
and value much like in natural ecosystems. n a natural ecosystem, there really is no such thing as waste,
Silver says. t just another resource. l
#Fast way to measure DNA repair Our DNA is under constant attack from many sources,
including environmental pollutants, ultraviolet light, and radiation. Fortunately, cells have several major DNA repair systems that can fix this damage,
and the introduction of alkyl groups caused by pollutants such as fuel exhaust and tobacco smoke. To achieve this, the researchers created five different circular pieces of DNA, four
Tumors in low-oxygen environments tend to be more resistant to therapy and spread more aggressively to other parts of the body.
The researchers are now working on sensors that could be used to monitor other biological properties such as ph. We hope this is the first of many types of solid-state contrast agents where the material responds to its chemical environment in such a way that we can detect it by MRI Cima says.
which produces unhealthy indoor air pollution, and can contribute to deforestation. Solar cooking could alleviate that
and since people often cook while the sun isn out, being able to store heat for later use could be a big benefit.
They could also be equipped with sensors that can ecordtheir environments noting for example, if a refrigerated vaccine has ever been exposed to temperatures too high or low.
which respond to their environment produce complex biological molecules and span multiple length scales with the benefits of nonliving materials
This puts control of curli fiber production in the hands of the researchers who can adjust the amount of AHL in the cells environment.
The two types of engineered cells can be grown together in a colony allowing researchers to control the material composition of the biofilm by varying the amounts of AHL and atc in the environment.
If gold nanoparticles are added to the environment the histidine tags will grab onto them creating rows of gold nanowires and a network that conducts electricity.
which could be useful for converting agricultural waste to biofuels. Other potential applications include diagnostic devices and scaffolds for tissue engineering.
and give them completely new functions, such as monitoring environmental pollutants. In a new Nature Materials paper, the researchers report boosting plantsability to capture light energy by 30 percent by embedding carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast,
they survive in harsh environments, and they provide their own power source and water distribution.
an environmental pollutant produced by combustion. Strano lab has developed previously carbon nanotube sensors for many different chemicals,
the researchers hope to develop plants that could be used to monitor environmental pollution, pesticides, fungal infections, or exposure to bacterial toxins.
In most robotic motion-planning systems avoiding collisions with the environment is the highest priority.
With soft robots collision poses little danger to either the robot or the environment. In some cases it is actually advantageous for these robots to bump into the environment
because they can use these points of contact as means of getting to the destination faster Rus says.
Manipulating the environment It appears that metastatic tumors as well as the supportive cells that surround them, secrete certain proteins into the extracellular matrix to make it easier for them to escape
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