That boundary layer can resemble the ocean's surface producing waves that reach towering heights travel vast distances
and can travel at a leisurely pace of a few centimeters per second. They are the lumbering giants of the ocean Peacock says.
and turbulence they produce and marine navigation in the region. This team's research he says contributed to a massive advance in our understanding of how these waves get generated and dissipated.
The study area has been subject to various alterations such as the addition of transmission lines roads and other human construction.
By altering the landscape with roads facility construction billboards and transmission lines and in some cases providing sources of water
as a result of grid development and that protecting unaltered landscapes from fragmentation by transmission lines roads crested wheatgrass plantings and the invasion of other nonnative vegetation is integral to stemming range expansion by ravens.
#Temperature most significant driver of worlds tallest treesunderstanding forest biodiversity and how carbon dioxide is stored within trees is an important area of ecological research.
and fruits to travel further. The new study explores the role of temperature in driving tree height a study which may allow us to forecast how forests adapt to climate change.
Dominated by emissions from cars trucks and other forms of transportation suburbs account for about 50 percent of all household emissions--largely carbon dioxide--in United states. The study
& Technology (ES&T) uses local census weather and other data--37 variables in total--to approximate greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the energy transportation food goods
The goal of the project is to help cities better understand the primary drivers of household carbon footprints in each location said Daniel Kammen Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group
Taking into account the impact of all urban and suburban residents large metropolitan areas have a slightly higher average carbon footprint than smaller metro areas.
and present in a visually striking way the impacts and interactions of our energy transportation land use shopping and other choices.
The UC Berkeley researchers found that the primary drivers of carbon footprints are household income vehicle ownership
In some locations motor vehicles are the largest source of emissions while in other locations it might be electricity food or goods and services.
California for example has relatively low emissions associated with household electricity but large emissions from transportation.
Suburbs are excellent candidates for a combination of solar photovoltaic systems electric vehicles and energy-efficient technologies said Kammen.
CART analysis indicated that the highest shrub cover in 1929 was in areas having four
and consumption as the main driver of the elephant poaching crisis. In addition the story highlighted the links between'blood ivory'as a source of funds for terrorist organizations and rebel groups in Africa.
and Asia WCS is working with governments to stop wildlife trafficking at the source transport and consumer ends of the chain.
At transport nodes such as airports and border crossings we work with governments to help detect
If carotenoids from our smoothie are absorbed not they cannot travel into the skin. Together with Dr Soma Mitra we also assessed the background diet of all the participants before they were allowed to join the study.
and by avoiding carrier-by-carrier matings a quantum jump in fertility could be achieved in Nordic red breeds adds Goutam Sahana.
when an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle mapped the seabed beneath the ice. These new insights suggest that the recent history of ice shelf melting
for 100 days) and greenhouse gas emission equivalent of 800,000 car trips from one end of the U s. to the other, Â according to the Natural resources Defense Council.
Get a more efficient vehicle. If you can, make it an electric vehicle (EV) and charge it up with power from your own rooftop solar array.
Ride a bike, take public transportation, or walk. The more you can get along without oil and natural gas, the better.
Your goal should be to imagine how your children or grandchildren could live without it entirely by the end of this century,
and try to make that possible.##2: Reduce your overall energy consumption. That might mean moving to a smaller house,
and try growing oilseed crops to make your own fuel for your diesel vehicles--after all, that's
and natural gas to grow, process and transport. The whole food distribution chain in the United states is on average 1, 500 miles long,
Apps, like the parking app Streetline that helps drivers find available parking spots, use this sensor technology too.
or riding bike on a sidewalk only to be tripped up by a tree root bursting through the concrete.
eschewing plastic for aircraft-grade aluminum. Inside, the team replaced  step tracking with goal tracking.
isn't how many steps they travel, but how much of their daily activity goals they have achieved.)
and gasoline shortages and the trains weren't running to Kasama. Radiation levels were said to be high in the area
On my first trip, I was really careful about food, and I bought bottled water Â
I took a trip to visit my family and saw these materials and realized, Å Oh my God, this is the magical material--bamboo, rattan, water hyacinth
AECOM designs stunning urban food junglethere are plenty of ways cities use food as destination spots:
Large towers that use  aquaponic growing systems--I'm imagining a larger version of this already functional aeroponic garden at O'hare airport in Chicago--grow food in various micro-climates at different
Ground-level pedestrian circulation enables easy visitor access; meanwhile a floating pod-shaped snack shack serves fare prepared from fruit
He points out that the freight trains and trucks that haul mountains of agribusiness cabbages and cucumbers and whatnot around the country trounce local vans in ton-miles per gallon-the jargon of freight fuel efficiency.
A train gets 480-ton miles per gallon; the best case that Boisvert found in New york city's Union square Greenmarket got 28 ton-miles.
Likewise, the extra mileage involved in delivering fertilizers, soil and workers around fragmented city plots spews CO2.
Airports'newest groundskeepers: farm animalshave trouble napping on planes? Fly out of Atlanta and you may soon be able to lull yourself into a slumber by counting sheep.
At airports such as Atlanta â¢s Hartsfield-Jackson International, officials have added the animals to their grounds crew as a low-cost way to cut down on weeds
and other hard-to-mow grasses on airport property. After just two days of testing the sheep â¢s weed-whacking abilities in a test acre lot near Atlanta's airport,
the animals had eaten through nearly half of the high-flying weeds in the area. Since the airport has about 3
000 acres of land to maintain, the sheep could prove extremely useful in making sure vegetation doesn â¢t grow into habitats for birds
and other animals that might endanger airport activities, WXIA of Atlanta notes. Hartsfield-Jackson isn â¢t the only airport catching on to the idea of animals as lawnmowers.
Seattle and San francisco have tried similar methods in the past and officials at Chicago O â¢Hare are currently contemplating the use of goats to cut down on weeds.
The Chicago Department of Aviation recently put out a bid calling for someone to supply goats to eat up some weeds surrounding O â¢Hare
a practice that could potentially cut down on the use of high-polluting, heavy machinery in hard-to-mow areas.
In Atlanta, airport officials are crunching numbers to see if the sheep can keep the land tidy more efficiently
to offer affordable financing and technical guidance. They also created a city utility so they could sell power directly,
it would be straightforward to run its public transportation on that power. Electric buses, electric light rail,
and electric taxis or Zipcars could eventually displace the majority of their liquid fuel consumption at a far lower cost per mile traveled.
The vehicles themselves could be funded likewise by a municipal bond which could be retired fairly quickly, or perhaps by a tax assessment on merchants,
like the free Emery Go-Round shuttle service in Emeryville, CA. In addition to building up local renewable generation capacity, there are many other significant steps that any city can take, with suitable incentives and the cooperation of local businesses, such as:
Switch city-owned fleet vehicles to electric or natural gas vehicles. Create municipal utility districts to drive the deployment of locally-generated energy.
Create biking-and walking-friendly live/work districts in core urban areas, with easy access to public transportation,
the legendary road that once carried millions of Americans from New york to Los angeles in the freewheeling, cheap oil days of Happy Motoring.
Now it is abandoned mostly, with remnant bits running through nostalgic small towns and serving as occasional strips of frontage road along interstate highways.
You get to the airport, you need to check in, and you don't have any bags to check.
were modeled these after airport or ATM kiosks, or was this different enough that it had to be built from the ground up?
Borrowing the kiosk to create the same type of efficiency the airlines and banking industries use.
The city, long tied to the auto industry, has lost most of its manufacturing base, and close to a third of the 139-square mile cityscape is abandoned land and buildings.
attract tourists from all over the world; and--most important of all--stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity
is a booster for urban agriculture. The American Institute of Architects also agrees that Detroit is suited particularly well to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale.
every five to 10 minutes there was only one car coming from either side of the road.
Now, Beijing â¢s roads are crowded just so, even in the evening. And the bugs are no longer there,
This gave him his first chance to travel to the rural areas he'd read about and committed to memory.
In addition to their previous transportation costs, their new disposal strategy reportedly saves the distillery almost $250, 000 a year on electricity.
Our farting microbes are farting methane to power our generator which in turn feeds into the distillery's electrical distribution network this also fuels Reynier's electric car.
A Scottish university has entertained even the possibility for whisky-powered cars by converting pot ale and draff to a butanol additive for gasoline.
you can drown your carbon sorrows in the knowledge that those bottles travel fewer miles to get to your stateside liver.
Apple submits detailed proposal for'Spaceship'campusas NASA puts its historic spaceship mission to rest,
revealing more details and drawings of what the Spaceship campus will look like. The Apple Campus 2 is expected to be completed by 2015.
Å It â¢s a little like a spaceship landed,  Jobs said in June,
Apple Spaceship campus to hold 12,000 employees and run on green energy via the City of Cupertino and Macrumors
which should attract several hundred thousand tourists based upon the draw from previous events. The country is also South america's leading economy,
We survive without a ticket agent at the airport, a cashier at the grocery store and a teller at the bank.
and is poised to take up residence at other universities, train stations, hospitals, corporate campuses and shopping centers. Briggo will open a kiosk at Austin Bergstrom International airport this fall.
To be fair Briggo executives are hardly out to eradicate the human barista. The human element of coffee shops is said beautiful
The right place for robotic coffee Terry Mahlum, regional director for Delaware North Companies Travel Hospitality Services,
and retail outlets in more than 25 airports around the globe, saw the Briggo kiosk on the University of Texas campus
and envisioned it at the local airport. It â¢s a good fit in Austin, with all the innovation and high-tech there,
The kiosk is slated for a central location across from Gate 13 in the American airlines terminal.
only 50 square feet, will appeal to the business traveler and anyone else on the move. For travelers who still want the human touch,
the airport has five other coffee shop options. We're going to promote Briggo pre-security, Mahlum said.
So passengers will be able to get on their mobile apps and place the order while they're standing in the security line.
Samuel Nahmias, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Studylogic, a research firm whose clients include the top coffee chains,
24/7 (for the ER doctor at the hospital or the late-arriving passenger at the train station).
Greenhouse robots are generally small wheeled vehicles that carry a tank of pesticide, a sprayer to distribute the liquid,
For its guidance system the Trakã Â r employs sensors that allow it to follow a 1 mm copper cable,
Smithsonian tracks bird strikes for military, airline industrydr. Carla Dove using a comparison microscope to study feather structure in the Birds Division at the Museum of Natural history.
It didn t take her long to realize that the work performed in this little lab is a big help to the military, the aviation industry and of course, the birds.
if we know the birds on the airfield, Dove said, they can change the habitat.
Not only can bird strikes threaten the safety of a flight, but they can cause millions of dollars in damage to the aircraft.
So the Federal Aviation Administration and the military fund the Smithsonian lab in order to learn more about the strikes
and how to prevent them. The two groups have separate databases where Dove team logs each incident.
Commercial airlines report strikes on a voluntary basis; for the military, it mandatory. What we do know about strikes is that most happen at takeoff and landing, typically at the engine,
the record for the highest strike goes to a Griffon vulture flying over Africa. But there a lot that we don t know
In fact pilots don t necessarily know that a strike even happens; it often those cleaning the jet engines who find the debris, called snarge.
And that what is placed in a Ziploc and mailed to Dove and her three colleagues.
and sent to the airfield where the strike occurred. This information helps biologists build airfield habitats that are unfriendly to the types of birds causing problems.
If you let the grass grow, that will deter some birds, Dove said. But that may not work at another airfield.
You might have long grasses that attract mice and a bird that eats mice. You have to know how to manage it.
Dove and her team worked on the remains of the geese from the 2009 US AIRWAYS landing in the Hudson river.
trying to determine from DNA samples exactly how many geese hit the plane. The remains of the geese were hand-delivered to the Smithsonian within two days of the accident,
We re working with the National Transportation Safety Board to refine it, Dove said. It like a detective story.
the public became more aware of the danger that birds can pose to aviation safety.
and Kennedy airports â some residents were appalled. I asked Dove, who goes birding in her spare time,
but when it comes to the airports, they have got to control these geese, she said.
Airplane engines â which go through bird tests â are designed to handle strikes with certain weights of birds
if that largely because more airfields are reporting, or because there are more strikes. She arrived at the lab in 1989,
Turns out it was remained all that from a Brazilian freetail bat from a Southwest Airlines flight from Sacramento, a Boeing 737 that departed at dusk.
So what does Dove do when she boards a commercial jet? Naturally: We re always looking out the window for birds,
Southwest Airlines unveils first'green plane';'saves 9, 500 gallons of fuel per yearsouthwest Airlines has announced the world's first green plane, a Boeing 737-700 that's 472 lbs. lighter than a conventional model and saves
9, 500 gallons of jet fuel per year. It's no secret that the airplanes are some of the worst polluting transportation methods available.
According to Outside. com, airlines account for about two percent of all glacier-melting, polar bear-killing emissions released into our carbon-choked friendly skies.
That article cites Southwest as the leading U s. airline for carbon footprint awareness, and notes that the company spent $175 million to retrofit the navigation systems on its planes to calculate tighter flight paths
and thus reduce jet fuel consumption by six percent or about 90 million gallons a year.
So it's no surprise that Southwest is again at the forefront of an industry that, in the U s.,lags behind the world in efficiency.
To lighten the Boeing 737-700's load, the company is installing recyclable Interfaceflor carpet, weight-saving seat covers and life vest pouches,
Here's a rundown of the advantages, in the carrier's own words: Interfaceflor Carpet-this carpet reduces labor
Seat covers-two new products that will be tested on the aircraft seats, offering more than twice the durability than the current leather seats as well as a weight savings of almost two pounds per seat.
Life vest Pouch-more environmentally friendly because it offers a weight savings of one pound per passenger,
Passenger Seat Rub Strips-switching from plastic to aluminum will help with durability which reduces waste,
when the plane would take flight
Spreading holiday cheer around Parisian gardensparis This year 100 drop of points will be available citywide to residents looking to recycle their Christmas trees.
while minimizing excessive transportation to shuttle trees to disposal facilities. The drop-off points are essentially a way to minimize the Christmas carbon footprint.
11 trucks pulled up with 7, 000 milk crates. Half are filled with soil and half go on the bottom because they re elevated.
and NASA engineers together, they also would have come up with a milk crate. It one cubic foot
Startup brings farmers markets to your doorgood Eggs delivers from farm to table Online services are delivering groceries, takeout and even ice cream trucks.
Good Eggs works with local farms and food makers in some U s. metro areas to help them sell directly to the consumer.
Bakers, beekeepers, farmers and commercial fishermen sell goods at farmers markets throughout the United states. There's a weekly market by my subway stop every Friday.
It relies on foot traffic, but Good Egg makes it a daily occurrence by delivering orders directly to the consumer or designated pickup sites.
commercial scale rooftop produce Uber hales ice cream trucks
Stone eyeglasses? Unusual materials get attention at Pitti Uomoflorence, ITALY--They wore seersucker suits, harem pants and chambray shirts.
She just developed a collection, available at her Web site and at London's Dorchester Hotel.
Style meets function in Mick Peel's bespoke bike saddlesflat streets, good biking infrastructure and temperate weather make Melbourne, Australia, a hot spot for cycling.
a fashion designer that has worked up a large following for his bespoke bike saddles and bar tape.
Adventure Journal featured Peel, who works under the moniker Busyman Bicycles, in a Q&a this week.
Why would one need advanced degrees to make bike saddles you might ask? One doesn't, obviously.
Busyman Bicycles came into being some time in 2008 and also has become very much what my Phd is based on.
Peel says interest in custom bike saddles, bar tape and toe straps, like the type he makes,
such as their bikes, and to move away from mass-produced commodities. For some of his clients, fabric selection has become an issue.
is a hi-tech mobile trailer used for cultivating medicinal marijuana. The aptly-named Big Bud is a fully functional weed farm that features programmable lights,
So about this trailer designed to grow marijuana, where did the idea come from? Oddly enough, it's something that's been done for about 30 years.
and buried the crops in the ground before they eventually switched to using trailers. This is pretty rudimentary,
so what we did was just take it to the next level by implementing hydroponic technology and developing it into a full line of trailers for not only the medical marijuana community,
Giving them the marijuana from a sterilized environment like our trailers is a huge benefit to this industry.
So what kind of customers do you get who express interest in owning a Big Bud trailer?
which are mainly a result of transportation cost of vegetables from South africa. There are all sorts of difficulties to growing food in Africa.
And now the two have a chance to travel to Google's headquarters in California, and be a part of a year long mentorship program.
where he takes small groups on an excursion to the neighboring Penn Quarter Farmer Market.
NASA Goddard Photo and Video/Flickr) via: The New york times
The 10 best cities for parks in the worldas the earth's population explodes at a barely comprehensible rate,
This means more cars, more traffic, more noise, more neighbors above and below you, and more pollution of all kinds.
Thanks to Charis Atlas Heelan at Frommer's here is a list of the world's ten best cities for parks:
A tourist attraction in its own right, the park stretches some 60 city blocks and covers close to 850 acres.
On a sunny day, this 2, 200-acre reserve in the 16th arrondissement is full of cyclists,
In winter, bring your sled or skates to Lincoln Park to enjoy the best outdoor experiences. 7. San francisco, California Golden gate Park covers more than 1,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Highlights include Wissahickon Valley Park with 50 miles of rugged terrain for mountain bikers and hikers, plus trout fishing in Wissahickon creek;
calls for about 8 percent of all fuel used in 2011 to be from renewable sources and for blending 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel with transportation fuel by 2022.
how good corn-based ethanol is for the environment, cars, and food prices is highly questionable.
The future of the parking lotthe prominence of the parking lot in the United states is undeniable.
It's estimated that parking lots cover anywhere from 800 million to 2 billion square miles of land in the United states
. And if we parked all the cars in the U s. in nonresidential parking spaces there would be plenty left over.
If we're going to pave over our country with parking lots shouldn't we give them a little more attention?
what this reimagined parking lot would look like. The first is a redesign of the Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin, Italy, in
which the architect Renzo Piano eliminated islands and curbs and instead added a grid of trees.
Now, the parking lot is hardly recognizable (see the image above. The other example comes from the Dia art museum (see below) in Beacon,
N y. and pays closer attention to the look of the parking lot to make it more inviting.
But it is a step in the right direction toward a better parking lot. Ben-Joseph takes a look at what else can be done
so that future parking lots are more sustainable and better integrated into communities. Ben-Joseph writes: A better parking lot might be covered with solar canopies
so that it could produce energy while lowering heat. Or perhaps it would be surfaced with a permeable material like porous asphalt
The ubiquity of parking lots has led also to an overlooked social dimension: In the United states, parking lots may be the most regularly used outdoor space.
They are public places that people interact with and use on a daily basis, whether working, shopping, running errands, eating,
even walking parking lots are one of the few places where cars and pedestrians coexist. Better parking lots would embrace
and expand this role...Planned with greater intent, parking lots could actually become significant public spaces,
contributing as much to their communities as great boulevards, parks or plazas. I like that idea.
Similarly, streets represent our auto-dependent culture, but we are finding ways in cities to make them accessible to multiple modes of transportation.
Even though we're driving less, parking lots will continue to be a reality unless we completely stop driving.
That's not likely to happen anytime soon. So lets discuss the transformation of parking lots the way we discuss the transformation of streets.
Ignoring parking lots in our cities won't make them go away. When A Parking lot Is So much More The New york times Top image:
Truus, Bob & Jan too!//Flickr Bottom image: urbandesigner/Flickr
The iphone 5 could have changed everythingprotestors dressed up to represent Foxconn workers outside an Apple retail outlet in Hong Hong on May 7th, 2011..
Is the release of a new iphone the perfect time to mobilize around fair labor practices?
Burgeoning demand At Infocast's Biomass Trade and Transport Summit in Charlotte, North carolina last week,
Seth Walker, Associate Bioenergy Economist, RISI A large part of that supply could come from the Southeast,
which is expected to grow to 10 Mt in 2017, according to Seth Walker, an economist with global biomass information provider RISI.
Seth Walker, Associate Bioenergy Economist, RISI However, it's still woefully undersized to meet European demand.
and massive new investment in transportation and logistics infrastructure to get the pellets to market.
transportation and logistics Transportation and loading can be as much as 40 percent of the total delivered pellet cost, according to Brent Mahana of Cooper/Consolidated,
With diesel at $4 a gallon, just 50 miles'worth of trucking costs to get feedstock to mills
While some areas of the U s. have excess capacity in freight rail and rail-to-port infrastructure,
A great deal of the feedstock is stranded for lack of transportation and logistics capacity. Geoffrey Clark, executive director of the Rail Authority of East Mississippi,
and open up eastern Mississippi and western Alabama to pellet transport. Without more direct rail access, feedstock suppliers in the region have to take very circuitous routes running far to the east
An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 rail cars a year could transit the line when finished, creating thousands of permanent jobs all along an economically depressed corridor.
and be assured that they'll have economical transport to European markets. The utilities won't sign offtake agreements without knowing
Unfortunately, our governmental bodies remain in legislative capture by the automobile and oil industries and haven't shown much leadership on freight rail
and rail-to-port infrastructure that isn't shovel-ready. With tragic shortsightedness, the vast majority of federal transportation infrastructure investment still goes to politically expedient road projects.
Building rail and waterborne transport infrastructure is a no-brainer for America, and it's high time we made it a national priority.
As I have detailed previously, we should be spending on the order of $1 trillion a year on a national infrastructure program,
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