How dubious are Snapple's bottle cap facts? For over decade, beverage maker Snapple has been printing Real Facts on the undersides of their bottle caps.
the city sells the crops to biofuel makers. It's an  endeavor  that's turned into a money maker for the city, The Kansas city Star reports:
--whether it's packaging or chemistry or biology or micro-engineering. It's special working here.
We produce it using specially-designed proprietary kilns that quickly heat biomass up to very high temperatures with no oxygen.
It's called bio-oil. It's a low-grade crude oil substitute. We can upgrade it to a point where it can run a diesel generator.
It is targeted primarily for operations with a lot of biomass in a small area so forestry operations or large farms, for instance.
The Sequoia will also be used to advance our understanding in the fields of astronomy, energy, genetics and climate change.
which locks out oxygen required for the food to biodegrade properly. Food waste s high water content makes it tough to burn
For companies like Goldenway Biotech, who built the Gaoancun plant, Beijing's food waste mountain is a business opportunity.
Goldenway Biotech; Tom Hancock
In Buenos aires, foldable housing for disaster reliefbuenos AIRES--Like many big ideas, Matã Â as Alter
Cows and chickens still have an important role to play in a healthy biosystem. Even so, conventional livestock uses 70 percent of the world's agricultural land.
and consult a professor of entomological parasitology. Once they are convinced that a bug is safe,
India's poor most vulnerable to rapid biodiversity losshyderabad Â--Â India's poorest fishing, forest and farming communities will be worst hit by rapid losses of nature as well as efforts to conserve it.
They voiced their concerns at the U n. Conference on Biodiversity which concluded on October 20 in the southern city of Hyderabad.
Negotiators from over 170 countries attended the two-week U n. meeting on biodiversity held every two years.
India will lead the international community to prevent biodiversity losses. In this capacity, it has set an agenda of linking livelihood with protecting biodiversity.
Living at the periphery of subsistence the poor are the most at risk from biodiversity loss,
Prime minister Manmohan Singh  told the delegates last week. They should not also be the ones to bear the cost of biodiversity conservation
while the benefits are enjoyed by society at large. The Indian government says that livelihood is already a component of its plans to conserve biodiversity.
M. F. Farooqui, a senior government official from the Environment Ministry, who supervised the conference,
one of the 17 megadiverse countries abundant in biodiversity, is home to 1. 2 billion people living on 2. 4 percent of the world's land.
Last week, Dr. Singh made the first financial pledge of $50 million to save biodiversity.
The biodiversity talks concluded on Saturday after developed countries agreed to increase funding for conservation schemes by 2015.
Developing nations, home to the bulk of biodiversity, will use most of this money. In exchange, 75%of developing countries will have to make biodiversity part of the national agenda as well as spend their own money on saving it.
But funding for conservation policies is hard to drum up in the lurch of the economic crisis.
While scientists describe devastating consequences of losing biodiversity, the U n. conference received little coverage from both the national and international media.
and biodiversity so it should sign on and participate, said Ashok Khosla, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's oldest environmental network.
With the help of corresponding ground data, they calculated the amount of aboveground biomass and thus
while using fewer additives, said Kay Cooksey, Cryovac endowed chair at Clemson University. Fresh, refrigerated pastas, rather than the dried kind found in the pasta aisle,
assistant professor of practice at Virginia Tech s Department of Sustainable Biomaterials, said in an e-mail.
like bioplastics. For instance, if consumers don t know to separate compostable food packaging from other landfill waste,
Female pigs have been injected with embryos containing genetic material from two different species, in order for the piglets to grow into chimeric animals.
The animals have been modified genetically to switch off natural genes with instructions to create particular organs. Stem cells from other animals are introduced then to replace the missing instructions with organ growth from different pig species. For example
Microbiologist Jan Narciso at the ARS Citrus and Subtropical Products Laboratory in Winter Haven Fla.,
Leafsnap combines biometrics and botany for electronic field guidewashington--This week behind the Smithsonian Castle, a research botanist and two computer science professors unveiled Leafsnap, a free plant identification
The computer scientists--experts in biometrics and face recognition technology--spent eight years collecting and photographing leaves,
Leaked EU documents rank biofuel emissions higher than crude oileuropean Union politics website Euractive has gotten its hands on official EU data reporting that many biofuel crops release
The numbers were intended for release in the spring when the EU presents new proposals on biofuels,
The European commission has defended long biofuels, despite dissent from Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. Its current biofuel roadmap demands that at least 5. 75%of all energy sold on the market of any member country be biofuel
boosted to 10%by 2020. However, also in the biofuel directive is that biofuel production should be sustainable,
and the new numbers suggest that it is not. The leaked data present higher carbon costs for biofuels because, for the first time,
the analysts incorporated the effects of indirect land use change (ILUC). ILUC is the rise in emissions
when forests and wetlands are destroyed to clear land to grow biofuel crops. And with ILUC added to the mix, it looks like some top biofuel crops are worse for the environment, in terms of carbon emissions, than crude oil.
The EU's default value for measuring carbon efficiency for oil from tar sands is 107g CO2 equivalent per megajoule of fuel (CO2/mj.
incorporating ILUC, for various biofuel crops, thanks to Euractive: Palm oil-105g Soybean â oe 103g Rapeseed â oe 95g Sunflower â oe 86g Palm oil with methane capture â oe 83g
36g Sugar beet â oe 34g Wheat (straw as process fuel in CHP plants) â oe 35g 2g Ethanol (land-using) â oe 32g 2g Biodiesel (land-using) â
oe 21g 2g Ethanol (non-land using) â oe 9g 2g Biodiesel (non-land using) â oe 9g
The top biodiesel crops--palm, soybean, and rapeseed oil--are all the least energy efficient. However, they are also the cheapest to produce,
HOK formed an alliance in 2007 with Biomimicry 3. 8, a nonprofit that helps organizations
and educators find design inspiration in biology, and it has been integrating biomimetic principles into projects such as a Haitian orphanage.
Now, HOK and Biomimicry 3. 8 have authored co a report called Genius of Biome, which serves as a primer to biomimetic design for resiliency based on examples seen in ecologic biomes,
communities of plants and animals that exist in a specific climate. The report focuses on the temperate broadleaf forest biome
which is found on six continents, is characterized by cold, dry winters and hot, humid summers,
biologist and design strategist at Biomimicry 3. 8 and Knittel's co-author on the report.
but for anyone interested in how biomimicry can inform ways to reshape human communities, based on place or habitat.
HOK & Biomimicry 3. 8
Los angeles urban farmers run for officewatching someone water their lush green lawn in a desert landscape should be a surreal image-like a scene from a David lynch or Terry Gilliam film.
If you produce these proteins in goats and other transgenic animals, it s way more efficient,
Well, ever since the days of Charles darwin and Thomas Huxley, it's been appreciated, first based on anatomy and later of course on genetics, independently on genetics,
and that animals are a fundamental part of cultural biodiversity Firstly, animals are a vital link in the global ecological and,
culture as well as biological functions, she said. Chambers asserted that ironically to save these breeds and species we had to eat them.
'a progressive landscape project focused on water reuse, biomimicry and community. It's about working with nature to create innovative and clever waterways throughout Melbourne--in our backyards and in public spaces.
and to ensure no reliance on precious drinking water to maintain our green cities--while still encouraging biodiversity,
It was discovered by private Austrian biotech Polymun. The GM tobacco plants that churned it out are grown in soil in greenhouses at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular biology and Applied Ecology in Aachen, Germany.
After 45 days, they're harvested, their leaves are shredded, and highly purified antibodies are extracted. The process yields 5 grams of purified antibody from 250 kg of tobacco.
Advocates of this emerging field â oe called molecular farming â oe say that protein drugs could be made more efficiently and cheaply inside GM CROPS,
Mass producing medicines in GM plants uses lower-cost tech than those of biopharmaceuticals made in huge stainless steel fermentation vats containing bacteria or mammalian cells.
Production costs could be 10 to 100 times lower than using conventional bioreactors, says Rainer Fischer of the Fraunhofer Institute.
The biotech medicine is the first plant-produced antibody to be greenlit for clinical testing by Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Agency.
The move will likely affect the regulation of other biotech crops, including genetically modified sugar beets, and could make it easier for GM CROPS to stay on the market,
since it will be no longer be possible to ban an approved crop without a full hearing.
Some 95 percent of beets grown in the U s. carry the Monsanto bacterial gene that resists the herbicide glyphosate, present in Roundup Ready.
The crops contain a bacterial gene that allows them to withstand spraying with Roundup or its generic equivalents, known as glyphosate.
The environmental groups and others had said that the foreign gene might spread to organic or conventional nongenetically engineered crops,
Nestle also questioned the ability for regulators to prevent pollen from GM CROPS to contaminate organic crops nearby.
bamboo has provided biomass fuel at power plants in the Philippines. Don't worry graphene. As far as I know,
Scientists find fungi that could give next-gen biofuels a boostthe formula to low-cost biofuel might be found within mushrooms.
A team of scientists including researchers from the Energy department's Joint Genome Institute identified Thielavia terrestris
and Myceliophthora thermophilia--two types of fungi that thrive in the hot environments necessary to speed up the biofuel refining process,
according to a Nature Biotechnology article published this week (subscription required). Why it matters The federal government has mandated that 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel be blended into transportation fuel by 2022.
the development of so-called next-gen biofuels made from non-food crops (or cellulosic ethanol) has fallen flat.
Next-gen biofuels have struggled in part because the process of breaking down plant biomass and converting it into fermentable sugars so it can be refined into fuel is too expensive to be commercially viable.
In other words, it can't compete against corn-based ethanol prices or gasoline, for that matter. Mushroom power Enter the heat-loving fungi.
The Energy department has several research projects aimed at finding heat tolerant enzymes from fungi and microbes such as cellulases that break down plant cell walls and convert biomass into fermentable sugars.
Many cellulases used in biofuel production thrive at temperatures of 20 degrees Celsius to 35 degrees C, according to the DOE's Joint Genome Institute.
the information can be used to improve strains as well as simplify the indentification of other beneficial and harmful mutations, according to the DOE's Joint Genome Institute.
Adrian Tsang, Concordia University via Energy department's Joint Genome Institute Related: Macoma files IPO: A first look inside the biofuels company Related video on Smartplanet:
video=6343051
NASA: Road transportation a'key driver'of global warminganalyzing impact by economic sector rather than chemical species, NASA scientists have determined that motor vehicles are the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming, now and in the near term.
the burning of household biofuels such as wood and manure. The third: agriculture, in the form of raising livestock, particularly methane-producing cattle.
and biomass burning--tropical forest fires, deforestation, prairie fires and so forth--emits smoke that blocks solar radiation. That's not to say smoke
The experiments resulted in ten transgenic piglets being born six of them since August, and under a black light they will glow green.
It's just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal
but the experiments herald the technique's success in future goals of introducing beneficial genes into animals
The research has been submitted to the Biology of Reproduction journal. Via: Hawaii. edu
Never seen before: Steve jobs talks innovation, legacya newly-released video of Apple cofounder Steve jobs can give today's entrepreneurs food for thought.
and Pepsico. The new bottle will use the bio-based materials to reproduce the molecular structure that is used in petroleum-based polyethylene terephthalate (aka PET),
Next-gen biofuels in 2012: Another mandate missed (and by a lot) Another year, another missed renewable fuel production mandate.
and once again next-generation biofuels will fall far short of the production volume mandated by Congress.
A National Resource Council report released in October said it's unlikely the U s. will meet specific biofuel mandates under the Renewable Fuel Standard by 2022
Not a single commercially viable biorefinery exists for converting cellulosic biomass to fuel, the NRC said.
E coli bacteria that eats switchgrass to make fuel How do you solve a problem like next-gen biofuels?
Scientists find fungi that could give next-gen biofuels a boost
Next-gen toilets that could change the worldflush toilets get the job done. They also require a network of piped water, sewer and electrical connections,
000 second prize for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals and clean water. The University of Toronto won the third-place prize of $40
RTI International received a $1. 3 million grant to fund the development of a self-contained toulet system disinfects liquid waste and turns solid waste into fuel or electricity through a biomass energy
and produce biological charcoal that be used as a replacement for wood charcoal or chemical fertilizers.
New enzyme cuts cost of next-gen biofuelsthe advanced biofuels industry has failed so far to ramp up beyond pilot and demonstration projects.
Industrial enzyme maker  Novozymes said this week it has developed a super-efficient enzyme that could help biofuel producers reach that elusive commercially viable goal.
The so-called Cellic CTEC3 enzyme--like other enzymes on the market--is used to break down biomass pulp--from corn husks
Traditionally, advanced biofuel producers have to use large amounts of expensive enzymes to get the desired end result.
Novozymes says its new enzyme has a better biomass-to-ethanol conversion rate and biofuel producers need only one-fifth of the enzyme dose compared to its competitors,
including main rival  Dupont's Genencor unit.   This efficiency improvement is enough to bring the cost of cellulosic ethanol in line with gasoline and corn-based ethanol.
A Novozymes spokeswoman told me the enzyme could bring cellulosic ethanol costs down to $2 to $2. 50 a gallon for its biofuel customers.
The advanced biofuels industry has to find ways to cuts costs if it ever hopes to scale up commercially
USDA bets (again) on advanced biofuels Poet's cellulosic ethanol strategy: Dump fed loan, partner with DSM Bioengineering e coli to turn seaweed into fuel Next-gen biofuels in 2012:
Another mandate missed (and by a lot
NYC's urban agriculture potentialnew York City is the most dense major city in the U s. So how much land could possibly be available to farm?
The Ferme de Paris, the city's farm located in the Bois de Vincennes, has proposed a new eco-friendly solution that will explore questions of biodiversity and more natural landscaping methods.
Even the workers at the Archives, the animals'temporary caretakers, have completed a biodiversity training to educate them on the importance of the sheep.
 The joint venture, called POET-DSM Advanced Biofuels LLC, is scheduled to start production in the second half of 2013.
and biochemicals, will contribute its enzyme and yeast technologies. If successful the joint venture plan to replicate
Not a single commercially viable biorefinery exists for converting cellulosic biomass to fuel, according to the National Resource Council.
Bioengineering e coli to turn seaweed into fuel Fed-backed Range Fuels sells plant for pennies on the dollar Chemical giant BASF invests in biomass-to-sugar startup Next-gen biofuels in 2012:
whose genome scientists have decoded just now. Which turns out to have a lot in common with a disease stalking my family (and yours) today, the flu.
Senior author Gene Nusbaum of Harvard described its ability to change as exquisite. Fay Wray thought the same thing of King kong. Something else about the potato blight.
the flu virus can be controlled. Here again the potato blight offers some clues. Nearly three-quarters of the blight's genome consists of junk DNA,
unused sequences that evolve quickly. The working genome evolves more slowly. Think of it in terms of your own work.
If you have a lot of notes for your paper you can edit it quickly, maybe rewrite it entirely in short order.
Push for greener, leafier spaces on Parisian roofsparis A new biodiversity initiative seeks to convert over 17 acres of Parisian rooftops to thriving gardens by 2020.
the hope is to create pockets of biodiversity across the city through innovative new rooftop gardens.
 Also, promoting biodiversity means finding ways to integrate different types of plants to a very particular Parisian climate.
but according to Marc Barra, business and biodiversity administrator for Natureparif, there is work left to do. Â Natureparif is an agency that is working with the city to promote
and advise on biodiversity issues in the Ile-de-france region The french region that includes Paris. Barra said that existing gardens don t adequately promote diversity,
ones that marry a love of the land with advanced knowledge of chemistry and biotechnology.
I know this sort of thinking contributed to the biotech bubble a few years back but there is real policy momentum
including those meant to support biofuel production. The second looks more deeply into the case for sustainable and organic farming methods, using a long-term research study in Europe for specific evidence.
but on the increased use of biofuels. It maps this growth to existing production capacity
The use of biotech crops is discussed also. All of this is mapped against investment opportunities across the agribusiness landscape:
fertilizers, biofuels, irrigation equipment, management and infrastructure development. The second study is published in the June 2009 AMBIO:
where both food crops and biofuels are produced, as evidence. The study reaches back into 1995 for its data.
Which gorillas are the most important to us for genetic reasons? Â They have to calculate in complex computer programs the genetics of each animal
and get them together. If zoos don't comply, they risk not getting accredited. It's such a sophisticated form of management.
I think that it is genetic in my case. I have a master's degree in landscape architecture and
making electricity could be transformed by using various versions of compressed biomass. The problem is that a lot of that biomass is scattered at, rural locations.
One opportunity is new technology European firms are investing in called torrefaction. The plants European utilities are designing start at $10 million.
Each of these village enterprises that makes a biomass coal replacement might cost $10, 000 to $20,
Or what warranted a vaccine for this particular virus? This is one of the big problems.
Trying to predict which of these viruses we ought to be worried most about. In the animal population there is a whole soup of flu viruses.
We are not good at determining which of those are most likely to jump into humans.
This particular virus had concerned features that us. There are specific mutations in its genome that we associate with an increased ability to grow in mammals.
And our laboratory studies found an elevated ability of this virus, as compared to most other avian viruses,
to transmit. Was there any overt indication that this strain of flu was more of a risk?
Consider the epidemiology that was going on in China at the time and compare it with H5n1
Well, we know that there are genetic elements of a virus associated with growth in mammals.
This particular virus had some of those. Also, the hemagglutinin (H) protein in this virus attaches the virus to the host cell.
We saw some significant changes in that protein that looked like it might be able to bind to a human host cell.
what viruses bind to. So there are signatures that avian viruses have that are associated with binding to those avian cells.
This virus is primarily avian still but it did have some signatures that we associate with mammalian virus. Where does this virus rank among the flu viruses we know about already?
I think it is more infectious than H5. It's probably more infectious than H9
which is another virus we sporadically see in humans. But if we rank it highest amongst the avian flu viruses,
what does that mean? The next leap is: Does it have a ten percent chance of being able to go human-to-human?
Is it one percent or less? We really don't know. I think the chances are still most likely that it is going to remain a chicken virus that will spread human infections.
But flu viruses do change. If you give them enough opportunity they will adapt to a new host.
So it may have the ability to turn into a real bona fide human pathogen. That is why we continue to monitor this in the bird populations,
So we have quite a bit of immunity to the human flu viruses. And that probably stunts a lot of the ability of that virus to cause disease.
It can still get in and make you a little bit sick. It can still transmit but the severity is limited by your immunity.
The H-type is the most variable part of that virus. That is why we call them H1, H3,
We group flu viruses into pathogenic types. Highly pathogenic or low pathogenic. Some viruses of the H5n7 type fall into a very virulent form.
And we know how they do this. They accumulate additional amino acids in their H protein. The H5n1 is one of these highly virulent forms.
this particular virus does not have that extra bit. So that is a good thing? No.
and you know the virus is there. With the H7 you cannot tell just by looking at the chickens.
Isn't that the case with most viruses? With any flu viruses there is a period
when you're infectious before you start to get clinical signs. With the H5 you eventually see sick birds.
But if you look at the pandemics we've seen they have all been from viruses of the H1, H2 and H3 type.
If we find viruses like the H7 that we perceive as high-risk then we start making viable vaccine strains.
but essentially you are protected only from a portion of these H1 viruses. And you are protected not against the H5 or H7.
There is some hope that perhaps we can target other parts of the virus. There is a lot of work toward creating a universal flu vaccine.
and went straight to biology. Right. I spent a long time on reading nutrition papers. Food is extremely complex.
But no one was focusing on specific biochemical or metabolic details of consuming food. There lot of weak correlations,
what is actually going on within this biological machine. It seemed a lot more clear-cut: This mineral is used in this enzyme.
I talked a lot with a close friend who is a biologist at Harvard. I talked to my doctor about measuring the physiological effects.
In terms of the specific biochemical pathways in different people there's not much of a difference in the different minerals, electrolytes that a human needs.
And better biofuels research, like re-engineering plants, so they do a better job of turning sunlight into fuels than current plants do.
growing salt-tolerant grasses for fodder or biofuel, and evaporating the concentrated saline the plant emits to produce salt, Science reports.
Salvaging biofuel from the West's pine beetle devastationmountain pine beetles have been ravaging western forests.
The company has found a way to produce biofuel from the dead wood that pine beetles have left in their wake.
CSU's Ken Reardon, professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering: If Cobalt can convert beetle-killed wood,
it likely that the company can make biofuel from almost any cellulosic feedstock. Sticking to the dead stuff that can pose fire hazards to western communities seems well enough for now.
A senior scientist at the Jet propulsion Lab, meanwhile--Sassan Saatchi--is relying on Lefsky's data to create forest biomass maps.
The lightweight imaging system, detailed in the Bioinspiration & Biometrics journal, features an artificial bee eye with a camera that aims to recreate an insect's processing and navigation skills.
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