Equally important is the ability of biodiversity to mitigate against the impact of the carbon we release.
Carbon is sequestered naturally in the environment, fixed in the wood of forests, the coral of reefs, the peat of bogs,
Studies have estimated that at least 80%of the world s population relies on compounds obtained mainly from plants as their primary source of health care.
one or more compounds originally found in a live organism. Species belonging to many different taxa are invaluable in biomedical research.
The program offers WGES Cleansteps Carbon Offsets to natural gas customers in Washington, Maryland and Virginia and helps clean up the bay through the Carbon Reduction Fund.
Initially, a major source of carbon offsets will be created those by J. B. Hunt through their shift from trucking to rail transportation.
We talked about carbon offsets, the challenges of transporting by rail and the benefits of getting trucks off the road.
Twenty years ago, people were not talking about carbon offsets. That s one of the interesting things about transportation.
Typically the carbon emissions are cut in half by doing that. But if the truck does more,
the carbon reduction is less. If the train does more, the reduction can be more.
What are the conversations you re having with customers about carbon footprints? More and more of them,
Burning 100 gallons of diesel fuel emits 1 metric ton of carbon emissions. This year we will ship over 1 million loads via intermodal service.
we save 1 metric ton of carbon emissions, so that will have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million metric tons,
and where the Cleansteps program found our carbon credits interesting. I like to think of it a cycle of goodness.
Carbon offsets is a difficult concept to explain. Think of it this way: Your car runs on gasoline.
but you can buy the J. B. Hunt carbon offsets and that allows us to keep building out our intermodal structure so we can keep reducing our greenhouse gases.
Up until now, some organizations have viewed collecting carbon management information as a once-a-year sort of thing.
it is an important step in the long-term strategy to find a solution to provide affordable access to safe water for All the Swach's filter uses a combination of paddy husk ash and silver particles to kill 80
The company hopes the plant will help reduce its carbon footprint and boost its use of renewable energy;
if Crane's stationary has reduced a carbon footprint? DC: Will it tip them over the edge
But EU restrictions on carbon emissions have made it expensive to incorporate these sorts of synthetic materials into bricks.
they bind fatty molecules together. Fragrances are made usually of fats, also called lipids. These ambergris molecules are lipophilic-meaning they like lipids.
So they can bind the lipids in the fragrance together and make sure they stick together and to skin.
Å Weve now discovered that a gene from balsam fir is much more efficient at producing such natural compounds,
researchers could manufacture a similar compound in the lab. Ambergris in a bowl Before you go check your perfume bottles,
so they're able to detect organic molecules. Using Ivan Pavlov's method of'classical conditioning,
Green chemistry is all about thinking about end of life considerations before you design the molecule and put it into the environment.
you would know if its not a good molecule. The goal in green chemistry is to reduce
six-carbon and five-carbon sugars found in nature. Smartplanet: Cobalt has seen investment from Vantagepoint, Pinnacle, LSP and Harris & Harris, among others.
Coca-cola notes that there is a big difference between water footprinting and carbon footprinting. Here's what it says in the report:
With carbon footprints, one can compare similar products (if the same boundaries and methodology are used) knowing that lower carbon
(or zero carbon) is better. On the other hand, water footprints help identify where water is used in the production of a production and
what type of water is used. Water is local and thus water footprint numbers must be considered in the context of the local watershed.
Butanol is drop in fuel molecule that can be used in existing vehicles and fuel distribution infrastructure,
but can we do them with wood as a way to reduce the carbon impact
that you could build a high-rise made of wood that would reduce its carbon footprint
which absorbs carbon while it grows. But not just any wood. You use laminated wood composites like glulam
would erase the carbon-reducing benefits. You d want to look and see if you are using within a 500-mile limit,
when companies claim carbon neutrality without lifting a finger to reduce actual consumption. The other work that it is important to mention
because every tech company contributes to the carbon footprint of the planet not just through its own business operations
and we can capture the carbon used in burning coal, that just leaves more coal ash.
they're usually decorated with plant-specific sugar molecules, which could prompt a dangerous immune reaction
In general, the evidence presented in this study shows that broadband-driven technologies can make a sizable contribution to reducing carbon emissions,
You have this polymer that s made from carcinogenic compounds like benzene and it will last up to 10,000 years.
In forests there s a lot of fungi that are breaking down the compounds. So the mycelium from mushrooms you use that as a glue to hold together these agricultural byproducts?
Walker Lunn founded Envirelation in an effort to help the hospitality industry reduce its carbon footprint
Shifts in carbon policies
EPA's stance on greenhouse gas draws legal fire from Chamber of Commercebeen stewing over this one for a few days,
One thing unique about Scotts fertilizer is that we re the only company that has combined all the nutrients in each particle.
RNA molecules that kill parasites by disrupting the way their genes are expressed, Technology Review explains.
who started his career as a molecular biologist before becoming the economics minister of the Republic of Georgia and finally a biotech entrepreneur.
if cutting carbon emissions is the goal, this biomass even if just the woody scraps on the forest floor is the wrong way to go.
Most people assume that wood bioenergy will be carbon-neutral, because the forest re-grows and there's also the chance of protecting forests from carbon emissions due to wildfire.
However, our research showed that the emissions from these activities proved to be more than the savings.
Oregon and California are considered carbon sinks. This means they hold more carbon than they naturally release into the atmosphere.
An OSU forestry professor tells the Seattle Post Intelligencer that in the long run, however, the biomass could still be better than burning fossil fuels.
and carbon-holding potential. Such forests would also be more likely to burn and thus, release their carbon on their own.
Just last month, the USDA granted a total of $80 million to University of Washington and Washington state University for next-gen biofuel research.
GMO trees for sequestering more carbon? Salvaging biofuel from West's pine beetle devastation Could biodiesel be worse for the environment than diesel?
Airlines say biofuels can shrink the industry s carbon footprint because they do not emit CO2 the way conventional hydrocarbon jet fuels ââ oetypically kerosene-do.
But Foe points out that jet biofuels can actually increase carbon emissions if planters of feedstocks like palm, jatropha and camelina eradicate forests and grasslands,
Paula Owen. Not only can people cut their carbon footprint, but they can also bring down their electricity bills considerably.
Arsenic and its compounds occur naturally in many places, but high levels accumulate in the environment through wood preservatives, fertilizers, coal burning, paints and other industrial uses.
 According to the Stern report, keeping forests intact is one of the most cost-effective ways to cut carbon emissions.
A world characterized by high oil prices, technological breakthroughs and a high implicit or actual carbon price.
And getting a good understating of my own carbon footprint. The state of Maine is more dependent on home heating fuel than any other state.
factoring in everything from carbon stored, to ozone, nitrogen, and particulates removed, health impact, effect on building heating/cooling costs,
have a carbon sequestration value of $386, 000, and a pollution removal value of 836,000.
Biochar is a carbon-negative soil amendment made from waste. It's produced through a process called pyrolysis.
when it's converted to charcoal we can sequester that carbon in the ground. We convert it into a form that will never decompose back into CO2.
I went to Princeton and I studied at the Carbon Mitigation Initiative. It's a think tank developing low-carbon energy technologies.
I also did soil science work with the Smithsonian in Panama. I was working on soil science issues with small farmers there.
because it doesn't generate carbon emissions. However, the conventional method of producing hydrogen gas relies on energy from fossil fuels to separate the atoms from other molecules like water.
Deli Wang, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San diego Jacobs School of engineering
And for that very reason they've long been regarded as mother nature's antidote for our carbon-emitting ways.
It's been estimated that the loss of forests contribute 15 to 20 percent of global carbon emissions,
and distribution of carbon stored in Earth's tropical forests. The accuracy of the map's information will allow nations to better manage greenhouse gases.
and Degradation program or REDD+can use the measurements to establish a monetary value for the carbon sequestered in forests.
and invest in low-carbon development projects. Prior estimates estimates were derived from a rudimentary process where researchers would manually measure the size of forest trees
They arrived at their carbon estimates by looking at information on the height of treetops from more than 3 million measurements.
the amount of carbon it contained. The data was rendered then into a visual representation that shows distribution of carbon stored in forests across more than 75 tropical countries.
This was achieved using NASA imagery from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, the Quikscat scatterometer satellite and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.
The most obvious fact you'll notice is that the majority of carbon is stored in the extensive forests of Latin america.
The region holds half of all the carbon found within the world's tropical forests. Brazil's carbon stock alone, at 61 billion tons,
almost equals all of the carbon stock in Sub-saharan africa, at 62 billion tons. The map reveals that in the early 2000s,
forests in the 75 tropical countries studied contained 247 billion tons of carbon, which is nearly 25 times the amount of carbon is released annually to the atmosphere from combined fossil fuel burning and land use changes.
These patterns of carbon storage which we really didn't know before, depend on climate, soil,
topography and the history of human or natural disturbance of the forests, said Sassan Saatchi of NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif. Areas often impacted by disturbance, human or natural, have lower carbon storage. For climate change scientists, the map also serves as a barometer of the health
and longevity of forests and how they contribute to the global carbon cycle and overall functioning of the Earth system.
The next step in Saatchi's research is to compare the carbon map with satellite observations of deforestation to identify source locations of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere.
Behind the wheel, drivers will also discover a carbon-fiber interior, paddle-shifting technology and a four-seat configuration.
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).
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.
Molecular Farming: HIV drug made in GM tobacco enters clinical trialstoday in London, UK regulators announced the approval of Europe's first clinical trial of an anti-HIV product produced in genetically modified tobacco plants.
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,
and chemical companies starting to sell old chemical compounds that posed more environmental risks than Roundup
and it's a lot more common than you and your honeycombed carbon lattices: bamboo. Bamboo is being hailed as a new super material,
The fast growing rugged grass has unrivaled capacity to capture carbon the article claims. The bamboo industry hails the crop's other environmental benefits.
Carbon fiber an environmental culprit And more bamboo bits: Toymaker turns to bamboo for material and inspiration In Mexico city,'bamboocycles'make two-wheeled transport trendy California company offers sustainable packaging for meat,
For each sector of the economy, they analyzed the effects of a wide range of chemicals--such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, organic carbon black carbon, nitrate, sulfate and ozone--on the atmosphere, particularly clouds.
The plasmids are tiny DNA molecules, separate from chromosomal DNA, and were transferred at a rate four times higher than usual thanks to the technique.
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),
the company is striving for carbon neutrality this year. By the end of 2010, about 39 percent of the power that the company uses will come from renewable energy sources;
Unlike diamond and many other extremely hard materials, boron nitride is based on a latticework of boron and nitrogen atoms not carbon.
A nanotwin is a crystalline segment that mirrors the orientation of atoms on the other side of an interface (a so-called twin boundary) within a material.
and boron atoms to create an onion-like material. Then, when compressed and subjected to intense heat and pressure (1,
I mean you expect it more with physics or particles and atoms. Not with humans and social networks.
 Some use radiocarbon, thermoluminescence and other techniques to accurately date the antiques. Others concentrate on identifying signs of artificial aging.
with the intent to reduce water use and carbon emissions and boost yield. I-Crop has the potential to revolutionize the way we farm,
enabling our farmers to save costs and water and carbon consumption, while at the same time improving their yields,
promising to reduce carbon emissions and water usage by 50 percent across the farming of its core crops in the next five years with the use of low-carbon fertilizers and new varieties of produce
and measuring various carbon and gas emissions. Those sensors have typically been used for finding gas leaks
and food products companies to apply the sensors to measuring the isotopes in foods. The intention:
Iain Green, vice president of business development for Picarro, said every food gives off a unique isotope signature.
 Terrewalks use what is considered a low carbon footprint manufacturing method. SP: What's the cost differential between Rubbersidewalks products and conventional concrete walkways?
There's an increasing realization of carbon emissions having a negative effect on the environment through climate change.
coal currently contributes 40 percent to carbon emissions globally. There are six billions tons of coal consumed each year.
You could essentially lower global carbon emissions by 10 to 15 percent by taking advantage of agricultural waste and invasive plant and converting them into a coal replacement.
It would make a positive impact on global carbon emissions. That's one example. There are many others like that.
And we have created some new compounds that will be in the geologic record for a long time to come, the most ubiquitous
We are putting carbon that was locked away during the Cretaceous period 300 million years ago, back into the atmosphere as CO2.
Where we mimic the cooling effect of a massive volcanic eruption by putting a lot of sulfur dioxide particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight.
The problem is that the instant those particles go away you get a redoubled warming and it has all kinds of unintended consequences.
In fact we are currently enduring a shortage of medical isotopes, which we could rectify if we had more nuclear reactors from
but we want them to understand their carbon footprint. I â â¢m going to perform on the stock exchange floor.
So, for example, you can see what the company's philosophy is related to carbon offsets (it prefers to generate renewable energy wherever it can)
Knowing how tall the forests are will help scientists figure out how much carbon the trees can capture
In a separate mapping project reported by the San jose mercury news (the tie-ins are carbon and lidar),
Geraldine Thomas, Professor of Molecular Pathology at the Imperial College in London, and the scientific director of the Chernobyl Tissue bank, was asked to assess likely health effects from Fukushima after her extensive work on thyroid cancer cases in Russia.
identifying if a single molecule of explosive is present. MIT researchers created a carbon nanotube with a bee venom-based sensor,
designed to detect traces of explosives. If commercialized, it could one day improve the security at airports
when the bee venom peptides target molecules found in explosives. Since the proteins reacted differently,
depending on the types of molecules found in explosives, the scientists identified a finger print that is unique for each of the explosive chemicals they exposed it to,
â Å Compounds such as TNT decompose in the environment, creating other molecule types, and those derivatives could also be identified with this type of sensor.
Because molecules in the environment are constantly changing into other chemicals, we need sensor platforms that can detect the entire network and classes of chemicals, instead of just one type.
If the sensors make their way out of the lab and into the real world, they would be more sensitive than the spectrometry-based systems that are used currently to detect explosives in the air.
In the future, let's hope a single-molecule sensor can stop someone like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab A k a. the underwear bomber from slipping through security.
or better than many typical filtering materials, like silica or carbon. What's more, the peels are a cheap waste material.
and the cost of synthesising the molecule has fallen also. Rob Carlson, the founder of a firm called Biodesic, started tracking the price of synthesis a decade ago.
The falling cost of DNA synthesis suggests that there will be automated oeprinters for the molecule before long.
Unfortunately, none of the single compound nutraceuticals tested appeared to significantly extend fly lifespan in our longevity screens.
The typically poor longevity effects of single compounds argue against the use of drug-like therapeutics directed to a single target for longevity treatments.
Astragalus compounds have also been shown to stimulate stem cells, promote peripheral nerve regeneration in rats,
Published studies have shown also that pterostilbene is a potent anticancer compound. For example, pterostilbene, an analog of resveratrol
I wanted an herbal compound that provided neural protection in the brain. L-theanine (also known as gamma-glutamylethylamide,
The development could enable the compound to be produced on a commercial scale at low cost, with no harmful by-products.
which can be manipulated to produce large amounts of the active compound would effectively create an abundant supply of the drug.
In quantum mechanics, a particle, such as an electron circling the nucleus of an atom, does not have an actual location or physical state.
All that can be said of it is a set of equations that describe its probability of being given in a place with a given energy
Two particles whose vibrations are the same in all dimensions are said to occupy the same quantum state.
Ashton Bradley and his colleagues at the Australian Research Council quantum-optics lab have shown that it possible to teleport an atom.
To demonstrate, Australian researchers made a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms. A BEC is a substance that occurs
it can instantly freeze certain particles it comes in contact with. The researchers then aimed a beam of rubidium atoms at the condensate.
Instantly chilled, the atoms in the beam also dropped to their lowest state, getting rid of the extra energy by giving off a burst of light.
Astonishingly, that light contains all the quantum information needed to reconstitute the atom. Aim it at another BEC,
and whatever atom it strikes takes on the quantum state of the original atom. In effect, an atom at the transmitting end has disappeared
and been reconstituted at the receiving end. There is still an atom at each end but the quantum oeidentity has moved from one to the other.
It is a long way from teleporting a few individual atoms to sending people from the Enterprise to a planet surface.
But, while it may take decades to transmit something as complicated as a virus or a single molecule of DNA,
it should be possible eventually theoretically to send a human being from one place to another through a matter transmitter.
The Issue: Energy The Future: World energy demand will increase dramatically. Experts predict that energy demand will rise by 60%between 2002 and 2030
but experts say it likely would not be a simple compound of chemicals. A pill-sized food replacement system would have to be extremely complex because of the sheer difficulty of the task it was being asked to perform
and senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, has described several potential food replacement technologies that are somewhat pill-like.
however, is that instead of containing drug compounds, the capsules would contain thousands of microscopic robots called nanorobots.
Freitas points out that the isotope gadolinium-148 could provide much of the fuel the body needs.
The simple activated carbon filtration system aims to tackle the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the proportion of the world people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
and reduce their carbon footprint, but Brightfarms has another idea: hydroponic greenhouses. Often, the high cost of organic produce is fueled by cross-continent shipping and distribution.
foam, or something else in a soft membrane held together by food particles that are being connected by electrostatic charges to each other and to a small amount of natural polymer."
Since 2009, Disney has invested also more than $27 million in forest carbon projects in the United states, Peru, Brazil, Democratic Republic of congo,
or any other starting point other than what is required to achieve carbon neutrality. Cities should provide incentives to developers who meet these performance goals.
and other beneficial compounds, say the researchers. In the study, children in their early teens who ate three
or palm-oil production releases large quantities of stored carbon into the atmosphere. Grazing ruminant animals, like cattle and sheep, also contribute significantly to climate change.
low-carbon energy revolution, the main beneficiary seems to be favoured the fuel of preindustrial societies.
But if subsidising biomass energy were an efficient way to cut carbon emissions, perhaps this collateral damage might be written off as an unfortunate consequence of a policy that was beneficial overall.
Wood produces carbon twice over: once in the power station, once in the supply chain. The process of making pellets out of wood involves grinding it up,
and produces carbon: 200kg of CO2 for the amount of wood needed to provide 1mwh of electricity.
This decreases the amount of carbon saved by switching to wood, thus increasing the price of the savings.
And that assumes the rest of the process (in the power station) is carbon neutral. It probably isn t.()As another bit of the EU,
the assumption oethat biomass combustion would be inherently carbon neutral is not correct as it ignores the fact that using land to produce plants for energy typically means that this land is not producing plants for other purposes,
including carbon otherwise sequestered. Tim Searchinger of Princeton university calculates that if whole trees are used to produce energy,
they increase carbon emissions compared with coal (the dirtiest fuel) by 79%over 20 years and 49%over 40 years;
there is no carbon reduction until 100 years have passed, when the replacement trees have grown up. But as Tom Brookes of the European Climate Foundation points out, oewe re trying to cut carbon now;
not in 100 years time. In short, the EU has created a subsidy which costs a packet,
probably does not reduce carbon emissions, does not encourage new energy technologies and is set to grow like a leylandii hedge
industrial compounds, high-value compounds, plastics, chemical synthesis, etc. â human health: medical drugs and devices, over-the-counter medicine, clinical therapies, etc.
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