#Carbon capture breakthrough: Recyclable material absorbs 82 percent of its weight in carbon dioxiderice University scientists have created an Earth-friendly way to separate carbon dioxide from natural gas at wellheads.
A porous material invented by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour sequesters carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas at ambient temperature with pressure provided by the wellhead
and lets it go once the pressure is released. The material shows promise to replace more costly and energy-intensive processes.
Results from the research appear today in the journal Nature Communications. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel.
Development of cost-effective means to separate carbon dioxide during the production process will improve this advantage over other fossil fuels
The Rice material a nanoporous solid of carbon with nitrogen or sulfur is inexpensive and simple to produce compared with the liquid amine-based scrubbers used now Tour said.
Rice graduate student Chih-Chau Hwang lead author of the paper first tried to combine amines with porous carbon.
Apache Corp. a Houston-based oil and gas exploration and production company funded the research at Rice
The paper's co-authors are undergraduate Josiah Tour research scientist Carter Kittrell and senior research scientist Lawrence Alemany all of Rice and Laura Espinal an associate at NIST.
The interdisciplinary team looked at a range of possible approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming.
Working under the auspices of the National Science Foundation the team spent two years evaluating more than 100 studies that addressed the various implications of climate engineering and their anticipated effects on greenhouse gases.
and promoting growth of new forests could tie up as much as 1. 3 gigatons of carbon in plant material annually the team calculated.
Since the dawn of agriculture tilling land has led to the loss of about half (55 to 78 gigatons) of the carbon ever sequestered in soil the team reports.
But such simple steps as leaving slash--the plant waste left over after crop production--on fields after harvests so it could be incorporated into the soil could reintroduce between 0. 4 and 1. 1 gigatons of carbon annually to soil the study says.
but scientists are only now starting to appreciate its potential for tying up greenhouse gases Cusack said.
and potentially as effective as improving forestry practices the approach and its potential impacts are understood not well enough for widespread use the team concluded.
#Environmental strategies on livestock farms: Results obtained after evaluationthe Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and development (Neiker-Tecnalia) has coordinated the European BATFARM project
and practices used on livestock farms in the European Atlantic region in order to reduce their environmental impact on the air water and soil.
In this project a detailed study has been made of the technologies present on livestock farms belonging to various regions in the Atlantic Area.
Together with Neiker-Tecnalia the public body that reports to the Sub-Ministry for Agriculture Fisheries and Food Policy of the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community the following are part of this project:
Teagasc-The Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Ireland) IRSTEA (France) INTIA (Navarre) the University of Glasgow Caledonian (Scotland) and the Higher Institute for Agronomy (Portugal.
Among the technologies evaluated in situ are floor type in cattle housing use of additives in slurry storage manure turning flexible lagoons for collective slurry storage biowashers for gases at the outlet of air ducts of the sheds
In this part of the continent a considerable proportion of livestock production takes place in line with the intensive model as in the case of pig poultry and a large proportion of cattle livestock.
So the problems in managing livestock waste are shared by all the regions involved in the project.
The outcomes of the project have been made available to the various interest groups companies livestock management bodies policy-making bodies research centres end users and the general public.
Directive on the adopting of Best Available Techniquesin connection with the environmental problems involved in livestock production the EU 2010/75/EC Directive also known as the IED (Industrial Emissions Directive) seeks to regulate all forms of emission into the atmosphere water
and soil coming from intensive livestock farms (farms with a population of over 40000 hens 2000 fattening pigs
or 750 sows) and makes the obtaining of comprehensive environmental authorisation compulsory. The Directive proposes adopting Best Available Techniques (BAT)
#New technology for greenhouses developedagricultural and fruit producers could acquire high-tech greenhouses at a considerably less cost thanks to experts from the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ) in the North of Mexico developing computer systems to control
nchez researcher in the Department of Electrical engineering some factors that may increase the cost of acquiring the import greenhouses are the level of sophistication of its technologies for automation its size
i e. only 10 percent of the maximum purchase price of an imported greenhouse. Solã s Sá
and radiation as well as elements that enable wireless connectivity between the greenhouse and mobile devices like cell phones.
The progressive implementation of this greenhouses for different areas of the country entail multiple benefits for domestic producers.
Automatic control of microclimates has the potential to mitigate the total cost of water for agriculture which in Mexico amounts to almost 70 percent of the vital liquid.
It also allows users to obtain crops equivalent to an area of â#0 hectares in just 500 square meters says the researcher.
A second phase for this technologies is the development of neural networks to give some artificial intelligence to the greenhouses.
Research suggests cooling action will clean airever-rising greenhouse gas emissions and the potential need to deploy untested and expensive climate engineering technologies are just two of the many bits of bad news in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's new report on Mitigation
One of the main causes of greenhouse gas emissions is coal power Hertwich says. Coal-fired power plants produce a lot of pollution so any measures that will reduce our combustion of coal will also help us to fight air pollution.
what humankind is doing to the climate by burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
nevertheless quick to point out that the past decade has seen an unprecedented rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere as a result of a global rise in emissions.
If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates we risk overshooting the carbon budget with dire consequences.
If humankind does not control the growth in greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade it increases the likelihood that we will need negative-emissions technologies such as bioenergy with CO2 capture
#Advantages, potential of computer-guided spinal surgeryin a series of research studies Cedars-Sinai spinal surgeons show that a new method of computer-guided spine surgery is beneficial for spinal reconstruction
The Cedars-Sinai surgeons highlight the advantages of a spinal navigation technique that uses high-speed computerized tomography (CT) imaging to navigate in and around the spinal column from different angles.
The Cedars-Sinai surgeons say they have cut these to nearly zero by using computer-guided methods.
This approach represents a major leap forward for instrumented spine surgery said Terrence T. Kim MD an orthopedic spine surgeon in the Cedars-Sinai Spine Center and expert in the computer-guided navigation field.
Johnson and Kim as study co-authors are Doniel Drazin MD a senior resident in the Department of Neurosurgery and Robert S. Pashman MD a clinical associate professor and orthopedic spine surgeon at the Cedars
One of the Cedars-Sinai studies showed that the mobile CT-scanner and computer-aided system used during minimally invasive surgery increased the accuracy of screw placement into vertebral pedicle bones.
The above story is provided based on materials by Cedars-Sinai Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
environment on plant traitslet's say plant scientists want to develop new lines of corn that will better tolerate long stretches of hot dry weather.
Greenhouse tests can provide some more. But how can plant scientists get a true picture of a plant's growth and traits under a wide variety of controlled environmental conditions?
His idea is a greenhouse on a chip--an instrument that incorporates miniature greenhouses microfluidic technologies that precisely control growing conditions
The project started nearly two years ago with a $119500 seed grant from Iowa State's Plant sciences Institute
Dong and his team will build miniature greenhouses that precisely control light intensity humidity temperature carbon dioxide chemicals and even pathogens.
Plant scientists will fill the miniature greenhouses with clear vertical and disposable chips containing seeds that will grow into seedlings.
Hundreds of the chips-in-mini-greenhouses can grow thousands of plants at the same time each greenhouse providing different environmental conditions.
He said he's already using some components of the instrument to work with Iowa State agronomists Thomas Lubberstedt who's studying germination of pollen at different temperatures
and Madan Bhattacharyya who's studying how fungal pathogens interact with soybean seeds at different moisture levels.
The study from Rice university and Duke university found that making a few changes to homework assignments in an upper-level undergraduate engineering course at Rice led to improved scores on exams.
The findings by a team from Rice's Center for Digital Learning and Scholarship and Duke's Department of psychology and Neuroscience demonstrate how technology
The results exceeded everyone's expectations said Rice co-author Richard Baraniuk the instructor of the upper-level signals
whether an intervention had a significant effect said Baraniuk the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of Rice's RDLS.
Rice research engineer J. P. Slavinsky was a co-author. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Rice university.
and create biochar a highly porous charcoal said project principal investigator Karl Linden professor of environmental engineering.
The biochar has a one-two punch in that it can be used to both increase crop yields
and sequester carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas. The project is part of the Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge an effort to develop a next-generation toilet that can be used to disinfect liquid and solid waste
while generating useful end products both in developing and developed nations said Linden. Since the 2012 grant Linden and his CU-Boulder team have received an additional $1 million from the Gates Foundation for the project
which includes a team of more than a dozen faculty research professionals and students many working full time on the effort.
Linden's team is one of 16 around the world funded by the Gates Reinvent the Toilet Challenge since 2011.
fibers said Linden. The energy generated by the sun and transferred to the fiber-optic cable system--similar in some ways to a data transmission line--can heat up the reaction chamber to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit to treat the waste material disinfect pathogens in both feces and urine and produce char.
Biochar is a valuable material said Linden. It has good water holding capacity and it can be used in agricultural areas to hold in nutrients
Linden is working closely with project co-investigators Professor R. Scott Summers of environmental engineering and Professor Alan Weimer chemical and biological engineering and a team of postdoctoral fellows professionals
We are doing something that has never been done before said Linden. While the idea of concentrating solar energy is not new transmitting it flexibly to a customizable location via fiber-optic cables is the really unique aspect of this project.
and moving parts and electrical engineers to design control systems Linden said. Tests have shown that each of the eight fiber-optic cables can produce between 80 and 90 watts of energy meaning the whole system can deliver up to 700 watts of energy into the reaction chamber said Linden.
In late December tests at CU-Boulder showed the solar energy directed into the reaction chamber could easily boil water
The great thing about the Gates Foundation is that they provide all of the teams with the resources they need Linden said.
Linden who called the 16 teams a family of researchers said the foundation has funded trips for CU-Boulder team members to collaborate with the other institutions in places like Switzerland South africa and North carolina.
and energy on our team and the Gates Foundation values that Linden said. It is one thing to do research another to screw on nuts and bolts
Two articles published March 11 in The Plant Cell offer a step-by-step approach for studying plant traits drawing on comprehensive quantitative research on lignin formation in black cottonwood.
and water transport that enables some trees to grow 100 meters tall. However lignin must be removed for biofuel pulp
I describe these findings as Mapquest for plant scientists says Vincent Chiang co-director of NC State's Forest Biotechnology Group the lead team for the project which involved scientists in the College of Natural resources College of Engineering
For example the systems biology approach could be applied in research to develop sweeter citrus fruit disease-resistant rice or drought-resistant trees.
and composition of lignin as well as why it's often difficult to modify lignin in plants says Ronald Sederoff co-director of Forest Biotechnology Group.
The ORNL technology offers a new pathway to biomass-derived renewable fuels that can lower greenhouse gas emissions and decrease U s. reliance on foreign sources of oil.
Vertimass anticipates that the ORNL technology will be in demand by existing corn-based ethanol production plants as well as new refineries coming online that aim to convert non-food crops such as switchgrass
poplar wood and corn stover into biofuels. The technology could also supply a source of renewable jet fuel required by recent European union aviation emission regulations.
and widely license breakthrough technologies that substantially expand the use of sustainable transportation fuels that reduce greenhouse gas emissions
when it comes to producing bioethanol from plant parts like corn or sugar canes. Corn cubs and sugar canes are in fact plant parts that can also be used directly as food so there is a great public resistance to accept producing this kind of bioethanol.
A big challenge is therefore to become able to produce bioethanol from plant parts which cannot be used for food.
Cellulose is found everywhere in nature in rich quantities for example in the stems of the corn plant.
If we can produce bioethanol from the corn stems and keep the corn cubs for food we have come a long way says Per Morgen professor at the Institute of Physics Chemistry and Pharmacy University of Southern Denmark.
Cellulose is organized in long chains in the plant's cell walls and they are hard to break down.
and it is made on the basis of rice husks. My Iraqi colleagues have made the acid from treated rice husk.
The worldwide production of rice generates enormous amounts of rice husk and ashes from burning the husk so this material is cheap and easy to get hold of he says.
It's all about the acidthe ashes from burnt rice husks have a high content of silicate
and this is the important compound in the production of the new acid. The scientists paired silicate particles with chlorosulfonic acid and this made the acid molecules attach themselves to the silicate compounds.
The result was an entirely new molecule--the acid RHSO3H --which can replace the enzymes in the work of breaking down cellulose to sugar explains Per Morgen.
Making the new acid3 grams of ash from burned rice husk were mixed with 100 ml of caustic soda (Naoh) in a plastic container.
so that the ash content of the silicate was converted to sodium silicate. To the solution was added nitric acid to control its concentration
The research offers new perspective on evolutionary biology microbiology and the production of natural gas and may shed light on climate change agriculture and human health.
College of Agriculture and Life sciences and the senior author of the study. He is also a faculty member at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute.
Methane is the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas. This innovative work demonstrates the importance of a new global regulatory system in methanogens said William Whitman a professor of microbiology at the University of Georgia who is familiar with the study
Methanogens also play an important role in agriculture and human health They live in the digestive systems of cattle
and sheep where they facilitate the digestion of feed consumed in the diet. Efforts to control methanogens in specific ways may improve feed utilization
and enhance the production of meat and milk researchers say. Methanogens are additionally a factor in human nutrition.
The organisms live in the large intestine where they enhance the breakdown of food. Some have proposed that restricting this activity of methanogens could help alleviate obesity.
and approaches that lead to improved outcomes are said unavailable Dr. Elizabeth Molyneux a pediatrician at QECH who co-authored the report with colleagues from Rice QECH Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Malawi.
and thanks to the partnership of QECH Rice and the Malawi Ministry of Health we are already implementing bubble CPAP nationwide.
In 2010 a team of Rice bioengineering students invented a low-cost bubble CPAP device. The technology which costs about 15 times less than conventional CPAP machines was created as part the Rice 360â°:
°Institute for Global Health Technologies'award-winning hands-on engineering education program Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB.
when CPAP was introduced first here said Rice's Rebecca Richards-Kortum the Stanley C. Moore Professor and chair of the Department of Bioengineering and director of both BTB and Rice 360â°.
Based on the dramatic results from the study QECH Rice 360â°and the Malawi Ministry of Health have partnered to provide bubble CPAP at all 27 of the country's government hospitals.
Richards-Kortum and Maria Oden director of Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) founded the hands-on BTB engineering education program in 2006.
BTB sends about a dozen Rice students overseas each summer to work with partners and test design prototypes--like bubble CPAP in 2010--that Rice students have created throughout the school year at the OEDK QECH has hosted BTB students each summer
since 2006 and Richards-Kortum and Oden raised $375000 in donations this year for the Day One Project an ambitious effort to expand QECH's neonatal facilities
Through the Day One Project Rice 360â°and QECH hope to create a collection of low-cost neonatal technologies that an African district hospital serving 250000 people can implement for about $5000.
#The better to bite fruit with: Natural selection shapes mechanical advantage in batsmechanical advantage--the efficiency in transmitting force--can be decisive
whether it be automated through an harvester in agriculture a six-foot-six swimmer or a bat with a short face that gives it the bite force to penetrate hard figs.
It's bat evolution that interests Stony Brook University Assistant professor Liliana M. Dávalos who joined forces with Dr. Elizabeth Dumont and a mechanical engineer Dr. Ian Grosse (both of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in a recently published paper in Evolution that lays out the team's findings relating mechanical advantage
Glossophaga soricina a nectar bat feeding on the flowers of a banana plant. Nectar feeding bats comprised one of three evolutionary optima for mechanical advantage among New world Leaf-nosed bats.
These bats of which there are almost 200 species eat a variety of foods including insects frogs lizards fruit nectar and even blood.
and eat hard fruits; snouts of species that eat other foods are intermediate in shape.
valos and her Stony Brook University students generated the evolutionary hypotheses evolutionary trees and tests of selection reported in the study;
and the specialized fig-eating Short-faced bat Centurio senex (C). They then analyzed the models to determine structural strength and mechanical advantage--the efficiency and hardness of the bats'bite.
Finally they studied the engineering results across hundreds of evolutionary trees of the bats to uncover the three optimal snout shapes favored by natural selection.
which gives them the high bite forces needed to pierce through the hardest figs. Nectar feeders have very low mechanical advantage--a trade-off for having long narrow snouts that fit into the flowers in
fig-eating frugivores: E) Artibeus jamaicensis F) Chiroderma villosum; and short-faced bats: G) Phyllops falcatus H) Centurio senex.
By coupling a flexible engineering model with analyses based upon evolutionary trees the study opens the possibility of discovering evidence for selection in other very diverse organisms
It also highlights the growing role of evolutionary trees in testing longstanding hypotheses on adaptation that could not be tested even ten years ago and certainly not without the engineering model.
much as a pine cone opens as it dries or a freshly fallen leaf curls and then straightens
A soil bacterium called Bacillus subtilis wrinkles as it dries out like a grape becoming a raisin forming a tough dormant spore.
Unlike raisins which cannot reform into grapes spores can take on water and almost immediately restore themselves to their original shape.
Insects frogs lizards fruit nectar and even blood. The bats'skulls of today reflect this dietary diversity.
while short-faced bats have exceptionally short wide palates for eating hard fruits. Species that eat other foods have shaped snouts somewhere in between.
We studied the engineering results using the evolutionary tree which is a very cool new thing about this work.
Analyzing the engineering results over hundreds of evolutionary trees of New world leaf-nosed bats revealed three optimal snout shapes favored by natural selection they report.
which gives them the high bite forces needed to pierce through the hardest figs. Nectar feeders have very low mechanical advantage
Beta-agonists, the environment and cattle fatiguein agricultural production maintaining a level of excellence that includes environmental sustainability animal welfare
and rightfully so might hold beef to an even higher standard of excellence said Dan Thomson Kansas State university veterinarian professor and director of the Beef cattle Institute.
The use of beta-agonists in cattle feeding is among the modern feedlot technologies making waves in the beef industry.
K-State researchers including Thomson are among the many researchers who are examining how beta-agonists affect cattle performance
and how the feed supplement might cause cattle particularly in the summer months to be slow-moving and stiff-muscled once they arrive at packing facilities.
Are we using low-stress cattle handling techniques? How far away from the load out facility are the fat cattle being moved?
Are we shipping them during the afternoon in the heat of the day or are we shipping them at 2 a m.?
History of beta-agonist usefeedlots have used beta-agonists a cattle feed supplement approved by the U s. Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) and considered safe from a food safety perspective to improve the cattle's natural ability to convert feed into more lean muscle.
Zilmax formally known as zilpaterol hydrocholoride is one of only two beta-agonists approved for cattle feeding on the market.
However Merck Animal health manufacturer of Zilmax voluntarily suspended sales of the product last September when major U s. meat packer Tyson announced it would stop buying cattle fed Zilmax due to an animal welfare concern
which questioned if the product affected the ambulatory ability or movement of cattle. Thomson said that
because the slow-moving cattle reports were more consistent during the summer months he has questioned how heat stress
what he calls cattle fatigue syndrome. This isn't a new phenomenon Thomson said. We've seen this in other species. The swine industry 15 to 20 years ago discovered pig fatigue syndrome.
It occurred about the time they started feeding beta-agonists at a very high level to pigs.
Market hogs would arrive at the plant and they were stiff open-mouth breathing had blotchy skin muscle tremors
and were going through stress. Thomson said many in the swine industry started calling these pigs NANI pigs meaning non-ambulatory non-injured.
So these pigs show up (at the packing facility) and they don't have any clinical signs of injury besides that they don't move Thomson said.
Researchers) did diagnostic tests to look at the difference between non-ambulatory pigs and pigs within the same truckload that were able to move.
They found elevated serum lactate and creatine phosphokinase (CPK) levels which are both indicative of depletion of muscle glucose
or muscle damage in these big heavily muscled animals. Regardless of beta-agonist use in feeding pigs Thomson said the swine industry went from having about a 250-lb. average out weight to a 300-lb. average out weight on market hogs.
So the hogs had more weight to carry around at the packing facility. To see if beta-agonists played a role in the movement concerns researchers did a series of tests on market hogs that were fed not beta-agonists They put some through a stressful situation prior to shipping them to slaughter
while the others did not experience any stress. They were able to recreate the same syndrome that we're now seeing in some cattle Thomson said.
Generally physical stress whether they were on a beta-agonist or not showed clinical signs of fatigue in these market hogs.
Still the swine industry has since cut the dose of beta-agonists in feeding by about 75 percent Thomson said.
A closer look at cattle fatigue syndromethe beef industry has a really good start on understanding
what cattle fatigue syndrome is said Thomson but the reason more research must be done is that like the NANI pigs the syndrome has shown up in cattle that were fed a beta-agonist
and cattle that were fed not a beta-agonist. In our research when we've looked at cattle that are stressed not
and they're on one of the beta-agonists on the market we've not seen anything
but an increase in heart rate by about 10 beats per minute and no difference in lactate or CPK levels Thomson said.
However we have to understand that when we have seen the issues with this fatigue cattle syndrome at packing facilities it's during the summer months
when we have heat stress. Moving forward Thomson said the industry needs to better-understand the clinical and physiological responses of beta-agonists in cattle
if dosages in cattle feeding rations might need to be altered and if there is a potential genetic component to it as well.
Advice for feedlot operatorsthomson said that he is very pro-technology. While Merck recently announced that it is too early to determine
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