Can impoverished African community gardeners learn to use and maintain a simple centuries-old nonelectric water pump to grow more vegetables?
Two Johns Hopkins student teams are working hard to move these green ideas off the drawing board and into the real world.
The other Johns Hopkins team aims to improve the irrigation of vegetable gardens that provide nutrition and income for families in remote rural communities in South africa.
and provides much needed irrigation water for the cultivation of winter vegetables. In an additional effort aimed at sustaining the benefits from the EWB-USA effort a team of undergraduate
The goal is to enable the community gardeners to maintain and repair their pumps. The focus is on a particularly inexpensive appropriate and robust type of ram pump designed by a South african named David Alcock.
and other help to the community in running these irrigation systems. It's important because the water allows the farmers to grow more vegetables during dry seasons for their own use and for sale to others.
If this team is awarded one of the EPA's follow-up grants the funds will be used to help open
and community gardeners in other regions to run their own ram pump irrigations systems without relying on outside assistance.
Potential food source derived from non-food plantsa team of Virginia Tech researchers has succeeded in transforming cellulose into starch a process that has the potential to provide a previously untapped nutrient source from plants not traditionally though of as food crops.
Y. H. Percival Zhang an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture
This new development opens the door to the potential that food could be created from any plant reducing the need for crops to be grown on valuable land that requires fertilizers pesticides and large amounts of water.
The new approach takes cellulose from non-food plant material such as corn stover converts about 30%to amylose
Corn stover consists of the stem leaves and husk of the corn plant remaining after ears of corn are harvested.
However the process works with cellulose from any plant. This bioprocess called simultaneous enzymatic biotransformation
Additional resources were contributed by the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life sciences'Biodesign and Bioprocessing Research center the Shell Gamechanger Program and the U s. Department of energy Bioenergy Science Center along with the Division of Chemical sciences
#GUMBOS technology promises new drugs, electronic devicesmention a breakthrough involving gumbo technology in New orleans and people think of a new twist on The Local Dish the stew that's the quintessence of southern Louisiana cooking.
what may be an advance in developing GUMBOS-based materials with far-reaching medical electronic and other uses.
what the scientists call a Group of Uniform Materials Based on Organic Salts (GUMBOS) and the nanogumbos materials--particles so small that 100000 could fit across the width of a human hair.
We believe that these GUMBOS represent a truly different approach to micro -and nanotechnology said Professor Isiah Warner Ph d. of Louisiana State university (LSU) Baton rouge who led the scientific team that developed the first GUMBOS five years ago.
Unlike some products of the revolution in nanomaterials and nanotechnology nanogumbos can be designed for specific uses rather than simply adapted for a particular use after being synthesized in the lab. Warner pointed out for instance that scientists are working on various types of nanoparticles for use in nanomedicine especially to diagnose
With GUMBOS technology nanoparticles can have desired the property incorporated directly into the nanomaterial he explained.
However when we convert them to our GUMBOS it only kills cancer cells. That's basically how it works.
The organic salts used to make GUMBOS are not the familiar organic sea salt products sold for cooking and other uses.
In recognition of his work on GUMBOS and on the development of many innovative methods over the course of his career Warner will receive the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry sponsored by the Battelle Memorial Institute on April 9.
He also will present an award address a tutorial on the making and potential uses of GUMBOS.
but foster Gulf of mexico Dead Zonenew ORLEANS April 9 2013#The most serious ongoing water pollution problem in the Gulf of mexico originates not from oil rigs as many people believe but rainstorms and fields of corn and soybeans a thousand
An expert on that problem#the infamous Gulf of mexico#oedead Zone##today called for greater awareness of the connections between rainfall and agriculture in the Midwest and the increasingly severe water quality problems in the gulf.
Just as fertilizer makes corn and soybeans grow it stimulates the growth of plants in the water#algae in the Gulf.
The algae bloom and eventually die and decay removing oxygen from the water. The result is water too oxygen-depleted to support life.#
#oeshortages in availability of water suitable for drinking agriculture and industry are the common denominator in some of the great global challenges facing society in the 21st century#Shakhashiri said.#
Genetically modifying crops so that they produce some of their own fertilizer could also help with the problem.
which is stressed increasingly by multiple demands for water supply agriculture industry recreation and ecosystem needs. Changes in water supply and demands for water are driven by population growth climate
alvarez@rice. eduthe extraordinary properties of some nanomaterials offer leapfrogging opportunities to develop next-generation applications for drinking water disinfection
technique called PALM--for Photo-Activated Localization Microscopy--the researchers have found a way to improve the collective catalytic activity of enzyme cocktails that can boost the yields of sugars for making fuels.
Synthesized from the sugars in the cellulosic biomass of grasses other non-food crops and agricultural waste advanced biofuels represent a sustainable nonpolluting source of transportation fuel that would also generate domestic jobs and revenue.
A recent report from the National Research Council stressed the need for advanced biofuels if the United states is to significantly reduce its use of fossil fuels in the coming decades.
Unlike the simple starch-based glucose sugars in corn and other grains the sugars in cellulosic biomass are complex polysaccharides that must be extricated from a tough polymer called lignin
We're the first to use PALM to study the interplay of enzyme activity and substrate heterogeneity says Liphardt an expert in PALM technology.
This enables us to quantify how and where enzymes are binding to the cellulose. Working with cotton--a well-defined cellulosic material--as their model system the researchers applied PALM imaging in combination with a mathematical analysis they devised.
Their results showed that cellulases exhibit specificities for cellulose structures that have many different levels of organization ranging from the highly ordered to the highly disordered.
The new PALM-based technique should allow enzyme cock tails to be matched optimally to the structural organizations of particular biomass substrates such as grass
#Environmental policies matter for growing megacitiesa new study shows clean-air regulations have reduced dramatically acid rain in the United states Europe Japan
and 1990 amendments addressed issues including acid rain. Similar steps in the European union Japan and South korea over the past three decades have reduced nitrate
and sulfate in rain--components contributing to acid rain said Suresh Rao Lee A. Reith Distinguished Professor of Civil engineering and Agronomy at Purdue University.
The effects of acid rain can propagate through aquatic ecosystems such as lakes rivers and wetlands and terrestrial ecosystems including forests
and soils negatively impacting ecological health. Researchers have used now publicly accessible data collected weekly or monthly at numerous monitoring sites during the period from 1980-2010 to track wet deposition of nitrate and sulfate near several U s. and East Asian cities.
Fast-growing cities in East asia that lack regulations or enforcement show a dramatic rise in acid rain according to the new study completed by Purdue researchers Our analysis of wet deposition (acid rain) data provides compelling evidence
It was authored co by civil engineering postdoctoral researchers Jeryang Park and Heather Gall and by Rao and Dev Niyogi Indiana state climatologist and an associate professor in the Purdue Department of Agronomy and the Department of Earth
what comes down as acid rain also is much smaller. Every car now has a catalytic converter that reduces tailpipe emissions.
In essence we've solved the acid rain problem through good environmental regulations and wide adoption of mitigation technologies.
Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels said Y. H. Percival Zhang an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life sciences and the College of Engineering.
This new environmentally friendly method of producing hydrogen utilizes renewable natural resources releases almost no zero greenhouse gasses
and create greenhouse gases. The U s. Department of energy says that hydrogen fuel has the potential to dramatically reduce reliance of fossil fuels
and generates a large amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Industry most often uses hydrogen to manufacture ammonia for fertilizers
Additional resources were contributed by the Shell Gamechanger Program the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life sciences'Biodesign and Bioprocessing Research center and the U s. Department of energy Bioenergy Science Center along with the Division of Chemical sciences
#New diagnostic technology may lead to individualized treatments for prostate cancera research team jointly led by scientists from Cedars-Sinai Medical center
or any other cancer said Edwin M. Posadas MD medical director of the Urologic Oncology Program at Cedars-Sinai's Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute and senior author
the Nanovelcro CTC chip laser capture microdissection and whole exome sequencing said Yi-Tsung Lu MD a postdoctoral scientist at the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer
His enthusiasm is echoed by Leland W. K. Chung Phd director of the Urologic Oncology Research Program at the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute.
Cedars-Sinai researchers were supported by a Young Investigator Award and a Challenge Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation research grants (P01 CA098912 and R01 CA122602) from the National institutes of health a Department of defense Idea
The above story is provided based on materials by Cedars-Sinai Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
This is just the first step in our effort to better engineer a process for capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants said George Hirasaki the lead researcher of Rice's CO2-capture research team The researchers hope to reduce the costs of CO2 capture by creating an integrated
Hirasaki's team was one of 16 chosen by the Department of energy (DOE) in 2011 to develop innovative techniques for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The team's first findings appear in two new studies that are available online this month in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.
Rice's new study found that in cases where waste is available it may be used to capture CO2.
Hirasaki Rice's A j. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering said employing waste heat is just one example of a number of ways that Rice's team is looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO2 capture.
It has been estimated that the use of current technology for CO2 capture would drive up the cost of electricity by 70 to 100 percent said Rice graduate student Sumedh Warudkar a co-investigator on the Rice university team.
The research suggests that two elements of Rice's design--optimized amine formulation and the use of waste heat--can reduce parasitic power loss from about 35 percent to around 25 percent.
#Trees used to create recyclable, efficient solar cellsolar cells are just like leaves capturing the sunlight and turning it into energy.
It's fitting that they can now be made partially from trees. Georgia Institute of technology and Purdue University researchers have developed efficient solar cells using natural substrates derived from plants such as trees.
Just as importantly by fabricating them on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates the solar cells can be recycled quickly in water at the end of their lifecycle.
However cellulose nanomaterials made from wood are green renewable and sustainable. The substrates have a low surface roughness of only about two nanometers.
The nation's forest product industry projects that tens of millions of tons of them could be produced once large-scale production begins potentially in the next five years.
N00014-04-1-0313)( T. K. B. K.)and the U s. Department of agriculture-Forest Service (Grant No. 12-JV-11111122-098.
Funding for CNC substrate processing was provided by USDA-Forest Service (Grant No. 11-JV-11111129-118)( R. J. M. J. P. Y. J. L
.).The authors thank Rick Reiner and Alan Rudie from the U s. Forest Service-Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) for providing CNC materials.
#Research documents lesser prairie chickenstexas Tech University scientists have been at the forefront of research on the lesser prairie chicken (LPC) a prairie grouse native to the West Texas landscape for more than three decades.
Additional research out of Oklahoma and Kansas has indicated lesser prairie chickens have an aversion to tall vertical structures such as wind turbines
and the number of lesser prairie chickens has decreased about 90 percent in the past 100 years. The bird is now found only in restricted areas of five states in the southern Great plains:
Hence the prairie chickens tend to stay away from areas where there are tall structures. Blake Grisham a post doctoral research associate working with Boal said in terms of wind farms companies already have been trying to do the right thing by staying away from known habitats.
Those spots do occur where they overlap with the distribution of the lesser prairie chickens; we've been fortunate that the wind energy companies have identified these places as potential problems
Boal said prairie chickens for example are not very likely to use cotton fields to nest in or for lekking (places where males aggregate to try to attract females to mate with).
Prairie chickens have evolved in this landscape Boal said. They have a breeding strategy that is suited to this landscape a boom
If the prairie chicken has a bad year they may have to expand their home range and forage over a greater area.
A lot has been converted to agriculture. Much of that area has been taken completely out of what has been habitat for them.
and the relative risk that a species is facing we need to look at those risks across its distribution not just have a one-size-fits-all for the prairie chicken's entire distribution.
The state of the lesser prairie chicken is an indicator of prairie health he said. A general decline shows that the ecosystem as a whole faces uncertainty
What people need to understand is that it's not just prairie chickens. It's really the inter-connectedness of these biotic communities Boal said.
When we have indicators like a prairie chicken and there's something going wrong that's an indication of that biotic community as a whole.
Prairie chickens are an important component of that land and their future depends on the quality of stewardship they receive.
#Petroleum use, greenhouse gas emissions of automobiles could drop 80 percent by 2050: U s. reporta new National Research Council report finds that by the year 2050 the U s. may be able to reduce petroleum consumption
and greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent for light-duty vehicles--cars and small trucks--via a combination of more efficient vehicles;
and greenhouse gases vehicles must become dramatically more efficient regardless of how they are powered said Douglas M. Chapin principal of MPR Associates
In addition alternative fuels to petroleum must be readily available cost-effective and produced with low emissions of greenhouse gases.
and reductions in petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions exceed the additional costs of the transition over and above
The report identified several scenarios that could meet the more demanding 2050 greenhouse gas goal.
but their greenhouse gas emissions are too high for the 2050 goal. However if the costs of these vehicles can be reduced
While corn-grain ethanol and biodiesel are the only biofuels to have been produced in commercial quantities in the U s. to date the study committee found much greater potential in biofuels made from lignocellulosic biomass
--which includes crop residues like wheat straw switchgrass whole trees and wood waste. This drop in fuel is designed to be a direct replacement for gasoline
and greenhouse gas emissions; it can also be introduced without major changes in fuel delivery infrastructure or vehicles.
Vehicles powered by electricity will not emit any greenhouse gases but the production of electricity and the additional load on the electric power grid are factors that must be considered.
However varying amounts of greenhouse gases are emitted during hydrogen production and the low-greenhouse gas methods of making hydrogen are more expensive
and will need further development to become competitive. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles could become less costly than the advanced internal combustion engine vehicles of 2050.
They are finding success using the byproducts of biofuels made from corn stover wheat straw and rice straw.
which is produced biofuel from inedible material such as wood chips wheat straw or other agricultural residue.
which uses corn and grain to make biofuel. Corn ethanol's byproduct--called distiller's dried grains--can be used as cattle feed
but cellulosic ethanol's byproduct--called high-lignin residue--is perceived often as less valuable. With the cellulosic ethanol process you have leftover material that has lignin
and some cellulose in it but it's not really a feed material anymore Riding said.
or dispose of the ash. When the researchers added the high-lignin ash byproduct to cement the ash reacted chemically with the cement to make it stronger.
The researchers tested the finished concrete material and found that replacing 20 percent of the cement with cellulosic material after burning increased the strength of the concrete by 32 percent.
and use of ash and concrete Riding said. This has the potential to make biofuel manufacture more cost effective by better using all of the resources that are being wasted
The research could greatly affect Kansas and other agricultural states that produce crops such as wheat and corn.
After harvesting these crops the leftover wheat straw and corn stover can be used for making cellulosic ethanol.
Cellulosic ethanol byproducts then can be added to cement to strengthen concrete. The utilization of this byproduct is important in both concrete materials
His poster was titled Utilization of high lignin residue ash (HLRA) in concrete materials. The research at Kansas State university was funded by more than $210000 from the National Science Foundation.
When this field is applied it creates subtle changes in the material's grain boundaries--where atoms from different crystals meet in the material.
Namely the field draws defects to the grain boundary. These defects consist of vacancies (missing atoms)
--which raises the temperature along the grain boundary. Raising the temperature along the grain boundary means that the material can be sintered at a much lower temperature
because sintering is done by selectively melting the grain boundaries to fuse the crystals together. Normally you would have to apply enough heat to raise the mass of all the material to the melting point
even though you only need to melt the grain boundary. Preheating the grain boundary with an electric field is allowed
what Narayan to lower the sintering temperature from 1450 C to 800 C and sinter the material much more quickly.
An invited viewpoint paper describing the work New mechanism for field-assisted processing and flash sintering of materials is published online in Scripta Materialia.
#Decoys could blunt spread of ash-killing beetlesas the emerald ash borer ravages North american ash trees threatening the trees'very survival a team of entomologists
Emerald ash borers (EABS) a type of beetle native to Asia first appeared in the U s. about 20 years ago.
They are now moving east from Michigan killing ash trees on the Eastern Seaboard as far south as North carolina.
Within 25 years practically no ash trees may remain on either side of the St lawrence Seaway said Akhlesh Lakhtakia Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering science and Mechanics at Penn State.
As their name implies emerald ash borers are iridescent green. The beetles don't carry disease
but their larvae feed on the ash trees'sap effectively killing the trees by depriving trees of their nourishment.
Thomas C. Baker Distinguished Professor of Entomology at Penn State knew that the male EAB locates a mate by flying over an ash tree finding a female by identifying her green wings
The researchers were able to create a color similar to the emerald ash borer's green wings by layering different types of polymer.
They also ran a pilot test in Hungary with a related beetle pest that bores into oak trees.
so that populations of emerald ash borers can be detected in new locations quickly paving the way for efficient use of other control methods according to the researchers.
and other greenhouse gas emissions in the United states by 2020 and an 80 percent cut by 2050.
when more greenhouse gases are sequestered than are released into the atmosphere explained Milne an energy assessment analyst at GCEP.
A typical BECCS system converts woody biomass grass and other vegetation into electricity chemical products or fuels such as ethanol.
As a carbon-negative technology BECCS takes advantage of the innate ability of trees grasses
The first project was launched in 2009 by the Department of energy at a corn ethanol production facility in Decatur Ill. operated by the Archer daniel midlands Company.
To make the process carbon negative researchers have proposed a BECCS co-fired power plant that runs on a mixture of fossil fuel (such as coal) and vegetation (wood grass or straw for example.
Biochar is a plant byproduct similar to charcoal that can be made from lumber waste dried corn stalks and other plant residues.
The type of feedstock also contributes to stability with wood being more stable than grasses and manure.
or crops grown on abandoned land that has reverted not to forest. On the other hand biochar production that relies on forest ecosystems may result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions they cautioned.
Net-negative farmingeven large agricultural systems can be net negative. The GCEP report cited research by Jose Moreira of the University of Sao paulo.
Keith has launched also a startup company called Carbon Engineering that's developing industrial-scale machines--artificial trees--that are designed to capture CO2 directly from the air.
or fuels mechanical trees do not generate power and in fact require natural gas to operate. Following the 2012 negative-emissions workshop GCEP issued an international request for proposals to develop net-negative carbon emissions technologies.
#Lack of energy an enemy to antibiotic-resistant microbesrice University researchers cured a strain of bacteria of its ability to resist an antibiotic in an experiment that has implications for a longstanding public health crisis. Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez
A lot of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria originate in animal agriculture where there is overuse misuse and abuse of antibiotics.
The Rice researchers tested their theory on two strains of bacteria P. aeruginosa which is found in soil
Alvarez has been chipping away at the problem since moving to Rice from the University of Iowa in 2004 even without American funding for research.
Co-authors of the paper are Rice alumni Michal Rysz now an environmental engineer at GSI Environmental Inc. Houston;
and John Fortner an assistant professor at Washington University St louis. Alvarez is the George R. Brown Professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice.
Studies show that dairy and beef cattle with an enriched diet of flaxseed and other omega-3 rich grains have fewer respiratory diseases.
The cattle also have higher fertility rates which helps offset infertility among dairy cattle. The technology to enrich ground beef with omega-3s is a spinoff of flaxseed research Drouillard began in 1998.
Drouillard and his students studied flax for several of its omega-3 fatty acids that may suppress inflammation
and reduce diabetes in cattle. Research showed that omega-3 levels dramatically increased in the cattle as more flaxseed was introduced into their diet.
Keeping the omega-3s from becoming saturated fats in cattle's digestive system is a challenge however.
Microorganisms in the rumen--the largest chamber in the cow's stomach--modify most of the ingested fats and turn them into saturated fats.
This causes ground beef to have low levels of omega-3s. Christian Alvarado Gilis a doctoral candidate in animal sciences and industry is researching how to improve omega-3 levels in cattle diets to further enhance the fat profile of beef.
Gilis is from Chile. According to Drouillard substituting omega-3 fatty acids for saturated fats does not change the ground beef's flavor.
Knowing that there are a lot of desirable flavor characteristics associated with the fat in beef we performed tons of sensory panel tests with Kansas State university's meat science faculty
and with the department of human nutrition throughout the years to ensure that the flavor is compromised not Drouillard said.
We found that our panelists were never able to detect appreciable differences in the flavor profiles of the omega-3 rich beef
which includes pork chicken cheese milk butter and ice cream. It will be the first ground beef to carry the U s. Food
and replicated the unique structural elements that create the bright iridescent blue color of a tropical plant's fruit.
For seeds and fruit in particular bright color is thought to have evolved to attract the agents of seed dispersal especially birds.
The fruit of the South american tropical plant Margaritaria nobilis commonly called bastard hogberry is an intriguing example of this adaptation.
The ultra-bright blue fruit which is low in nutritious content mimics a more fleshy and nutritious competitor.
Deceived birds eat the fruit and ultimately release its seeds over a wide geographic area. The fruit of this bastard hogberry plant was scientifically delightful to pick says principal investigator Peter Vukusic Associate professor in Natural Photonics at the University of Exeter.
The light-manipulating architecture its surface layer presents which has evolved to serve a specific biological function has inspired an extremely useful and interesting technological design.
The team replicated the key structural elements of the fruit to create flexible stretchable and color-changing photonic fibers using an innovative roll up mechanism perfected in the Harvard laboratories.
For our artificial structure we cut down the complexity of the fruit to just its key elements explains Kolle.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011