#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
Over 120 generations the starving bacteria chose to conserve valuable energy rather than use it to pass on the plasmid--a small
because there is a metabolic burden a high energy cost to keeping them. The Rice researchers tested their theory on two strains of bacteria P. aeruginosa
but it's enough to have bacteria notice a deficiency in their ability to obtain energy from the environment and feel the stress to dump resistant genes.
and plant oils. The U s. currently does not have recommended a daily intake of omega-3s though many doctors and nutritionists recommend between 1200-1600 milligrams daily depending on a person's age and health.
#Global natural gas boom alone wont slow climate changea new analysis of global energy use economics
Because natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal many people hoped the recent natural gas boom could help slow climate change
But in the long run according to this study a global abundance of inexpensive natural gas would compete with all energy sources--not just higher-emitting coal
but also lower-emitting nuclear and renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar. Inexpensive natural gas would also accelerate economic growth
and expand overall energy use. The effect is that abundant natural gas alone will do little to slow climate change said lead author Haewon Mcjeon an economist at the Department of energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Global deployment of advanced natural gas production technology could double or triple the global natural gas production by 2050
but greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow in the absence of climate policies that promote lower carbon energy sources.
Because gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal some researchers have linked the natural gas boom to recent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United states
Their computer models included not just energy use and production but also the broader economy and the climate system.
These integrated assessment models accounted for energy use the economy and climate and the way these different systems interact with one another.
even though it was dramatically changing the global energy system said James Jae Edmonds PNNL's chief scientist at JGCRI.
and use energy from all sources affect emissions in several ways: â#¢Natural gas replacing coal would reduce carbon emissions.
But due to its lower cost natural gas would also replace some low-carbon energy such as renewable or nuclear energy.
Overall changes result in a smaller reduction than expected due to natural gas replacing these other low-carbon sources.
In a sense natural gas would become a larger slice of the energy pie. â#¢Abundant less expensive natural gas would lower energy prices across the board leading people to use more energy overall.
In addition inexpensive energy stimulates the economy which also increases overall energy use. Consequently the entire energy pie gets bigger. â#¢The main component of natural gas methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
During production and distribution some methane inevitably escapes into the atmosphere. The researchers considered both high and low estimates for this so-called fugitive methane.
The combined effect of the three the scientists found is that the global energy system could experience unprecedented changes in the growth of natural gas production
and significant changes to the types of energy used but without much reduction to projected climate change if new mitigation policies are not put in place to support the deployment of renewable energy technologies.
Abundant gas may have a lot of benefits--economic growth local air pollution energy security and so on. There's been some hope that slowing climate change could also be one of its benefits
but that turns out not to be said the case Mcjeon. Scientists engineers and economists from the following institutions contributed to the research:
Beyond improving food crops the technique could also help improve plants grown for energy production materials and other purposes.
and provide sustainable sources of energy and materials. We have feed to an ever-growing population
and we have to replace materials like oil-based fuels Bucksch said. Integral to this change will be understanding plants
and the regions within a fire where intense energy in the form of heat is released can be determined accurately the rate
Wildland fires involve complex interactions that include fuel distribution terrain topography chemical reactions energy transfer and the associated fluid dynamics that transport moisture gas-phase hydrocarbons air
when you see this raging fire where exactly is all this energy being released in space?
Where the energy release associated with combustion is released its intensity and how it is being released are all basics for predictive ability.
Where the energy is released is what is going to dictate the fluid dynamics in the vicinity.
Energy released by fire heats and converts heavy hydrocarbons in the materials burning into light gaseous hydrocarbons that are burned more readily.
D. R. Weise A numerical investigation of the effect of moisture content on pyrolysis and combustion of live fuels Paper D402 Central States Section of The Combustion Institute Spring
Technical Meeting Tulsa OK March 17-18 2014) Because the fuel for wildland fires is mostly in the undergrowth three species of shrub
which the energy release will drive the airflow around it and the resulting fluid dynamics will in turn drive the fire.
Continual warming of the leading edge of the fire is a necessary precondition to releasing the chemicals in the fuels that are needed to sustain it.
and do prescribed these fires sometimes on day one the fuels don't ignite easily and spread but they can come back there on day two
Each fuel was modeled through an annual seasonal cycle. We found that one of the most sensitive elements that is required for fire to spread is wind
California's seasonal combination of Santa anna winds and rising temperatures both serve to dry the fuel for combustion and drive the fire's process once underway.
and it is gaining heat as energy is produced as a result of combustion so it is an energy balance problem.
We also initiated a series of studies to examine the transition between a ground fire and tree crown burning.
-22 2013) The UAH scientists are looking at how the interaction of fires in shrubs near each other can create energy hot spots in a conflagration.
As you bring the shrubs closer together is the fuel being consumed faster and the energy created faster as a result?
Dr. Mahalingam asks. We are interested in how the fire spreads from shrub to shrub what the interaction is and at what spacing and
-22 2013) UAH researchers continue to examine how moisture levels in fuel sources affect burning behaviors under a USDA grant further expanding on recent published research.
It can be manufactured at room temperature has an extremely low forming voltage high on-off ratio low power consumption nine-bit capacity per cell exceptional switching speeds and excellent cycling endurance.
In doing so they worked in close cooperation with members of the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program's Deep-space Habitat Project team.
which ultimately affects crop yield. â#Schroeder is also co-director of a new research entity at UC San diego called â#oefood and Fuel for the 21st Centuryâ
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
and enable the economic production of gas resources with higher carbon dioxide content that would be too costly to recover using current carbon capture technologies Tour said.
All of this works in ambient temperatures unlike current high-temperature capture technologies that use up a significant portion of the energy being produced.
If the oil and gas industry does not respond to concerns about carbon dioxide and other emissions it could well face new regulations Tour said noting the White house issued its latest National Climate Assessment last month and this week set new rules to cut carbon pollution from the nation
or use it for enhanced oil recovery to further the release of oil and natural gas. Or they can package
Apache Corp. a Houston-based oil and gas exploration and production company funded the research at Rice
Of those approaches none came close to reducing emissions as much as conservation increased energy efficiency and low-carbon fuels would.
Technology that is already available could reduce the amount of carbon being added to the atmosphere by some 7 gigatons per year the team found.
Charcoal has been used as an agricultural amendment for centuries but scientists are only now starting to appreciate its potential for tying up greenhouse gases Cusack said.
and storage particularly when the technique is used near where fuels are being refined. CCS turns carbon dioxide into a liquid form of carbon
which oil and coal extraction companies then pump into underground geological formations and wells and cap;
Hertwich was one of the lead authors of the Energy Systems chapter. 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.
Experts estimate that a quarter of a million people die prematurely each year in China because of air pollution from the country's coal-fired power plants.
Five pages 500 commentshertwich's contribution as one of the lead authors of the Energy Systems chapter amounts to roughly 5 pages.
what humankind is doing to the climate by burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
when it comes to energy sources Hertwich said. The world is making significant investments in renewable energy
which in turn is making renewables cheaper and easier to bring to market. What I found was really surprising was the rate at
when solar power was more of a novelty source of energy for individuals who were too far from power lines to get conventional electricity from the grid.
In fact today we install the equivalent of 100 large coal-fired power plants--the same capacity in renewables--every year he said.
However we haven't started phasing out the coal-fired power plants so this needs to happen too.
and create biochar a highly porous charcoal said project principal investigator Karl Linden professor of environmental engineering.
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.
Additionally the biochar can be burned as charcoal and provides energy comparable to that of commercial charcoal.
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
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 solar energy work environmental engineers for waste treatment and stabilization mechanical engineers to build actuators 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
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
because we have a high interest in developing countries and expertise in all of the renewable energy technologies as well as sanitation.
#Biofuel-to-hydrocarbon conversion technology licensedvertimass LLC a California-based start-up company has licensed an Oak ridge National Laboratory technology that directly converts ethanol into a hydrocarbon blend-stock for use in transportation fuels.
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 is pleased very to be partnering with ORNL to commercialize this revolutionary technology that can broaden the market for alternative fuels said Vertimass chairman William Shopoff.
We see this technology as a significant step in moving the United states toward energy independence. The technology developed by ORNL's Chaitanya Narula Brian Davison
The resulting liquid can be blended at various concentrations into gasoline diesel and jet fuels without negatively affecting engine performance.
After mixing with petroleum-derived fuels the blend-stock does not require modifications to the existing distribution infrastructure.
The blend-stock can be mixed into gasoline at higher concentrations than ethanol's current limit of 10 percent;
plus it can be added to diesel and jet fuel. It's completely consumer-transparent. 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
Preliminary ORNL analysis in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado shows the catalytic technology could be retrofitted into existing bio-alcohol refineries at various stages of ethanol purification.
The ORNL research was supported by DOE's Office of Energy efficiency and Renewable Energy. Initial funds were from the ORNL Laboratory Directed Research and development and Technology Innovation programs and from the Bioenergy Science Center
which is supported by the U s. DOE Office of Science. Vertimass LCC is based in Irvine Calif. The mission of Vertimass LLC is to develop
and improve energy security and domestic economies. Commercialization will lead to the widespread use of proprietary Vertimass technology for low cost production of sustainable transportation fuels for aircraft and heavy and light duty vehicles from multiple sources of biomass on a large scale.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Oak ridge National Laboratory. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
The world's need for fuel will persist also when Earth's deposits of fossil fuels run out.
Bioethanol which is made from the remains of plants after other parts have been used as food or other agricultural products and therefore termed second generation is seen as a strong potential substitute candidate
Since 2010 it has been mandatory in Denmark to add five per cent ethanol to all gasoline sold in the country.
You can add up to 85 per cent bioethanol to gasoline and this is common in several South american countries.
Danish research institutions and DONG Energy (denmark) have great focus on how to produce bioethanol from otherwise useless crop residues such as straw.
The use of bioethanol instead of gasoline reduces the CO2 emissions from cars and fossil fuel consumption.
and provides methane for fuel. The same process allows natural gas production from agricultural residues a renewable resource.
and energy has to leave the ocean through evaporation he explained. If you think about all the ice on top of Mt everest--who took this huge amount of material up there?
There's energy in evaporation but it's so subtle we don't see it. But until now no one has tapped that energy to generate electricity.
As Sahin pursued the idea of a new humidity-driven generator he realized that Mahadevan had been investigating similar problems from a physical perspective.
since they shrink reversibly they had to be storing energy. In fact spores would be particularly good at storing energy
because they are rigid yet still expand and contract a great deal the researchers predicted. Since changing moisture levels deform these spores it followed that devices containing these materials should be able to move in response to changing humidity levels Mahadevan said.
When Sahin first set out to measure the energy of spores he was taken by surprise. He put a solution thick with spores on a tiny flexible silicon plank expecting to measure the humidity-driven force in a customized atomic force microscope.
and adhesive tape stored energy settling on rubber as the most promising material. Then he built a simple humidity-driven generator out of Legosâa miniature fan a magnet and a spore-coated cantilever.
Sahin's prototype captures just a small percentage of the energy released by evaporation but it could be improved by genetically engineering the spores to be stiffer and more elastic.
Indeed in early experiments spores of a mutant strain provided by Driks stored twice as much energy as normal strains.
Solar and wind energy fluctuate dramatically when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow
. If changes in humidity could be harnessed to generate electricity night and day using a scaled up version of this new generator it could provide the world with a desperately needed new source of renewable energy.
The work was funded by the U s. Department of energy the Rowland Junior Fellows Program and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard university.
5 predictions for smarter buildings in 2012in the United states, buildings make up 70 percent of all energy use,
Rethinking how buildings use energy is an essential issue of our time, and many have taken on the challenge of retrofitting energy hogs--to save money,
to make cities more efficient, and to help the planet. Smart buildings can help people translate the mass amounts of data that our buildings generate,
(and mend) our energy use. Today, the smart buildings market is estimated to be around $30 billion globally
and the need for more energy efficient buildings is still slowly making its way into planning and development agendas.
and analyzes power consumption. With the carbon matching system in place in this neighborhood, traffic patterns can be broken down,
and how much energy they are using in the form of a summary at the end of each month. Smart meters, one of the key parts of a smart building, allow building owners
and residents to instead get a real time view into their energy usage. This creates a lot more transparency,
Seeing the energy or water we use per task, then will help drive a transformation in energy efficiency.
Taking a cross-section of a building's consumption will be very helpful for larger structures and campuses. Analytics will point directly to behavior that can be changed,
as well as recommend temperatures that save energy, and show instantly when something needs to be fixed. IBM â¢s campus in Rochester, Minnesota has implemented this system of transparency.
so far cutting energy use by eight percent. Prediction 3: The proliferation of an Internet of things.
More energy options for buildings Bartlett predicts that in the near future, as we develop more low carbon energy sources,
building owners will be able to go to what he calls the energy cafe and select different kinds of energy to use--rather than a building being forced to use just one thing.
The cafe just means that there will be a number of different energy sources available over the grid.
With smart meters, not only can building operators get an idea of how much and what kind of energy they are using,
buildings in the future can choose, and change, the energy they use according to their specific needs. This method was implemented on IBM's campus, following a new sustainability mandate.
I think that it is said really cool Bartlett, because depending on your own needs and how much you want to be a part of this,
it puts people in control instead of having to take what is provided. Prediction 5: Real estate finance teams will become corporations'smarter buildings teams In the next few years,
so transparency will likely place pressure on the corporation to make aggressive changes to their energy use.
Smart building initiatives will help them listen to how their buildings are wasting energy and money,
to help 4, 000 buildings meet Mayor Bloomberg's energy efficiency goals. The technology implemented here is going to help him get transparency
Currently, the cost of energy use in New york city municipal buildings is more than $800 million per year,
which will undoubtedly push people to use the new methods of looking at energy consumption. Adoption of smart meters
but it also requires a utility that is willing to buy back the energy that you don't use.
as energy costs are higher in these areas --but its good to pave the way and show some leadership.
Compare that to cleantech--you know how painful it was to have energy utility companies take renewable energy seriously.
Water is 30 years behind the energy utility. The last thing you want to be innovative about is water.
The trigger that has worked best in California is the relationship of water and energy. Water is a mass--it must be stored.
There is a true energy cost anytime you try to move water. And an infrastructure cost.
 After that, you need water to cool a nuclear reactor. You don't really want to turn them down.
And it's occasionally addicted to energy. New york and Pennsylvania are sitting on an enormous reserve of natural gas, the Marcellus Shale.
Investors are hearing a lot of pitches about medical devices and energy products these days, and then they see this,
And since technology is much more energy efficient, we think there's a great opportunity to capitalize on this new green rush.
Currently, much of energy intensive light used to grow cannabis is wasted instead of being absorbed since plants can only photosynthesize so much of it.
Mass. that uses a process called pyrolysis to turn waste into energy. The company hopes the plant will help reduce its carbon footprint and boost its use of renewable energy;
as a side benefit, it's also making the U s. banknote--a k a. Â the greenback--even greener.
How did Crane get involved with renewable energy sources? DC: Crane and Co. is a paper company,
Here in Berkshire County, we're certainly among the top three energy users from the Western  Massachusetts  Electric company.
 Currently, we have the benefit of a trash-to-energy plant established a few decades ago.
if we can come up with a renewable energy solution for our operations, but the caveat is we're not in the energy business,
and we don't want to be. We just want to be able to purchase renewable energy. A number of years ago we started looking pretty seriously at biomass.
We need a lot of energy and we need it on-demand. When we start up a 400-horsepower motor in the middle of the night,
you can't use solar panels for that. I'm keenly interested in renewable energy. We started looking around
and came across a group of folks that we had known from a former energy project.
They had started a company called Reenergy over in Albany N y..That company had gained the rights to the technology where you can take an organic feedstock and turn it into liquid fuel.
We have demand for both thermal energy as well as electricity. This fuel can be used to drive generators, much more efficient than the steam process.
We're looking to really do away with fossil fuels, in a lot of our operations within our existing infrastructure.
SP: Which is turned why you to biomass specialist  Envergent. DC: Envergent was really putting the finishing touches on the development side of bringing this forward.
The timing was right for us to move ahead with the project. The size of the original plant that we had looked at for the traditional biomass approach...
We're taking our energy dollars and instead of purchasing electricity generated outside our state from fossil fuels,
we're pouring our dollars into our local economy. Â It's kind of a labor-intensive process.
It doesn't fluctuate up and down like crude oil prices. There's a tremendous follow-on effect. SP: What's most important to Crane about going green?
but from a dollar standpoint, the volatility for energy today is a real strain for us.
We're also looking at reviving a smaller hydroelectric plant that will generate more energy.
We're looking for multiple ways to solve the energy question and move toward a sustainable supply.
On top of that, we get a major portion of our thermal energy from a plant nearby, but that same plant takes care of the solid waste from the Berkshire County area.
When someone steps up to the plate against us, they'll need to show their product and their renewable energy.
Now replacing the energy that goes into producing it? Well, geez, it's going to be one of the greenest products at the company.
but it takes more energy to produce--you have to do mining to get the materials.
The wood in the pyrolysis process comes out in this liquid--pyrolysis oil. They were extracting the chemicals for food additives from it.
In petroleum refining, there's a technique called FCC--fluid catalytic cracking--that makes gasoline, predominantly.
Often, where the energy resource is is far away from where you want to consume that resource. Â Shipping is done always on a per volume basis. Â Think of this as packaging for the industry.
Fuel usage has also been cut by 20 percent. The sales team can also use Sun World's data in conjunction with industry buying trends to figure out the best timing for campaigns.
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