Solar power could be harvested more efficiently and transported over longer distances using tiny molecular circuits based on quantum mechanics, according to research inspired by new insights into natural photosynthesis. Incorporating the latest research into how plants, algae and some bacteria use quantum mechanics to optimize energy production via photosynthesis, UCL scientists have set out…

The loss of Arctic sea ice is predicted to open up the Northwest Passage (the vast northern sea lanes above Canada presently choked off by ice), shortening shipping routes and facilitating the exchange of marine organisms between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Skeletons, DNA samples and harpoon heads have all suggested that bowhead populations…

Most people think of polluted sites as being something industry does. Not so. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it has signed an agreement with the Department of Defense to remediate Joint Base Andrews (formerly Andrews Air Force Base) located in Clinton, Md. Although cleanup activities have been on-going at the facility, the…

Yale University has created a new poll based report, Politics & Global Warming, which describes how Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and members of the Tea Party respond to the issue of global warming. The results come from a nationally representative survey of 1,010 American adults, aged 18 and older, conducted April 23 through May 12, 2011.…

Cartons as in milk cartons for example. Just trash or something that can be recycled and become sustainable? The City of Dallas has launched recently a new effort to add food and beverage cartons as part of its residential curbside recycling program. Dallas will be the first major city in Texas to have a carton…

King crabs and other crushing predators are thought to have been absent from cold Antarctic shelf waters for millions of years. Scientists speculate that the long absence of crushing predators has allowed the evolution of a unique Antarctic seafloor fauna with little resistance to predatory crabs. A recent study by researchers from the University of…

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. The study by Tom Wigley, who is a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), underscores the complex and…

European chemical manufacturers are covertly venting huge quantities of the powerful super greenhouse gas HFC-23, according to a study by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA). The report, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says that Western Europe’s emissions of HFC-23s – an ‘F’ or fluorinated gas mainly used as…

In July, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s MobiSys conference, researchers from MIT and Princeton University took the best-paper award for a system that uses a network of smartphones mounted on car dashboards to collect information about traffic signals and tell drivers when slowing down could help them avoid waiting at lights. By reducing the…

Hurricane Irene strengthened on its path toward the continental United States in late August 2011. This is a relatively rare hurricane that threatens all of the US east coast. Residents of the U.S. East Coast braced for the first hurricane to seriously threaten the country in three years. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on…