• Underground "physical Internet" to distribute food, goods

    A start-up proposes automatically routed canisters to replace lorries for the purpose of delivering food and other goods in all weather with massive energy savings; the proposal envisions putting goods in metal capsules 2-meter long, which are shifted through underground polyethylene tubes at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour, directed by linear induction motors and routed by intelligent software to their destinations

  • U.S.: China rise a "Sputnik moment" for clean energy

    Energy Secretary Steven Chu likened a series of Chinese milestones — including the development of the world’s fastest supercomputer — to the Soviet Union’s landmark 1957 satellite that led the United States into the Space Race; the United States still concentrated on research in areas such as computers, defense, and pharmaceuticals but that its funding for energy innovation was paltry

  • Nature's desalination: bacteria turn salty water fresh

    The growing global shortage of water has led to a growing interest in desalination to produce fresh water from seas and estuaries; conventional desalination plants, however, consume large amounts of energy; the solution: a bug-powered desalination cell that takes salt out of seawater

  • Royal Society paints unsettling picture of a world 4 °C warmer

    If present warming trends continue, the world could warm by 4 °C by 2060; a new, detailed study by the U.K. Royal Society would make global water shortages acute; most of sub-Saharan Africa will see shorter growing seasons, with average maize production will drop 19 percent and bean production by 47 percent compared with current levels; the extreme weather, sea-level rise, and water shortages will drive many people to migrate

  • Time to find a second Earth: WWF

    In 2007 Earth’s 6.8 billion humans were living 50 percent beyond the planet’s threshold of sustainability, according to a WWF report; the report says that even with modest UN projections for population growth, consumption, and climate change, by 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption; if everyone used resources at the same rate per capita as the United States or the United Arab Emirates, four and a half planets would be needed

  • Sucking up oil spills is a cinch

    Cleaning up oil spills is a time consuming, difficult process, but a novel approach uses a new kind of vacuum cleaner that blows bark or other absorbent material onto oil spills, and then sucks the material up again. The vacuum cleaner is four times more efficient in cleaning up after oil accidents than conventional techniques

  • U.S. scientists to speak out on climate change

    About half of the new Republican members of Congress are climate change skeptics, and 86 percent of them oppose any climate change legislation that would boost government revenue; many U.S. scientists are joining an effort to speak out on climate change, while other scientists express discomfort with blurring the line between science and policy-making

  • Research to help reduce coastal flooding

    According to the Environment Agency’s Flooding in England Report, one in six homes in the United Kingdom are at risk from flooding, and 2.4 million properties are vulnerable to coastal/river floods; coastal areas could be saved from the misery of flooding thanks to new research from the University of Plymouth

  • Impact: Earth! Web site calculates asteroid impact effects on Earth

    Purdue University researchers unveils the Impact Earth! Web site; the site allows visitors to use a calculator to calculate the potential damage a comet or asteroid would cause if it hit the Earth; visitors enter parameters such as the diameter of the impact object, its density, velocity, angle of entry, and where it will hit the Earth, and the site estimates the consequences of its impact, including the atmospheric blast wave, ground shaking, size of tsunami generated, fireball expansion, distribution of debris, and size of the crater produced

  • Drought may threaten much of globe within decades

    A new study, based on twenty-two computer climate models and a comprehensive index of drought conditions, as well as analyses of previously published studies, finds that most of the Western Hemisphere, along with large parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia, will be at risk of extreme drought this century; in contrast, higher-latitude regions from Alaska to Scandinavia are likely to become more moist

  • NOAA: Global temperature ties for warmest on record

    The first nine months of 2010 tied with the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record (the records go back to 1880); this value is 1.17 F (0.65 C) above the twentieth century average; Los Angeles set a new all-time maximum temperature on 27 September when temperatures soared to 113 F;

  • With rising sea levels, the time for adapting is now

    Coastal development has accelerated over the past fifty years; many of the world’s megacities are situated at the coast and new infrastructure worth billions of dollars is being constructed; these developments assume that the stable sea levels of the past several millennia will continue — but this assumption is no longer true

  • Ocean-landing asteroid will create huge ozone holes

    To date, 818 asteroids that are at least 1-km wide have been discovered on orbits that could take them close to Earth; if a 1-km wide asteroid were to land in the ocean, it would create a big splash, throwing 42 trillion kilograms of water and vapor — enough to fill sixteen million Olympic-sized swimming pools — across an area more than 1,000 kilometers wide and up to hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface; this will result in the destruction of the ozone layer above the Earth’s atmosphere, exposing humans, animals, and plants to civilization-threatening levels of UV radiation

  • Large parts of the world are drying up

    The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa, and South America, have been drying up in the past decade as a result of intensified “evapotranspiration” — the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere

  • Scientists: More than 4 million barrels of oil entered Gulf

    Scientists conclude that following the 20 April explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon well, 4.4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico; knowing the total volume of oil is critical to understanding how much oil could be lurking in the Gulf and nearby marshes — a highly contentious issue