• Improving cities by using the notion of “urban metabolism”

    As is the case with organisms, cities need energy, water, and nutrients, and they need to dispose of wastes and byproducts in ways which are viable and sustainable over the long run. This concept of “urban metabolism” is a model for looking systematically at the resources that flow into cities and the wastes and emissions that flow out from them in order better to understand the environmental impacts of cities and to highlight opportunities for efficiencies, improvements, and transformation.

  • Exploring asteroids for commercial metal harvesting

    Deep Space says that in a decade, it will be harvesting asteroids for metals and other building materials, to construct large communications platforms to replace communications satellites, and later solar power stations to beam carbon-free energy to consumers on Earth. “More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year. They can be like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century,” says the company’s CEO.

  • DOE addresses rare earth, critical materials shortage

    The U.S. Department of Energy announced earlier this month that a team led by Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, has been selected for an award of up to $120 million over five years to establish an Energy Innovation Hub which will develop solutions to the domestic shortages of rare earth metals and other materials critical for U.S. energy security.

  • Black carbon’s contribution to climate change underestimated

    Black carbon is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming and its influence on climate has been greatly underestimated, according to the first quantitative and comprehensive analysis of this issue; black carbon is believed to have a warming effect of about 1.1 Watts per square meter (W/m²), approximately two thirds of the effect of the largest man made contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide.

  • Black carbon’s contribution to climate change underestimated

    Black carbon is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming and its influence on climate has been greatly underestimated, according to the first quantitative and comprehensive analysis of this issue; black carbon is believed to have a warming effect of about 1.1 Watts per square meter (W/m²), approximately two thirds of the effect of the largest man made contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide.

  • NASA: 2012 sustained long-term climate warming trend

    NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record. Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperature from year to year, but the continued increase in greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere assures a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.

  • The humble jute serves as a sustainable reinforcement for concrete

    Fashionable people may turn up their noses at jute, the cheap fiber used to make burlap, gunny sacks, twine, and other common products, but new research is enhancing jute’s appeal as an inexpensive, sustainable reinforcement for mortar and concrete.

  • DHS: Industrial control systems subject to 200 attacks in 2012

    A DHS report released last week revealed that industrial control systems, which are used to monitor and control critical infrastructure facilities, were hit with 198 documented cyberattacks in 2012, and that many of these attacks were serious.

  • Shoring up Long Island’s natural shore defenses against future storms

    Sand and other coarse-grained sediments are vital to the naturally occurring barrier systems which dissipate storm surges, protect coastal residences, and shelter biologically diverse estuaries and ecosystems; a team of researchers is conducting marine geophysical surveys of the seafloor and shallow subsurface to assess the health of the offshore barrier system which protects the New York Harbor and southwestern Long Island region against damage from future storms

  • Before the deluge: improving flood forecasting

    Summer 2012 was the third consecutive summer in which Pakistan has endured catastrophic floods; thirty million people were affected in 2010 and 2011; the summer 2012 floods affected 4.7 million more, killed nearly 500 people, and led to the evacuation of 350,000; Pakistan, stubbornly refusing to accept external assistance in flood forecasting, is not able to predict and prepare for natural disasters on its own

  • Appearances deceive: supposedly “stable” zone make earthquakes even more powerful

    In an earthquake, ground motion is the result of waves emitted when the two sides of a fault move — or slip — rapidly past each other, with an average relative speed of about three feet per second. Not all fault segments move so quickly, however; new earthquake fault models show that “stable” zones may contribute to the generation of massive earthquakes

  • "Prophylactic dressing" for walls make buildings safer during earthquakes

    In the case of earthquakes, only seconds may remain for a safe escape from buildings; debris falling down and obstructing the escape routes may even aggravate the situation; a new product extends the time for saving lives by reinforcing walls and keeping off the debris; an innovative building material manufacturer now has launched the mature innovation in the market

  • Assessing future sea level rise from ice sheets

    Future sea level rise due to the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could be substantially larger than estimated in Climate Change 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, according to new research

  • Political action the biggest swing factor in meeting climate targets: study

    The new study examines the probability of keeping average global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above preindustrial levels under varying levels of climate policy stringency, and thus mitigation costs

  • The natural relationship between CO2 concentrations and sea level means that sea level will continue to rise

    By comparing reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 concentrations and sea level over the past forty million years, researchers have found that greenhouse gas concentrations similar to the present (almost 400 parts per million) were systematically associated with sea levels at least nine meters above current levels