Environment

Assuming you don't have the space for a smelly compost heap but want to be as environmentally responsible as possible, what’s the most responsible way to dispose of a banana peel, or any other food waste? A new study about the impact of various food waste disposal systems says putting it into a garbage disposer results in lower global warming potential than putting it in the trash and sending it to a landfill. According to the EPA, landfills are a major source of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Because food scraps are a significant component of…

“What do you think we’ll fight World War III over?” It was an interesting question for a third date, and the first thing my (now ex-) boyfriend and I disagreed on.  I said “cheap oil” and he answered “water.” Our difference of opinion was largely a product of our upbringings.  I was raised on thunderstorms and flooded basements back East, while he grew up amid droughts and “water wars” in California. Months after we parted ways, I was reminded of that conversation as I drove through California’s Central Valley, past billboards plastered with water propaganda and tractors shadowed by…

As with everything, my insatiable curiosity leads me to adventures.  This past week I went on a hike to one of the remote areas of Trinity River Audubon Center to view a pond that I hadn't seen before (because you have to hack your way through a lot of brush to get there, and I'd never gotten around to it.)  It's been hot here in Texas (you may have noticed) but the sight of the pond itself was eerie.  The shores had receded nearly 40 feet in some areas and there were dead carp (skeletons) strewn on the shoreline and at least 40 large dead mussels.  Wading birds were…

Large amounts of research and money have been invested in the development of transgenic, or GM (genetically modified) crops. These crops are genetically engineered to withstand drought, excessive rain or other weather conditions, or to improve their yield or increase their rate of development, or to express certain toxins that would limit the amount of insects feeding on them. While transgenic crops might potentially be a means to increase food production, they have been, and remain to be, quite controversial. There are many reasons why people oppose them, but one of them is that insect…

According to a press release from Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, a UK ruling forces the release of other nations property, in this case climate data. We are talking about some legal left-overs in the so-called Climategate case where scientists were wrongfully accused of refusing to share data (national and international). A couple of days ago, data from all but 19 stations in Poland, were published on CRU's home pages. From my time as a Director of the European Sea Level Service, I know very well that Poland has very strict rules on their Earth observation…

The great thing about being a scientist is that you have more adventures than anyone else!  Today I took along the kids from the Lone Star Adventure Camp on a bug hike at the Trinity River Audubon Center, exploring the insect (grasshoppers in particular) diversity of the area around Catttail Pond.  Earlier in the summer when I did bug hunts with YMCA camps, I had noticed that the grasshoppers caught near the building (where we have a lot of switchgrass and Sideoats gramma) seemed to represent a different population than the ones caught some twenty yards away, where the area was…

Ashwini Kumar Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Energy Plantation Demonstration Project Centre. Department of Botany, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur – 302 004, INDIA Phone : 0141-2711654 (Off.) 0141-2654100 (Resi.) 09461663610 (Mobile) E-mail : Ashwanikumar214@gmail.com ABSTRACT: Fossil fuel consumption produces green house gases and use of biofuels helps in green house gas mitigation. Global climate change has stimulated efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. During last decades we have developed agrotechnology for the biofuels: hydrocarbon yielding plants, oil yielding plants and wood biomass and…

Modern tissue engineering techniques could enable the development and production of meat grown, or ‘cultured’, in the lab. This research into in vitro meat (see figure 1 for an example) has its roots in experiments conducted by NASA, and since then, the idea has slowly trickled into the focus of other research groups (at the moment, the main hubs of activity appear to universities in the Netherlands). But even as early as 1930, Churchill has said: Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately…

Rice accounts for nearly half the daily calories for the world's population but crops are at risk from tsunamis and tidal surges and perhaps future unknown effects of climate change.   But naturally occurring fungi called endophytes might come to the rescue. In an effort to explore ways to increase the adaptability of rice to disasters that have already led to rice shortages, USGS researchers and their colleagues colonized two commercial varieties of rice with the spores of fungi that exist naturally within native coastal (salt-tolerant) and geothermal (heat-tolerant) plants.…

Global warming is a complex matter, with many effects interacting. This, of course, makes modeling it accurately a great challenge. Now, a new feedback mechanism has been identified. The quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. But how does this affect our world? Recently, a research team has been looking into how higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere affect the soil and its ability to take up methane and nitrous oxide, or release these potent greenhouse gases. By gathering data from 49 experiments across the globe, the team went looking for general patterns.…