Green Options

A professor and student team have designed a network of modular floating docks to harness clean energy for New York City.
The eco-docks would generate the energy by harnessing tidal power from the city’s rivers; they should also help to add much needed green space above the dirty waters.

Researchers at the University of Huelva have proven that high-oleic sunflower oil has the efficiency it takes to be an environmentally-friendly base for industrial lubricant.
The study found that the biolubricant shared similar characteristics to traditional lubricants, only sunflower oil has a lower volatility and is entirely biodegradable. Using the sunflower oil as an alternative should also help reduce the cost of keeping industry clean.

Timberland has announced a new policy agreement with Greenpeace to ensure that leather used in new boots and shoes won’t contribute to deforestation in the Amazon.
The policy will issue a moratorium on purchasing any cattle raised in newly deforested areas within the Amazon Rainforest, and it will force all of its suppliers to do the same.

Cold-blooded animals have a lifespan which is exponentially related to the temperature of their environment, a new study finds.
That means that as temperatures increase due to global warming, cold-blooded animals around the world will begin dying younger. Given that the vast majority of animals on Earth are cold-blooded, including the likes of amphibians, mollusks, crustaceans and reptiles, global warming could have unexpected, profound impacts on the world’s ecosystems.

Hungry villagers have been caught stealing meat from the nearly extinct lions of Waza National Park.
The villagers likely scare off the lions with sticks or fire shortly after they make a fresh kill. Researchers fear the practice may be more common than previously thought, and it may help explain why lion numbers are plummeting in Cameroon.

Traditional farmers in the Thai hills are still growing rice the old fashioned way, and they may be single-handedly preserving the crop’s genetic diversity in the process.
Domesticated rice varieties have been selected for their high yield, and though they are necessary in order to feed the world’s growing population, they are genetically static. But a new study demonstrates that the traditional farming methods still practiced in remote areas of Thailand are preserving ancestral varieties of rice by keeping them genetically dynamic.

Dunham the bottlenose dolphin was attacked by sharks and euthanized this Tuesday just 3 hours after being released from Florida’s Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
Experts nearby monitoring the dolphin said he was attacked by at least two different sharks, and that the wounds were life-threatening. They euthanized him immediately upon arriving at the scene.

Two Kenyan students have invented a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their phones as they pedal.
Deemed a “dynamo-powered smart charger”, the device should make it more economical for the 17.5 million Kenyans who use mobile phones to charge them. Even more impressive, the environmentally-friendly phone charger was originally built from scraps retrieved from a junkyard.

A Spanish company called Turtle Airships is working on plans to build a luxurious solar-powered blimp which can take passengers from New York to Paris.
Perhaps the only thing cooler than being powered by lightweight photovoltaic cells, this airship is also designed to rest on land or water.

17 dams recently built on the Mekong River in Southeast Asia are threatening fisheries, destroying a vast ecosystem, and starving millions. And 11 more dams are currently in the planning process.
The dams already in place are blocking fish from traveling upstream to spawn, and the new dams– many of which will sit nearer the river’s headwaters– could threaten the entire river ecosystem. 65 million people currently live and rely upon the Mekong for their sustenance and livelihood, and about 80 percent of their protein intake comes from the river’s fisheries.