A team of researchers at MIT are engineering a strain of bacteria, which is similar to the type that causes tuberculosis, to produce biofuel.

The researchers say that the bacteria are useful because they are hungry for a number of sugars and toxic compounds and produce lipids that can be converted to biodiesel.

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Dogs and their guides have been transported to the Galapagos Islands as part of a K9 project to track down poachers and reduce crime against wildlife.

The K9 units are now set for regular inspections, beginning at airports, harbors and random checkpoints on all three islands in order to halt illegal poaching activities which have plagued many of the islands’ unique flora and fauna.

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In a first, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle have developed a completely tree-powered electrical circuit.

The nano-scale device—approximately 130 nanometers [a nanometer is one billionth of a meter] in size—consumes just 10 billionths of a watt (10 nanowatts).

Unlike the legendary science fair experiment in which a potato-based electric circuit is created using two electrodes (each electrode being a different metal, which react with the starch, causing a potential difference and thus a current), the UW device utilizes electrodes comprised of the same metal, and is able to generate (output) 1.1 volts. “As far as we know, this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree,” according to paper co-author Babak Parviz, associate professor of electrical engineering at the UW.

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One mountain lion in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona is single-handedly hunting the refuge’s endangered big horn sheep population to extinction.

The puma has already culled at least 15 sheep since last February, a remarkable pace which, if continued, would total 37 deaths by the end of the year. By comparison, the estimated annual yearling recruitment from the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge bighorn sheep herd is only 39 animals.

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This picture is a picture of the beautiful Monterey, California coastline. This is where I grew up. It is famous for it’s beautiful sea life. Sea otters, jelly fish, sea lions, kelp forests all populate the Monterey coast.  The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world. Yet, with all that mass of water, we humans are changing the chemical properties. The acid levels in the pacific ocean, as well as every ocean around the world, are rising. If things keep going this beautiful coastline, my home, will become a wasteland of acid. Habitable to only the most extremophiles.

Rewind our story. Fossil fuels are not just a problem for our atmosphere. When we burn fossil fuels carbon dioxide falls down into the sea. The carbon dioxide is quickly converted into carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has been known to be corrosive to corals and shellfish, and now scientists are discovering that rising acid levels in the ocean are effecting other animals as well.

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Austrian scientists are putting the ‘fun’ in ‘fungus’ by forcing organisms which are usually asexual to have sex instead.

The hope is that the fungus would then be easier to breed, which would allow researchers to create organisms that are more efficient at degrading cellulose for the purpose of making biofuel.

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Giant poisonous jellyfish are poised to assault Japanese waters, experts warn.

Reports of massive bloomings indicate that this season’s Nomura’s jellyfish spawn should be a big one. The good news is that there may not be a nation on Earth more psychologically prepared for the invasion of giant monsters.

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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.

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A remarkable dragonfly migration stretching between 14,000 and 18,000 kilometers has been discovered which spans the Indian Ocean.

The migration is by far the longest known insect migration, dwarfing the 7,000km journey of monarch butterflies. Millions of dragonflies make the epic migration every year, which spans from India to the Maldives, the Seychelles, Mozambique, Uganda and back again.

Perhaps the only thing more amazing than the migration is that it has somehow dodged scientific discovery until now. “This just illustrates how little we still know about the natural world,” said Charles Anderson, discoverer of the mass migration.

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Phallus drewesii, named after Dr. Robert Drewes of the California Academy of Sciences, is a 2 inch long phallus-shaped mushroom that grows on wood, smells like rotting meat and curves awkwardly downward.

Upon discovering that the new species would be named after him, Drewes remarked: “It is a wonderful honour and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me. I have been immortalized in the scientific record.”

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25% of all the world’s large-scale terrestrial migrations have already ceased due to habitat loss and human-caused changes to the landscape, and it may not be long before all migrations disappear entirely.

That according to a new study, which warns that with continued population growth, development and habitat encroachment, storied epics like those of wildebeest parading across the Serengeti or herds of bison rumbling across North American plains shall become tall tales of the past.

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Researchers at Arizona State Univerity and the University of New Mexico have named a Venezuelan diving beetle Agaporomorphus colberti in honor of the humorist.

One of the outstanding features of the species is the genitalia of the males. “This new species is similar to members of a clade within the genus exemplified by A. knischi…and unique in having similar, extremely complicated male genitalia…”

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A recent study documented the discovery of 100-200 new amphibian species in Madagascar.

One of the researchers, Dr. Miguel Vences, stated: “People think that we know which plant and animal species live on this planet. But the century of discoveries has only just begun – the majority of life forms on Earth is still awaiting scientific recognition.”

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A sea otter sighting has been confirmed in Oregon near Depoe Bay. There have been no confirmed sightings of the creature in Oregon waters since 1906. Morris Grover spotted the animal but did not want to tell anyone until he sent photos of it to biologists and they told him what he photographed. They identified it as a sea otter. (Many river otters there have been mistaken for sea otters).

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New research in the South Oman Salt Basin shows evidence of animal life dating back much further than the first appearance of other significant life forms.

Chemical traces of the minute marine sponges, called demosponges were observed by a research team led by the University of California, Riverside geochemist Dr. Gordon D. Love. Desmosponges include the species most consumsers are familiar with: the bath sponge. These over 500 million-year-old sponges however, were probably much smaller due to a lack of oxygen available during their geological period. The fact that they existed 200 million years before plants appeared on land, shows just how very old they are.

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Our fish need cold, clean water to survive, but they’re getting less and less of it. Dams block access. Climate change is now looming to exacerbate the threat, and it increases the urgency. All of these things are pushing our fish toward extinction. If we allow these fish to go extinct, we’ve allowed the deterioration of the streams and rivers.

The bull trout has already gone extinct as a result of Shasta and McCloud Dam. Unfortunately, I don’t think waiting until 2020 to possibly remove the Klamath Dams is quick enough action.

Image:  Eric Luse / The Chronicle

One of the teams’ challenges in constructing a working sensor was that the device had to spend considerable time in “sleep mode” to conserve its limited power supply. This was problematic in that something was needed to “wake” the system up so it can do what it was intended to do. To solve this problem, the team invented a tiny clock mechanism to periodically wake the device up. The clock runs continuously on just 1 nanowatt of power, and, when fully turned on, uses just 350 millivolts (about one quarter the power of a AA battery).

Parviz points out that the nano-scale is not just a matter of size, but also one of power usage, and he anticipates more uses for such devices as a new generation of nano-electronics comes on-line.

The exact cause of this electrical tree power is not entirely understood but may involve the flow of dissolved mineral ions in the tree’s xylem–the specialized cells just inside of the tree’s cambium layer that transport water. And although too weak to ever replace solar power, tree-power can be used to monitor forest health, one tree at a time, and perhaps also monitor other signals from the environment (such as soil oxygen content, chemical signals from disease-causing pathogens, or heat increases that might indicate fire).

Additional co-authors of the paper include Eric Carlson and Ryan Ricchiuti, also of the UW. Research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Photo Credit: University of Washington

In what could be my biggest personal revelation since diving into the world of alternative energy, it dawned on me last week that the “western” biofuel players are certainly the loudest kids on the block, but not really the most important.

I spent a large part of my time at the conference just trying to sort out which of the dozens of excellent forums on biofuels, energy, and environmental quality I should attend. The rest of my time was taken up with trying to keep my head together enough to make sense of it all so I could convey it in a way that’s meaningful to you, my readers.

But, while running around like a kid in a candy store, I became aware that my understanding of biofuels was decidedly myopic. Up until last week, I was squarely focused on U.S., E.U., and, to a smaller extent, Brazilian policies — quite naturally and unapologetically, I might add. After all, I am a U.S. citizen and I have a profound connection to my country and it’s cultural peers.

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Field researchers from Karlsruhe’s Natural History Museum who made the discovery near Manaus, Brazil, say the species, which resembles miniature wasps and looks like no other, may date back around 120 million years, according to Reuters.

Martialis heureka, nicknamed the “Ant from Mars” due to its unusual features and heureka from its surprising discovery, the ants themselves are eyeless, pale in color, subterranean, and predatory, according to Wikipedia.

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"It’s a proven technology, but in an unproven environment," said Mr. Butcher, 27. "The idea of growing energy crops is not necessarily a new one; the idea of growing them on distributed sites on vacant land, in an urban context, is kind of a new idea."

Kind of. It’s happening elsewhere, in dribs and drabs. Monroeville’s Cardinal Resources plants poplar trees, which suck up toxic waste, at manufacturing sites around the country, but doesn’t convert those plants into fuels. In Los Angeles, a design team funded by the Annenberg Foundation has turned a 32-acre rail yard into a massive cornfield and garden. But that project, dubbed "Not a Cornfield," is more urban artwork than laboratory. The closest parallel can be found in Michigan, where Michigan State University researchers are turning a 2-acre dump site into land for biodiesel and ethanol crops.

Using plants, enzymes, fungi, or microorganisms to depollute contaminated areas isn’t an entirely novel concept. Phytoremediation - using plants to clean up the soil - has been practiced for centuries. Due to general increases in industrial pollution and the sheer potential of the idea, using naturally and (more recently) genetically-engineered organisms to ameliorate pollution has gained special emphasis in the last 20 years.

The CMU group is taking the next logical step in bioremediation by attempting to create a usable byproduct, in this case fuel:

GTECH [Growth Through Energy and Community Health], a nonprofit that sprang out of a master’s thesis, is hoping to bring all of the divergent threads together, stitching a strategy that will cleanse contaminated industrial land, occupy vacant urban plots and produce renewable fuels, the last of which happens to be one of the hot political topics du jour.

Test crops already have been planted. At the former LTV Steel site in Hazelwood, the GTECH crew has taken over six barren acres of fill and planted hybrid poplar trees, switchgrass and sunflowers. The first two can be reduced into cellulosic ethanol — that is, ethanol that isn’t corn- or grain-based — while sunflowers become conventional biodiesel.

Testing several types of crops is important, since each plant removes different contaminants. For example, ragweed and poplar trees sequester lead. Barley and sugar beets excel at removing salt and have commonly been used to desalinate agricultural land. Naturally occurring bacteria can be harnessed to assist in cleaning up oil spills. And sunflowers are apparently well-suited to remove arsenic and uranium from soils - just in case you had a chemical explosion or a nuclear meltdown.

It’s also important to find crops with properties conducive to making biofuels. Growing ethanol- or biodiesel-producing crops on contaminated land bypasses the food vs. fuel issue and could make more land available for cultivation.

But it isn’t clear that any of these crops will actually work for the intended purpose, especially on really polluted sites. Will it take a succession of several different crops or polyculture to fully remediate the soil? Will the plants even grow under such poor conditions? And more importantly for the project, will the biofuels meet ASTM fuel standards, considering the contaminant load they could contain?

"We’re not growing on even farmland, which is hard enough to grow on," said Ms. Koch, 33. "We’re growing on vacant properties, which are usually demolished houses that have brick and glass and cement and rebar and all kinds of terrible things. [Crop] quality is going to be a concern," especially in the first years. It’s a concern at Michigan State, too. Will the end product meet industry standards — and, should they come to pass, federal standards — for what makes usable biofuel?

Time will tell.  In any case, it’s a great idea, and the group deserves a nod:

"You’re going to see a lot more land, whether it’s a brownfield or otherwise, get utilized for crops like that. I wouldn’t be surprised to someday see all the highway grass be switchgrass instead," he said. Rather than paying PennDOT workers to mow grass along the sides of highways, farmers or biofuel companies might bid for the rights to harvest the switchgrass, which sprouts perennially and grows well in poor soil and cooler climates.

CMU grads want to use blighted industrial, residential sites to produce bio-fuel crops. July 10, 2007. Post-Gazette.
Wikipedia: Phytoremediation
Wikipedia: Bioremediation

Photo Credit: Post-Gazette

One of the teams’ challenges in constructing a working sensor was that the device had to spend considerable time in “sleep mode” to conserve its limited power supply. This was problematic in that something was needed to “wake” the system up so it can do what it was intended to do. To solve this problem, the team invented a tiny clock mechanism to periodically wake the device up. The clock runs continuously on just 1 nanowatt of power, and, when fully turned on, uses just 350 millivolts (about one quarter the power of a AA battery).

Parviz points out that the nano-scale is not just a matter of size, but also one of power usage, and he anticipates more uses for such devices as a new generation of nano-electronics comes on-line.

The exact cause of this electrical tree power is not entirely understood but may involve the flow of dissolved mineral ions in the tree’s xylem–the specialized cells just inside of the tree’s cambium layer that transport water. And although too weak to ever replace solar power, tree-power can be used to monitor forest health, one tree at a time, and perhaps also monitor other signals from the environment (such as soil oxygen content, chemical signals from disease-causing pathogens, or heat increases that might indicate fire).

Additional co-authors of the paper include Eric Carlson and Ryan Ricchiuti, also of the UW. Research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Photo Credit: University of Washington

This year, biologist E.O. Wilson was the recipient of one of the TED prizes, and his wish is on its way to becoming a reality. Wilson wants to bring about a catalogue of all the world's species in one place on the web: an Encyclopedia of Life that is accessible to all.

As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we're still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.

The people at TED tend to not just have big ideas, but to act on them. So it is no surprise that the Encyclopedia of Life is already underway. After the conference, Avenue A | Razorfish, an award-winning web design company, volunteered to help with the project. They have designed a gorgeous site that will soon house the encyclopedia. Many organizations are working together to begin filling the encyclopedia with information and making it possible for everyone to contribute content. In the age of Web 2.0, the Encyclopedia of Life will be the Wikipedia of all living things (past and present) on the planet. The video showing how the encyclopedia will work is a must-see.

This is a truly unique and ambitious project. Imagine having in-depth information on every single species on the planet available online, easily accessible to anyone. Scientists all over the world will be able to add data and information, and people can enter their own photos of plants and animals and place them on an interactive map. You can glimpse what the site will look like on the beautifully designed demonstration pages. It's obvious that good design has been part of this project from the beginning, and thanks to the folks at Avenue A | Razorfish, the extensive amount of information that will be part of the encyclopedia will be organized and well-presented. The Encyclopedia of Life is a wonderful example of great minds coming together to promote interest in nature, protect biodiversity, and make important information available and accessible to anyone. It brings together science, technology, and good design for the benefit of all the planet's life.

Links: Encyclopedia of Life, news coverage of the site launch, E.O. Wilson's talk at TED, About TED

One of the teams’ challenges in constructing a working sensor was that the device had to spend considerable time in “sleep mode” to conserve its limited power supply. This was problematic in that something was needed to “wake” the system up so it can do what it was intended to do. To solve this problem, the team invented a tiny clock mechanism to periodically wake the device up. The clock runs continuously on just 1 nanowatt of power, and, when fully turned on, uses just 350 millivolts (about one quarter the power of a AA battery).

Parviz points out that the nano-scale is not just a matter of size, but also one of power usage, and he anticipates more uses for such devices as a new generation of nano-electronics comes on-line.

The exact cause of this electrical tree power is not entirely understood but may involve the flow of dissolved mineral ions in the tree’s xylem–the specialized cells just inside of the tree’s cambium layer that transport water. And although too weak to ever replace solar power, tree-power can be used to monitor forest health, one tree at a time, and perhaps also monitor other signals from the environment (such as soil oxygen content, chemical signals from disease-causing pathogens, or heat increases that might indicate fire).

Additional co-authors of the paper include Eric Carlson and Ryan Ricchiuti, also of the UW. Research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Photo Credit: University of Washington