Green Options

Over the last 4 years Dr. Steve Sweetman has discovered many ancient species previously unknown to humans. He has unearthed and identified eight dinosaurs, many reptiles and six very small mammals - all from the time of the dinosaurs. One of the dinosaur fossils is a type of velociraptor that he measured as 6 meters in length.

In Lake Huron, one of North America’s Great Lakes, sinkholes formed by water erosion host exotic organisms in what looks like an alien world.

Instead of the large fish common to the rest of the lake, the bizarre life forms that thrive in the lake’s sinkholes include purple cyanobacteria, ghostly floating pony-tails, and other organisms similar to those found in Antarctic sinkholes and deep-sea, hydrothermal vents.

“You have this pristine fresh water lake that has what amounts to materials from 400 million years ago … being pushed out into the lake,” says team co-leader Steven A. Ruberg of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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.

British engineers have developed a new environmentally friendly cement that is carbon-negative.

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers.

The new environmentally friendly formulation means the cement industry could change from being a “significant emitter to a significant absorber of CO2,” says Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based Novacem, whose invention has garnered support and funding from industry and environmentalists.

The new cement, which uses a different raw material, certainly has a vast potential market. Making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions - more than the entire aviation industry. And the long-term trends are upwards: a recent report by the French bank Credit Agricole estimated that, by 2020, demand for cement will increase by 50% compared to today.

By doping honey bees with cocaine, researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered evidence that the insect brain has a reward system.

The famous “waggle” dance of honey bees is a complex language that allows foraging bees to communicate the distance, direction and quality of a food source to the rest of the hive. The study showed that honey bees on cocaine tend to dance more, without relation to the quality of food or state of the hive. Given the effects of cocaine on people, hyperactivity may seem like a fairly obvious reaction. However, the implications of the study suggest something that has not been found before: a reward system in the insect brain.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a new way of storing energy from sunlight that could lead to ‘unlimited’ solar power.

The process, loosely based on plant photosynthesis, uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. When needed, the gases can then be re-combined in a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity whether the sun is shining or not.

According to project leader Prof. Daniel Nocera, “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years. Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now, we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Archaeologists in China have discovered the fossilized remains of a feathered dinosaur the size of a pigeon believed to have lived millions of years before birds evolved but which may be an early avian ancestor.

The discovery of a 90% intact fossil preserved in a slab of rock at a site in Laioning Province in Inner Mongolia, heightens the notion that tiny-bodied, carnivorous bipedal dinosaurs are closely related to and most certainly evolved into birds.

Scientists have created a new material that could dramatically increase the efficiency of solar cells, by literally capturing every color of the rainbow.

Whereas other materials only catch a small range of light frequencies, and therefore only a small fraction of the potential energy, the new invention is capable of absorbing all the energy contained in sunlight. According to team leader, Prof. Malcolm Chisolm, “There are other such hybrids out there, but the advantage of our material is that we can cover the entire range of the solar spectrum.”

After revising estimates, Cuba now claims it has double the amount of oil in its offshore reserves than previously thought. If the estimates are accurate, Cuba would have just as much oil as the U.S.

This discovery, coupled with initiatives to develop alternative energy projects, such a brand new biogas factory, will put Cuba on the fast track to achieving energy independence.

A butterfly species that lives in Southeast Asia and some parts of Africa has been discovered on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

If the butterfly arrived by migrating or via human transportation remains unknown.

The discovery was made by a man named Jim Snyder, who has been photographing and observing butterfly species since his childhood.  When walking one day in March near the Waikiki library he noticed a unique set of butterflies that had different eye and wing colors compared to other species living in Hawaii. He also observed that they flew low to the ground– another unusual trait for the locality. There were only sixteen other species known to live on Hawaii’s islands prior to Snyder’s find.

In what could be a first in the world, a fish species in the cichlid family has been observed by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake and one of the world’s biggest fresh water bodies.

This may be remarkable because what is causing them to diverge are adaptations to their vision as animals and plants try to cope with increased pollution and the effects of climate change. The change is also happening without geographical isolation, which was thought to be a precursor for evolution.