Green Options

Researchers at Michigan State University have patented a process for pretreating corn crop waste that they say will cut the cost of making cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels.

Cellulosic ethanol is made from wood pulp, grasses and crop wastes. The technology promises better energy output than corn-based ethanol, at prices that could be cost-competitive with gasoline.

A groundbreaking study has proved that man-made light sources can change natural light cycles, triggering abnormal animal behavior that often leads to injury and even death.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, confirms that polarized light pollution can cause confusion in creatures that rely on light ‘cues’ to navigate through their environment, with many animals also thrown off course by light reflecting from buildings.

On Monday a rumor started to spread around Michigan State’s campus. Barack Obama was coming to speak on Thursday, and the campaign had cleverly kept it under wraps until then.

It was a weird and improbable shotgun wedding of genetic material — one conducted by your drunk uncle Larry in a brothel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. One in which researchers successfully combined enzymes from a bacteria that normally resides in a cow’s gut with the genes of the leaves and stalk of a corn plant — and one in which the offspring from that marriage is a corn plant that can digest itself into the components needed to make ethanol.

Certainly, anything that can digest itself warrants a closer look — and now a company in Kansas has licensed that proprietary corn offspring, dubbed Spartan Corn III (it even sounds like a name your drunk uncle Larry would approve of), for the ultimate consummation of the marriage in a baptism of commercialization.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education announced on Friday four Campus Sustainability Leadership Awards in four different categories. Two other schools were named honorable mention. The awards were given during the 7th biennial Greening of the Campus conference held at Ball State University.

Chandler-Gilbert Community College (Chandler, AZ) won in the community college and other two-year institutions category. Green Mountain College (Poultney, VT) won in the four-year

[...]