Remarkably, it is the first ecosystem ever found having only one biological species. In utter darkness, total isolation, with no oxygen, and in 60-degree-Celsius heat (140 degrees Fahrenheit), the cave-dwelling, rod-shaped bacterium, Desulforudis audaxviator survives.

Trajectories of evolution have fitted the bacterium with the genes necessary to exist under a variety of different conditions. One such adaptation is the ability to survive by fixing nitrogen and carbon directly from the environment.

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Photo credits: Wired.com.

Entrepreuneur.com recently wrote an excellent guide for small business owners on proactive moves they can take to survive - and better yet, thrive - in the nose-diving economy.

“You Can Weather the Economic Storm (Product price sensitivity and financial creativity can help you thrive in any economy)” is especially relevant for green entrepreneurs as many of the principles underlying Dennis Romero’s advice aligns with what sustainable business leaders already know: go for local resilience, understand the value of community-based goodwill and when in doubt, simply, simplify, simplify to the bare essentials (do the latest farm-fresh food recipes or eco-cleaning supplies mantras sound familiar, anyone?).

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Kate Lister ad Tom Harnish, the folks behind the great telecommuting blog, Undress4Success, are writing a book called Undress4Success–The Naked Truth About Working From Home to be published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2009. The team have compiled a great deal of research and posit that work-at-home programs could reduce Gulf Oil Imports by almost 75%. If that’s accurate, it could be a game-changer.

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This year, the ozone hole extended to approximately 27 million square kilometers. This compared to 2007’s 25 million square kilometers and 2006’s 29 million square kilometers.

Want a size comparison? That’s about the size of the North American continent!

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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.

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Climate change effects such as this one aren’t unique to the coastal area of Peru– in fact they are now becoming the norm across the country’s ecologically diverse regions.

To better understand why Peru’s coast has become colder, an international team of researchers commenced work this week on a research project in the Pacific Ocean off of Peru’s coast.  They are using a variety of equipment, such as a satellite-controlled submarine, to collect data from the atmosphere and ocean. During the research, they also hope to learn more about the infamous and periodic El Nino and La Nina climate occurrences.

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CSR - HR = PR

(Corporate Social Responsibility - Human Resources = Public Relations)

I came across this “equation” yesterday while researching best green HR practices. It is a quote by Adine Mees and Jamie Bunham of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility from DRIVING SUCCESS: Human resources and sustainable development. They then followed with this:

If employees are not engaged, Corporate Social Responsibility becomes an exercise in public relations. The credibility of an organization will become damaged when it becomes evident that a company is not ‘walking the talk’.

Although some say that the verdict is still out when it comes to green initiatives for employees, I say not. Some studies say that while nice, offering green initiatives doesn’t actually affect employment decisions or employee satisfaction, the two metrics that actually mean something. However, when looking at the trend data, Green employee programs seem to make a lot of sense. Trend watcher Reinier Evers says that the rising importance of salient perks and benefits, which he calls “perkonomics“ is a development that should not be ignored. Studies show that female and younger employees increasingly want green HR initiatives. In another, 79% of Gen Y workers report that they would be more likely to accept a job offer at a green company than another company when evaluating two similar job offers. Another study found that 69% of Gen Y workers want their company to be more environmentally friendly. Working women (63%) feel the same way, compared to only 54% of men and 52% of Boomers.

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Environmentalists and anyone else attempting to derail wind farms have often turned to the fate of birds for scientific back up. In the case of the environmentalists, I’ll let it pass, but it’s when the senators and other politicians who have never shown an ounce of interest in the outdoors – let alone an animal in the outdoors – jump on the “PROTECT THE BIRDS” bandwagon that gets me riled up (among a host of other things).

Thankfully, new research out of England has lain to rest at least some of the claims saying that wind farms, and to a lesser extent singular wind turbines, represent a real threat to bird populations.

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During a recent sea expedition the team successfully used the bacteria, which contains a protein that glows blue when viewed though a simple light-detecting device, to detect oil.

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And now, thanks to Virgin Galactic, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be getting a bit more data to continue their never ending quest to understand planet Earth.

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And now, thanks to researchers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Center for Space Research (CSR) in America, a new and accurate picture of Greenland’s shrinking ice cap has been formulated.

Subsequently, the researchers have found that Greenland is currently responsible for an annual increase of sea levels of up to half a millimeter.

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This will involve the setting up of crop banks and seed vaults, so to speak, in developing countries that depend on staples such as corn and rice, to tap on their valuable ’sustainability traits’ as a way of conserving the diversity of the world’s food crops.

In attempts to boost food security, crops from banana to sweet potato will be screened to identify material that plant breeders can use to produce varieties adapted to conditions associated with climate change.

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The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson’s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt.

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I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not with the results of a recent survey by Responsible Travel. If you’re not familiar with this website and you’re planning a vacation, here’s a little bit about them from their site.

Since 2001, we’ve been handpicking inspiring holidays from all over the globe to give you a fantastic experience and make a real difference to local people and the environment. We were the first people to link up travelers and responsible operators and places to stay in this way, and still offer the largest selection of responsible holidays anywhere on the web!

A recent survey they conducted found that women were more likely than men to book an eco vacation.

The study revealed over two thirds (67%) of people who booked one of Responsible Travel’s ethical holidays online were women.

Not to be too hasty, the folks at responsible travel are quick to mention that:

… this doesn’t necessarily mean that women are necessarily more environmentally-savvy than men when it comes to travel, it may be just because they’re normally the ones who organize vacations.

This squares with travel industry statistics that show that 70% of all travel decisions are made by women.

So what does this mean for the ecopreneurial travel company?

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A chemical equator - an atmospheric line - discovered by scientists suggests the existence of a 50 kilometer-wide boundary between polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere and the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere.

In a model, the red that represents high levels of carbon monoxide present in the air in the Northern Hemisphere gives way to blue that reflects clean air of the South; in between, a white-colored ‘chemical equator’ separates them.

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A research group at the University of Texas at Austin has taken a carbon-based nanomaterial called graphene, and developed it into a device that has the potential to vastly improve upon the energy storage capacity of batteries. Reportedly, graphene could also double the current maximum storage capacity of the group of battery alternatives known as ultracapacitors.

If the research group’s findings bear out when applied to reality, it could mean a complete phase change in the way we approach energizing not only our transportation sector, but our entire energy infrastructure.

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Ever since I first saw Ernie and almost the entire felt-cast of Sesame Street do “The Rubber Duck, Duck” dance on Sesame Street, I have had a strange fascination with rubber ducks. They aren’t the common toy here in Australia that they appear to be elsewhere. And though looking back at that video now presents me with a bit of a moral and architectural dilemma, considering just how many people are naked together in that tub, my love for the rubber duck continues.

And now, once again, the rubber duck is coming to the aid of science. US rocket scientist Alberto Behar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has sent 90 rubber ducks into the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland in an attempt to figure out what is happening inside Greenland’s fastest moving glacier.

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Scientists with National Center for Atmospheric Research hope that the findings will open new doors to study how plants impact air quality, but also to develop a warning system to tell farmers when crops are beginning to fail. Scientists have long-known that plants in laboratory settings can produce aspirin-like chemicals, but this study is first known record of plants emitting noticeable levels of the chemical into an ecosystem when under stress.

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Under a scenario that is nothing short of fairy tale-optimistic and unrealistic, a pair of authors from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has predicted a minimum warming of 2.4° C (4.3° F) above pre-industrial levels.

And even an increase that is seemingly that small, falls within the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) threshold range of temperature increase that would see a massive loss of biodiversity, deglaciation and a variety of other negative environmental effects.

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