Breathtaking http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21702743-air-quality-indices-make-pollution-seem-less-bad-it-breathtaking Air quality in big cities may cut ~1 year from life expectancy. London significantly worse than NYC
Posts Tagged ‘energyandenvironment’
Breathtaking |The Economist
August 12, 2016Professor Sir David MacKay, physicist – obituary
July 4, 2016QT:{{”
“It was here that the consumer could make a difference: “ ’Turn your thermostat down’ is, by my reckoning, the single best piece of advice you can give someone,” he told an interviewer. “So is ‘fly less’ and ‘drive less’. But hybrid cars and home windmills are just greenwash.”
David MacKay (with energy-efficient bicycle): ‘I love renewables, but I’m also pro-arithmetic’ Credit: Graham Turner
…
In July 2015 MacKay was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, for which he underwent chemotherapy, a process he documented on a blog, “Everything is Connected”.
On April 10, just four days before his death, he posted an “open letter” to the directors of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge in which he wrote: “The hospital is a great one, the staff are wonderful, and I’m grateful for everything the NHS does for me here. But I do have just one impassioned question and plea… Why oh why oh why does [the hospital] not have any semblance of intelligent thermal environmental control?””
“}}
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/04/15/professor-sir-david-mackay-physicist–obituary/
Obit quotes him days before his death: “Why oh why…does [the hospital] not have any…intelligent thermal…control?”
Ambient Energy Orb & Joule
April 30, 2016http://www.ambientdevices.com/
QT:{{”
Ambient Devices is the leading provider of displays and systems that deliver instant, effortless access to information at a glance. Ambient’s energy products, including the Energy Orb and new Energy Joule
“}}
A Radical Attempt to Save the Reefs and Forests
April 18, 2016An…Attempt to Save the Reefs & Forests
http://NewYorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/a-radical-attempt-to-save-the-reefs-and-forests Engineering the #chestnut tree to express OxO, a defense against its blight
QT:{{”
“Powell attended graduate school in the nineteen-eighties, around the same time as Gates, and, like her, he was fascinated by molecular biology. When he got a job at the forestry school, in 1990, he started thinking about how new molecular techniques could be used to help the chestnut. Powell had studied how the fungus attacked the tree, and he knew that its key weapon was oxalic acid. (Many foods contain oxalic acid—it’s what gives spinach its bitter taste—but in high doses it’s also fatal to humans.) One day, he was leafing through abstracts of recent scientific papers when a finding popped out at him. Someone had inserted into a tomato plant a gene that produces oxalate oxidase, or OxO, an enzyme that breaks down oxalic acid.
“I thought, Wow, that would disarm the fungus,” he recalled.
Years of experimentation ensued. The gene can be found in many grain crops; Powell and his research team chose a version from wheat. First they inserted the wheat gene into poplar trees, because poplars are easy to work with. Then they had to figure out how to work with chestnut tissue, because no one had really done that before. Meanwhile, the gene couldn’t just be inserted on its own; it needed a “promoter,” which is a sort of genetic on-off switch. The first promoter Powell tried didn’t work. The trees—really tiny
seedlings—didn’t produce enough OxO to fight off the fungus. “They just died more slowly,” Powell told me. The second promoter was also a dud. Finally, after two and a half decades, Powell succeeded in getting all the pieces in place. The result is a chestnut that is blight-resistant and—except for the presence of one wheat gene and one so-called “marker gene”—identical to the original Castanea dentata.”
“}}
San Francisco, ‘the Silicon Valley of Recycling’
April 4, 2016SF, the SV of #Recycling
http://www.NYTimes.com/2016/03/29/science/san-francisco-the-silicon-valley-of-recycling.html Describes a Willy-Wonka like center w/o the chocolate that has become a tourist attraction
QT:{{”
““It’s Willy Wonka’s everything-you-can-imagine-recycling place,” Mr. Reed said during the recent tour. The former freelance reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle loves talking about recycling and composting so much that it is as enjoyable “as a woman asking if she can give me a back rub.” he says.”
“}}
Methane Has Never Looked So Beautiful – NYTimes.com
March 19, 2016Methane Has Never Looked So Beautiful
http://NYTimes.com/2016/03/08/science/methane-has-never-looked-so-beautiful.html Me bubbling up in frozen lakes. Great #photos but ominous for #climatechange
The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare – The New York Times
February 29, 2016The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst
Nightmarehttp://NYTIMES.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html Scary account of the risks from unregulated flurochemicals incl #PFOA
QT:{{”
Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. P “}}
How Much Warmer Was Your City in 2015? – The New York Times
February 19, 2016How Much Warmer Was Your City in ’15
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/19/us/2015-year-in-weather-temperature-precipitation.html#new-haven_ct Great #viz of NHV’s freezing Feb. & hot Dec. HT@chaubtu
Stopping the big burp | The Economist
February 15, 2016Stopping the big burp
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21688374-researchers-new-zealand-are-trying-prevent-livestock-belching #Methane from livestock is a major greenhouse gas, perhaps reducible with genetic engineering
Solar Power for Everyone – The New Yorker
July 6, 2015Power to the people
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/power-to-the-people Will utilities go for refitting homes w/ solar & more insulation? Or will they resist?
linkstream2 microblog 