Bill Gates Bets On Next-Gen Nuclear

original article:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/24/nuclear-power-innovation-technology-ecotech-bill-gates.html

snippets:

Bill Gates announced his plans to fund a viable, next-generation nuclear technology called a traveling-wave reactor.

Traveling-wave reactors have been discussed for decades as a cheaper and safer alternative to typical fission reactors, but until now the supercomputers required to make such technology possible were simply not affordable.

The prototype developed by TerraPower will rely upon Microsoft's supercomputing prowess and a whole lot of computer hardware--1,024 Xeon core processors assembled on 128 blade servers offering "over 1,000 times the computational ability as a desktop computer."

Instead of requiring enriched uranium, it can burn depleted uranium and other low-grade radioactive fuel stocks. It can also burn them for a long, long time. With this new reactor, a long-term reaction is created in which the waste from breeding the fuel is recombined to create more fuel inside the reactor. Theoretically, a nuclear reactor could operate for 100 years without changing the fuel rods, and the resultant waste would be much less radioactive than the waste of our modern-day reactors.

Even if Gates' billions combined with Toshiba's know-how does result in a full-scale industrial version of the traveling-wave reactor, it will be 10 years before one is constructed. The construction process itself will take five years.

Radiation Dose Chart

Original Image:

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Sperm Whales May Have Names

original article:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/sperm-whale-names/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))

snippets:

Subtle variations in sperm-whale calls suggest that individuals announce themselves with discrete personal identifier. To put it another way, they might have names.

The findings are preliminary, based on observations of just three whales, so talk of names is still speculation. But “it’s very suggestive,” said biologist Luke Rendell of Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. “They seem to make that coda in a way that’s individually distinctive.”

Rendell and his collaborators...have for years studied the click sequences, or codas, used by sperm whales to communicate across miles of deep ocean. In a study published last June in Marine Mammal Sciences, they described a sound-analysis technique that linked recorded codas to individual members of a whale family living in the Caribbean.

In that study, they focused on a coda made only by Caribbean sperm whales. It appears to signify group membership. In the latest study...they analyzed a coda made by sperm whales around the world. Called 5R, it’s composed of five consecutive clicks, and superficially appears to be identical in each whale. Analyzed closely, however, variations in click timing emerge. Each of the researchers’ whales had its own personal 5R riff....

Rendell stressed that much more research is needed to be sure of 5R’s function. “We could have just observed a freak occurrence,” he said....“This is just the first glimpse of what might be going on.”

That individual whales would have means of identifying themselves does, however, make sense. Dolphins have already been shown to have individual, identifying whistles. Like them, sperm whales are highly social animals who maintain complex relationships over long distances, coordinating hunts and cooperating to raise one another’s calves.

Sperm-whale coda repertoires can contain dozens of different calls, which vary in use among families and regions, as do patterns of behavior. At a neurological level, their brains display many of the features associated in humans with sophisticated cognition. Many researchers think that sperm whales and other cetacean species should be considered “non-human persons,” comparable at least to chimpanzees and other great apes.

Is That a Banana in Your Water?

original article:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110311-water-pollution-lead-heavy-metal-banana-peel-innovation/

snippets:

Banana peels are no longer just for composting or comedy shows: New science shows they can pull heavy metal contamination from river water.

Traditionally, water quality engineers have used silica, cellulose, and aluminum oxide to extract heavy metals from water, but these remediation strategies come with high price tags and potentially toxic side effects of their own.

Bananas, on the other hand, appear to be a safe solution. Banana peels also outperform the competition, says Gustavo Castro, a researcher at the Biosciences Institute at Botucatu, Brazil, and a coauthor of a new study on this new use of the fruit’s peel.

For the study, Castro and his team dried and ground banana peels, then combined them in flasks of water with known concentrations of metals. They also built water filters out of peels and pushed water through them.

In both scenarios, “the metal was removed from the water and remained bonded to the banana peels,” Castro said, adding that the extraction capacity of banana peels exceeded that of other materials used to remove heavy metals.

Previous work has shown that other plant parts—including apple and sugar cane wastes, coconut fibers, and peanut shells—can remove potential toxins from water.

Climate-smart agriculture is needed

original article:

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110302/full/news.2011.131.html?s=news_rss

snippets:

Between 70% and 80% of agricultural greenhouse-gas emissions, such as nitrous oxide, come from the production and use of nitrogen fertilizers. So future rises in food production must be achieved without corresponding boosts in fertilizer use, added Gordon Conway, professor of international development at Imperial College London.

Conway heralded the 'fertilizer trees' Faidherbia albida as the future, particularly for farmers in Africa. These trees, which reintroduce nitrogen to the soil, have been shown to quadruple African maize yields in soils with no artificial fertilizer added.

But David Powlson, a retired soil scientist with a visiting professorship at the University of Reading, UK, urged caution. He says that countries' fertilizer use should differ according to their stages of development, particularly in Africa, which has soils that are starved of key nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers elsewhere in the world, such as in China, "should not be used as an excuse not to give nitrogen fertilizers to Africa", he says.

When Energy Efficiency Sullies the Environment

Original Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/science/08tier.html?_r=1&src=recg

Snippets:

Energy-efficiency standards have been embraced by politicians of both parties as one of the easiest ways to combat global warming. Making appliances, cars, buildings and factories more efficient is called the “low-hanging fruit” of strategies to cut greenhouse emissions.

But a growing number of economists say that the environmental benefits of energy efficiency have been oversold. Paradoxically, there could even be more emissions as a result of some improvements in energy efficiency, these economists say.

The problem is known as the energy rebound effect. While there’s no doubt that fuel-efficient cars burn less gasoline per mile, the lower cost at the pump tends to encourage extra driving. There’s also an indirect rebound effect as drivers use the money they save on gasoline to buy other things that produce greenhouse emissions, like new electronic gadgets or vacation trips on fuel-burning planes....

“Efficiency advocates try to distract attention from the rebound effect by saying that nobody will vacuum more because their vacuum cleaner is more efficient,” Mr. Shellenberger said. “But this misses the picture at the macro and global level, particularly when you consider all the energy that is used in manufacturing products and producing usable energy like electricity and gasoline from coal and oil. When you increase the efficiency of a steel plant in China, you’ll likely see more steel production and thus more energy consumption....”

But if your immediate goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions, then it seems risky to count on reaching it by improving energy efficiency. To economists worried about rebound effects, it makes more sense to look for new carbon-free sources of energy, or to impose a direct penalty for emissions, like a tax on energy generated from fossil fuels. Whereas people respond to more fuel-efficient cars by driving more and buying other products, they respond to a gasoline tax simply by driving less.