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December 30 2011
When Good Flowerbeds Go Bad: A Story of Chemistry in Action
White gates turning black in Belgrade.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, a fortress of white limestone was built between the River Sava and the Danube in what is now Serbia. It later gave its name—Belgrade, or “white fortress”—to the city that sprang up within and outside its walls, and in the twenty-first century, after more than a millennium of attacks by Huns, Bulgarians, Byzantines, more Bulgarians, Turks, and what-have-you, Belgrade fortress met its harshest enemy yet: fertilizer.
Our story starts with scientists trying to figure out why the fortress’s legendary white walls were turning black . They took samples of the corrosion and examined it with a number of chemistry techniques to determine what it was made of, finding, as they had expected, that the black hue was partly due to sulfur dioxide released by the coal-burning fires heating the surrounding houses. Too much sulfur dioxide in damp air will trigger a chemical reaction in limestone, causing white calcium carbonate to convert to black calcium sulfate.
But the researchers also found a substance called syngenite, which incorporates calcium, sulfur, and potassium. And that was strange, because syngenite, which often forms on medieval stained glass ...
November 29 2011
The Greatest Threats to da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”: Milan’s Dirty Air & Visitors’ Oily Skin
Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” has survived since the late 1400s on a wall in the Santa Maria delle Grazie Church in Milan, weathering centuries of change and intrigue, such as a World War II bombing. Worried about soiling from air pollution in the city, one of Western Europe’s most heavily polluted, curators installed a ventilation and filtration system to protect it in 2009. The system worked well at reducing levels of fine and coarse particulate matter within the church (according to a new study), which should save the painting from worst effects of air pollution.But a significant threat remains: fatty lipids and organic compounds, such as those emitted from the skin of the 1,000 people that visit the painting each day.
Researchers found elevated levels of lipids and organic compounds (including squalane) inside the chapel, compared to outside. These compounds can combine with soot and stick to and soil the painting, says University of Southern California researcher Nancy Daher. These organic compounds come from visitor’s skin, fire retardants, cleaners, and even wax used in earlier restorations of the painting itself. The researchers recommend finding a way to reduce airborne levels of these chemicals, ...
September 08 2011
If You Build a Ghost Town in the Desert, the Geeks Will Come
May 31 2011
May 27 2011
Officials Use Blue, Peelable Goo to Decontaminate Japan
Just pour and peel! Also slices and dices.
Put away that Swiffer—when you’ve got a real mess to clean up, turn to this blue goo.
Japanese officials looking to clean up radioactive contamination are applying a product called DeconGel to the problem. The usual method is distressingly Stone Age: soap and water applied by human beings. As you can imagine, there are a number of problems with this, like what to do with all that radioactive water, which has a tendency to leak all over the place, and what to do about radiation exposure of said human beings.
DeconGel, 100 buckets of which were donated to the relief effort by its manufacturer, CBI Polymers, looks to be a handy way to bypass all that. A radiation-mitigation expert working with Japanese officials put them on to it: “I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” he says, “and there’s nothing comparable to DeconGel out there that I know of today.” (via CNNMoney)
If you’ve ever used a lint roller, you’re familiar with the basic mechanics of DeconGel. The viscous blue goop is poured onto the contaminated surface, allowed to dry, and then peeled off like masking tape from a ...
May 17 2011
Small Particles Can Flow Up Waterfalls, Say Tea-Drinking Physicists
When the height is right, tea leaves zip up the
waterfall and go for a swim in the upper container.
It’s not just salmon that can leap nimbly up waterfalls, according to a new study in the physics arXiv: wee particles like tea leaves and industrial contaminants can flow upstream if conditions are right.
Cuban scientists first noticed this strange phenomenon while brewing yerba mate by decanting pure water from one container into another containing the tea leaves. Mysteriously, tea leaves sometimes appeared in the water container.
They investigated and found that when a waterfall from one container into another is no more than a centimeter high, the water’s flow generates a counterflow along the edges of the channel that goes in the opposite direction, drawing chalk powder and tea leaves up into the higher vessel. While scientists knew that such counterflows could form, the idea that they might persist even after the water goes over a waterfall is a kooky new take on it.
This map of the velocities of particles on the water’s
surface shows the counterflow in red and the main flow in blue.
It’s not all fun and water ...
An Underappreciated Weapon Against Air Pollution: Our Dead Skin
We humans have a whole lotta skin: The average adult human body has about 22 square feet of it. If you could step out of your skin and plop it on a scale (kids, don’t try this at home), it would weigh 8 pounds. And every minute, 40,000 of your dead skin cells flake off your body and join their brethren among the dust that accumulates in your home. Knowing how much dead skin we slough off, some scientists decided to test what that skin is up to, discovering that the oils in dead skin cells actually help reduce indoor air pollution.
The idea of linking skin cells with air pollution doesn’t take too much of a mental leap: Past research has shown that the natural organic compound known as squalene, which is found in human skin, hair, and clothing, chemically reacts with ozone and neutralizes it. “More than half of the ozone removal measured in a simulated aircraft cabin was found to be a consequence of ozone reacting with exposed, skin, hair, and clothing of passengers,” according to the American Chemical Society.
In this ...
May 10 2011
A Toast! To Scottish Homes Powered by Whisky
If you live in Scotland, the same whisky that energize your visits to the pub may also energize your home: Contracts are underway to construct a combined heat and power plant that runs on the leftovers of some of Scotland’s most famous distilleries. Scheduled to be up and running by 2013, this particular alcohol-powered project is Scotland’s first whisky-fueled energy project that will provide electricity to the public.
Sixteen whisky labels located in Speyside, Scotland—including Glenfiddich, Chivas Regal, and Famous Grouse—will contribute material to the new power plant. They’ll transport their spent grains (or draff) from the distilleries to the biofuel plant, where it’ll be combined with wood chips and burned, generating over 7.0 MW of power. This energy output—about the same as two large wind turbines—is expected to power at least 9,000 homes. In addition, the residue called pot ale, which accumulates in the distilleries’ copper stills, will be turned into animal feed and fertilizer for nearby farmers.To minimize the energy used to run the plant and ensure the process is energy efficient, no draff will be collected from distilleries farther than 25 miles away. Still, while Sam ...
April 08 2011
If the Catastrophic Weather Events Don’t Get Us, the Stupidity Might
What global warming?
What the weather’s like affects some people’s beliefs about global climate change, a new study found: On hot days, they’re all over it, but on cold days, they’re not so sure.
This is not impressive, people. It’s called “global,” meaning not just what you personally felt when you walked out the door this morning. “Climate” also means something different from “weather”, and “change” could mean things will get warmer, colder, or just plain different. On unusually chilly days, these climatically labile folks are 0 for 3.
If only that was the worst of it. A string of studies have shown that people are comically bad at consistently thinking, well, anything when it comes to climate change. Even miniscule differences in what we’re up to at the moment or how we’re asked can have a big effect on what people think of climate change and what they’re willing to do to help. Here are five more ridiculously simple things that get people to change their minds:
What’s on TV. I’m sure you all remember the 2004 hit film The Day After Tomorrow, in which global warming throws Earth into a new ...
March 08 2011
Ultimate Green Burial: Frozen & Vibrated Into Dust, Kinda Like a Terminator
Sure, your life is pretty green. You bike to work, recycle, and use energy-saver light bulbs. But what about after you are done all that living? How can you turn your green lifestyle into a green deathstyle?
Two words: liquid nitrogen. A sweedish company, called Promessa Organic Burial says they’ve discovered the greenest possible way to bury your loved ones: freeze them in liquid nitrogen and then use sonic waves to shatter their body, a la T-1000 in Terminator 2.
The website describes the process and even provides a nice illustration:
Within a week and a half after death, the corpse is frozen to minus 18 degrees Celsius and then submerged in liquid nitrogen. This makes the body very brittle, and vibration of a specific amplitude transforms it into an organic powder that is then introduced into a vacuum chamber where the water is evaporated away.
The powdered, dehydrated remains of your body are then packaged neatly into a small cornstarch box and buried to rot away and be reabsorbed into the earth within 12 months.
As biologist and Promessa’s head of operations Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak puts it
February 17 2011
$10,000-Gizmo Lets You Turn Plastic Bags Back Into Petroleum
You could be spared the guilt of forgetting your eco-friendly cloth shopping bag on the trip to the grocery: A Japanese inventor has created the first home recycling system that can convert all those extra plastic bags back into oil.
His name is Akinori Ito, and his invention is now for sale through Blest Corporation. According to the website, one model–the Desk-top Waste Plastic Oiling System–weighs a mere 110 pounds. But the best part is that this non-polluting conversion process is also highly efficient: two pounds of plastic can be converted into one quart of oil using a mere kilowatt of power.
It works by capturing the vapors released by heated plastic, and then funneling them through a network of pipes and water chambers, which gradually cool the vapors until they coalesce back into crude oil–where the plastics originally came from.
That process creates oil that can power certain types of stoves and generators–and more refining can turn it into gasoline. But as Clean Technica duly notes:
Of course, the end product of this conversion system is still fuel that must be burned, and thus, it will ...
February 04 2011
Video: See the First Aerial Footage of an Uncontacted Amazonian Tribe
In the rainforest along the border between Brazil and Peru, an indigenous tribe is ignoring the 21st century and living life the old-fashioned way. Experts believe this “uncontacted tribe” has had no direct contact with mainstream society, but the Brazilian government has known about the tribe for 20 years and routinely flies above the settlement to check on the inhabitants’ well-being.
NOw, the BBC has released the first ever video footage of this tribe, which had previously only been seen in photographs:
The footage was filmed in cooperation with the Brazilian government, and was featured on the BBC’s Human Planet series. It was shot in the summer of 2010 along the Peru-Brazil border using a zoom lens that allowed the crew to film from more than a half-mile away.
The Brazilian government flies over the settlements once a year to check on the tribe. As José Carlos Meirelles, the Indian-affairs specialist who led the video expedition, explains to National Geographic:
“They always get scared when they see an aircraft, but this tribe is used to seeing commercial flights—Boeings and local jets—flying over the region…. I prefer to get them scared once a year—and make sure they are healthy, growing ...
January 26 2011
To Help Reindeer Thrive in a Globally Warmed World–Castrate Them?
The chain of cause and effect seems clear: climate change causes Arctic temperatures to fluctuate, which causes ice build-up as snow repeatedly thaws and refreezes. And to Arctic reindeer herders–who want their herds to continue to eat the nice lichen underneath all that ice–the next link in this chain is also clear: castrate your reindeer.
That’s what researchers have decided will help the Arctic’s indigenous people–the Sami–thrive as our world continues to warm up. As Reuters reports:
“Males castrated in the traditional way would have an increased chance of survival over other males since they maintain body weight and condition during the rutting season,” according to a research document by Eli Risten Nergaard of Sami University College.
But that’s not all. Researchers have found that castrated male reindeer are larger than their un-castrated brethren, are therefore better able to pound through the thick Arctic ice; they’re also more willing to share their food with calves. In other words, castrated male reindeers facilitate the survival of the entire herd–that is, assuming they’re not all castrated.
“To make herds more resilient in ...
January 07 2011
Beef Fat Spill Turns the Houston Ship Channel Into a Clogged Artery
Fat is in the news: Not just because of the world’s obesity problems, but because one agriculture company accidentally fattened up the Houston Ship Channel on Tuesday by spilling 15,000 gallons of beef tallow into it.
The fat was in an onshore storage tank owned by agricultural company Jacob Sterns and Sons, which for unknown reasons leaked about 250,000 gallons of animal fat. About 15,000 gallons seeped into the channel through a storm drain, and immediately solidified after hitting the water, Coast Guard spokesman Richard Brahm told The Wall Street Journal:
“Luckily the stuff is easy to clean up,” Mr. Brahm said. “It solidifies at room temperature, so as soon as it hit the water it just kind of sat there.”
The floating fat looks like a collection of dirty little icebergs (officially called “patties”), but is causing some problems. Three quarters of the northern end of the channel had to be shut down for the cleanup effort–luckily it didn’t block tanker traffic along the waterway.
The US Coast Guard helped clean up the fat in the channel, and finished pitch forking and booming the ...
January 05 2011
Unwanted Christmas Trees Find a Home–at the Bottom of a Lake
Oh Christmas trees, oh Christmas trees, what should we do with your corpses?
Here’s an idea that seems to be working well: Use them as fish habitats. Surprisingly, the trees are prefect for the job, Pete Alexander told The New York Times:
“Christmas trees are perfect — just the right size and weight,” said Mr. Alexander, the fisheries program manager for the East Bay Regional Park District, which is based in Oakland, Calif. “And we get them free, because vendors want to get rid of them.”
After the holidays are over, the group gets leftover trees from vendors, ties a bunch of trees together, and sticks them at the bottom of a lake. The trees quickly grow algae and attract fish to the area–which also attracts fishermen. Every year the workers build a habitat in a new lake, and The New York Times reports that the structures last about five years:
“They last a pretty long time — about five years in the lake,” said Lee Mitchell, a natural resource specialist for the Army Corp of Engineers, who is leading a similar campaign ...
January 04 2011
What to Do With Troublesome Invasive Species: 1) Eat Them, 2) Wear Them
Sick of invasive snakes eating through your wiring and biting your babies? Don’t have any tylenol-doped mice to lob at them? You might be in luck, we have a few ideas of what to invasive species that insist on making pests of themselves.
Idea #1: Make Them Into Dinner
Become a part of the “invasivore” movement by ingesting some tasty lionfish (pictured) or asian carp, and by nomming on some kudzu or Japanese knotweed. One “almost serious” invasivore, Rachel Kesel, blogged on the subject and talked to The New York Times:
She said in an interview that she was studying in London when she wrote the post, which grew out of conversations about diet and ecology. “If you really want to get down on conservation you should eat weeds,” she decided. And so she blogged. She now works for the parks department of San Francisco and said she did indeed pursue the vegetable side of the diet she proposed. “I’m really looking forward to some of our spring weeds here,” she said, notably Brassica rapa, also known as ...
December 21 2010
GM Recycles Oil-Soaked Booms From BP Spill Into Parts for Chevy Volt
The Chevy Volt is taking aim at the green market. Not only did it nab the 2010 green car of the year award, but it’s also helping to clean up the mess that big oil company BP made in the Gulf of Mexico.
GM is recycling 10,000 pounds of oil-soaked booms from the gulf into parts for the Volt. Instead of sending the booms to landfills, their absorbent polypropylene (which bears plastic-recycling #5) filler will be cleaned and recycled, GM said in the press release:
“This was purely a matter of helping out,” said John Bradburn, manager of GM’s waste-reduction efforts. “If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down, and we didn’t want to see the spill further impact the environment. We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.”
The used booms will be resurrected as an auto part that deflects air from the radiator; boom material will make up 25 percent of the part, with 25 percent coming from recycled tires and the rest from post-consumer recycled plastics and other polymers. The parts are made with the collaboration of four different companies: Heritage Environmental collected the booms, Mobile Fluid Recovery dried them, Lucent Polymers transformed the material into a resin for die-mold production, and GDC Inc. produced the components, the company explained in the press release:
“Creative recycling is one extension of GM’s overall strategy to reduce its environmental impact,” said Mike Robinson, GM vice president of Environment, Energy and Safety policy. ”We reuse and recycle material by-products at our 76 landfill-free facilities every day. This is a good example of using this expertise and applying it to a greater magnitude.”
GM is now trumpeting some major “green company” status: the company says its facilities recycle 90 percent of the waste they generate, their cars and trucks are at least 85 percent recyclable, and more than half of its worldwide facilities are landfill-free—all manufacturing waste is recycled or used to create energy.
Related content:
Discoblog: Back to The Future: The First Green Flying Car Is Ready For Takeoff
80beats: How Would You Like Your Green Car: Hydrogen-Powered, or With a Unicycle on the Side?
80beats: Around the World in 80 Days: Electric Car Race Begins
80beats: From GM: A 2-Wheeled, Electric, Networked Urban People Mover
80beats: Improved Batteries for Electric Cars Could Recharge in Seconds
80beats: Isn’t It Ironic: Green Tech Relies on Dirty Mining in China
DISCOVER: The Next Source of Green Energy: Your Car Itself
DISCOVER: 6 Blue-Sky Ideas for Revolutionizing the Automobile (Gallery)
Image: Flickr/uscgd8
December 15 2010
Are Gun-Toting Climate Skeptics Taking Pot Shots at Wind Turbines?
It seems wind turbines aren’t just stirring up energy, but a fair bit of emotion, too. And when that emotion comes in the form of gunshots, it makes the news.
In early December someone sabotaged poor wind turbine number 8 in a wind farm in Bingham township, Michigan by taking out its transformer. The Huron Daily Tribune reports:
A hole found in the transformer’s radiator resulted in damage, which caused oil to leak out. The exact amount of damage to the $50,000 transformer was not reported. The hole in the transformer, according to police, appears to be from a small caliber firearm…. Huron County Sheriff Kelly J. Hanson said the damage to the transformer appears to be “intentional sabotage.”
The hole in the wind turbine’s transformer caused it to break down, which resulted in the turbine overheating and automatically shutting down. The shooter remains on the lam, and his motives are not clear, says Treehugger:
We can’t be sure that the shots fired near Ubly, Michigan, were indeed by a wind power opponent, or coal lover. Maybe it was just a bored kid stupidly destroying private property. Actually, the bored kid is a better scenario than another possibility: Someone who doesn’t like wind turbines, and the renewable energy they produce.
The incident in Michigan isn’t the first of its kind. Problems have also cropped up near Geistown, Pennsylvania in May, including a shooting while two workers were performing maintenance on the turbine–literally putting them in the line of fire. The county is offered a $2,000 reward for information on the shooter, local District Attorney Kelly Callihan told the Tribune Democrat:
“We have had multiple incidents around Portage. On May 10, it escalated to a point where lives were endangered,” District Attorney Kelly Callihan said Tuesday during a press conference…. “There were maintenance workers up on the tower.”
The problem isn’t restricted to the United States; it seems people are getting gun-shooting angry over wind turbines all over the world. In Romania, the company building a wind farm had to hire bodyguards to protect it, and they were forced to fire rubber bullets to keep outsiders off the company’s land.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Are Wind Turbines Killing Innocent Goats?
Discoblog: Did an “Alien Octopus” Destroy a British Wind Turbine?
Discoblog: LHC Shut Down By Wayward Baguette, Dropped by Bird Saboteur
The Intersection: When Wind Turbines Over Rotate
80beats: Offshore Wind Farming Gets a Giant Google Boost
80beats: Feds Green-Light the Nation’s First Offshore Wind Farm
Image: flickr / Retinafunk
December 06 2010
How to Prep for Oil Spills: Dump 210,000 Gallons of Popcorn in the Water
One large bucket of popcorn, please, hold the salt, oil, and butter. Actually, make that 210,000 gallons of popcorn. We have an oil spill to re-enact.
Brazilian oil spill clean-up experts leapt into action last week to clean up a popcorn spill that makes movie theater accidents seem pretty tame. It turns out that popcorn makes a good approximation for spilled oil, explains the EFE, a Spanish news agency:
Although it sounds quaint, popcorn has been used to replace oil in simulations for over ten years by [Petrobras]. After testing seeds and grains, the experts found several positive factors in the popcorn: it is biodegradable–prepared without salt and no cooking oil–gives good flotation and serves as food for fish.
The popcorn spill was set up in the Rio Negro outside of Manaus, Brazil by the oil company Petrobras and the Brazilian navy. The organizations were keen to test their readiness to respond to spills because oil companies drill in the nearby Amazon, and transport their oil through the river’s delta. Petrobras’ spokesperson explained to EFE:
“Major emergencies do not happen often, then it is a fantastic opportunity to exercise the team and technology,” said regional manager of Petrobras’ contingency, Márcio Derton, who completed stating that “contingency is the keyword of the moment.”
The flood of popcorn was supposed to simulate a mid-sized tanker running around in the river and spilling several thousand gallons of oil over several days. National and international crews were called in to contain the spill, explains Treehugger:
Fortunately, it didn’t take long before an oil company’s emergency clean-up crew was mobilized to tackle the floating patches of popped kernels with around 30 boats, 6,500 feet of containment boom, and five skimmers as airplanes coordinated the effort overhead.
The simulation was part of the International Mobilization, Preparedness & Response Exercise meeting, and was the first to simulate oil clean-up in flowing river water, instead of at sea.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Heart-Stopping Cinematic Excitement: Guess How Much Fat Is in Movie Popcorn?
Discoblog: The Sweet Sound of Seepage: Listening to the Oil Spill
80beats: Massive Coral Die-Off Found Just 7 Miles from BP Oil Spill Site
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill: Do Chemical Dispersants Pose Their Own Environmental Risk?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Oil-eating bacteria have started to clean the Deepwater Horizon spill
DISCOVER: The Physics of…Popcorn
Image: Último Segundo/Bruno Rico
November 19 2010
Is This the Peak of Peak Panic? Peak Chocolate, Peak Maple Syrup, & More
![Now, this is one peak you've probably heard a lot about. But you may not know that it already happened--about four years ago, according to <a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/is-peak-oil-behind-us/?partner=rss&emc=rss" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>:
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Production of conventional crude oil--the black liquid stuff that rigs pump out of the ground--probably topped out for good in 2006, at about 70 million barrels a day. Production from currently producing oil fields will drop sharply in coming decades, the [International Energy Agency's annual] report suggests.</p>
<p>Although oil may be past its peak, oil use is definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. The IEA is predicting that after a short dip, oil production will continue on a relatively steady plateau for at least another 25 years, as new oil fields are discovered and exploited. But energy demand is still rising, especially from China. Peak oil, in turn, could directly cause peak coal, says <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/11/should-we-be-planning-for-the-end-of-cheap-coal.ars" target="_blank">Ars Technica</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">If oil prices remain high and governments make progress on their emissions goals, there's a possibility that the world has already hit peak oil, and that the next few years will see its use plateau for a while before dropping again. Using these same assumptions, the report also said that we could hit peak coal somewhere within the next 20 years.</p>](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gallery/albums/peak-everything/2-oil.jpg "Peak Oil")
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