ENN
Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Una encuesta del Instituto de Investigación PEW llamada "Política del Clima", mostró una bolsa con todo tipo de materiales para los observadores de la industria energética, revelando que una parte de los estadounidenses que apoyan el uso de combustibles fósiles se expandió, mientras que casi todos apoyan las energías renovables.
Lignocellulosic biomass—plant matter such as cornstalks, straw, and woody plants—is a sustainable source for production of bio-based fuels and chemicals. However, the deconstruction of biomass is one of the most complex processes in bioenergy technologies. Although researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) had already uncovered information about how woody plants and waste biomass can be converted into biofuel more easily, they have now discovered the chemical details behind that process.
Geomorphologists who study Earth’s surface features and the processes that formed them have long been interested in how floods, in particular catastrophic outbursts that occur when a glacial lake ice dam bursts, for example, can change a planet’s surface, not only on Earth but on Mars. Now geoscience researchers Isaac Larsen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Michael Lamb at the California Institute of Technology have proposed and tested a new model of canyon-forming floods which suggests that deep canyons can be formed in bedrock by significantly less water than previously thought.
Tiny robots have been helping researchers study how climate change affects biodiversity. Developed by Northeastern University scientist Brian Helmuth, the “robomussels” have the shape, size, and color of actual mussels, with miniature built-in sensors that track temperatures inside the mussel beds.
In pictures, the Arctic appears pristine and timeless with its barren lands and icy landscape. In reality, the area is rapidly changing. Scientists are working to understand the chemistry behind these changes to better predict what could happen to the region in the future. One team reports in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry A that sea salt could play a larger role in the formation of local atmospheric pollutants than previously thought.
En una hora, la Tierra recibe suficiente energía del sol para satisfacer todas las necesidades energéticas de la humanidad durante un año. Sin embargo, el mundo utiliza poco más de uno por ciento de la energía del sol para nuestras necesidades de electricidad. Un obstáculo importante para poder aprovechar todo el potencial de la energía solar es que es intermitente, no podemos obtener un suministro constante de energía solar porque el sol no siempre brilla.
