Month: November 2011

  • Galactic Process

    New observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers’ understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements. This process allows galaxies to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years. This ongoing recycling keeps some galaxies from emptying their fuel tanks of interstellar…

  • EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson: EPA to propose utility carbon rules next year

    The top U.S. environmental regulator will propose early next year twice-delayed rules on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, she told the energyNOW television show. “I can’t tell you what the regulations say right now, but what we are planning to do is release them early next calendar year,” Lisa Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency…

  • Starving Bacteria

    Though it was known in the nineteenth century that bacteria are the cause of many diseases, no effective antibacterial treatments were available back then. In 1910, Paul Ehrlich developed the first antibiotic. Bacteria are also notorious for existing antibiotic treatments. A new study is showing that bacteria that are starving tend to resist antibiotics better.…

  • Ten-point plan to save the oceans

    The world has made lacklustre progress in meeting most of the commitments it made 20 years ago to safeguard the oceans, says a report. At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, agreements were made on issues such as sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, capacity building, and biodiversity; later, the Johannesburg Summit in 2002…

  • Solar Design From MIT Does Double Duty

    MIT researchers say a hybrid solar-thermoelectric system they’re working on would provide a big advantage over conventional solar cells or solar thermal systems, particularly for household use: the ability to produce heat and electricity simultaneously. They propose accomplishing this mean feat through a clever reconfiguration of the standard parabolic trough.

  • The First Stars

    The very first stars in our universe were not the giants scientists had once thought, according to new simulations performed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Astronomers grew stars in their computers, mimicking the conditions of our primordial universe. The simulations took weeks. When the scientists’ concoctions were finally done, they were shocked by…

  • First Green House Gas Permit

    Green house gases are such materials as Carbon Dioxide and Methane that are implicated in global warming. From a permitting point of view it is a new phenomena. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first Texas Greenhouse Gas (GHG) permit for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Thomas C. Ferguson Power Plant…

  • U.S. postpones Keystone XL pipeline decision past 2012 election

    The U.S. government on Thursday delayed approval of a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline until after the 2012 U.S. election, bowing to pressure from environmentalists and sparing President Barack Obama a damaging split with liberal voters he may need to win reelection. The decision to explore a new route for TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL oil pipeline to…

  • The Use of Whiskers on Mammals

    Whiskers, are specialized hairs usually employed for tactile sensation. Research from the University of Sheffield comparing rats and mice with their distance relatives the marsupial, suggests that moveable whiskers were an important milestone in the evolution of mammals from reptiles. Using high-speed digital video recording and automatic tracking, the research team, which was led by…

  • 40% of Madagascar’s reptiles at risk of extinction

    40 percent of Madagascar’s terrestrial reptiles are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss and over-collection for the pet trade, reports the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in its latest update of the Red List of Threatened Species. Experts from around the world conducted the assessment of 370 native terrestrial reptile species found…