Nov 18 2011

Galactic Process

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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 gas and stretches their star-forming epoch to over 10 billion years.
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Nov 18 2011

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

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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 administrator, told the program in a segment seen by Reuters that is to be broadcast over the weekend. The EPA in June delayed the proposed rules on power plants, which are the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, saying it needed more time after talking with businesses, states and green groups. It delayed them again in September. Republicans in the House of Representatives have waged a war on EPA clean-air regulations, saying such rules will kill jobs and add costs to businesses suffering in a battered economy. In September, President Barack Obama directed the EPA to delay a major rule on smog-forming pollutants until 2013, forcing Jackson to embrace a George W. Bush-era smog rule she previously described as legally indefensible. The move led some environmentalists and health groups to worry the administration would subject other clean-air rules to long delays.
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Nov 17 2011

Starving Bacteria

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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. During an infection there is a tendency to starve bacteria under certain conditions. How can this be reversed? "Bacteria become starved when they exhaust nutrient supplies in the body, or if they live clustered together in groups know as biofilms," said the lead author of the paper, Dr. Dao Nguyen, an assistant professor of medicine at McGill University.
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Nov 17 2011

Ten-point plan to save the oceans

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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 in South Africa set targets and timetables to achieve those goals.
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Nov 11 2011

Solar Design From MIT Does Double Duty

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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.
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Nov 11 2011

The First Stars

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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 the results -- the full-grown stars were much smaller than expected.
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Nov 11 2011

First Green House Gas Permit

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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 in Llano County, Texas. LCRA is modernizing and expanding its plant by replacing its 37 year old unit with a new more efficient and reliable natural gas powered unit.
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Nov 11 2011

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

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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 avoid fragile territory in the Sand Hills of Nebraska dismayed the Canadian government, which had lobbied assiduously for the $7 billion project. It also drew a harsh reaction from the oil industry and from Republicans in Congress who accused Obama of sacrificing jobs for the sake of his reelection. The State Department suggested that looking at new routes for the pipeline within the state of Nebraska would take until at least the first quarter of 2013, well beyond the November 6, 2012 U.S. election. The department had previously said it hoped to make a final decision by the end of this year.
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Nov 10 2011

The Use of Whiskers on Mammals

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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 Professor Tony Prescott from the University´s Department of Psychology, have shed new light on how rodents such as mice and rats move their whiskers back-and-forth at high speed and in varying ways to actively sense the environment around them in a behavior known as whisking. Whisking allows mice or rats to accurately determine the position, shape and texture of objects, make rapid and accurate decisions about objects, and then use the information to build environmental maps.
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Nov 10 2011

40% of Madagascar’s reptiles at risk of extinction

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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 in Madagascar, including snakes, lizards, crocodiles, turtles, and tortoises. Overall 22 were found to be critically endangered, or at immediate risk of going extinct.
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