Remember the Concorde? The supersonic passenger jet that flew from 1969 to almost 2000. It was not cost effective for the airlines, and extravagantly expensive for passengers. It was also cramped. The luxury was being able to fly from New York to London in about 3 hours! The Concorde had a big problem, the sonic…

Tomorrow is Father’s day and animals are not normally thought of as being good fathers. For most species, the mothers do most of the work feeding and nurturing their young. Owl monkeys appear to be an exception! If there were a competition for “best father” in the animal kingdom, owl monkeys might very well win.…

Using too much fertilizer is a very bad idea. It doesn’t help crops, and in fact can be harmful to them. Excess fertilizer runs off and contributes to river and stream contamination and a new study shows that it is bad for the climate too! But farmers sometimes think that if some is good, more…

Plants make and store energy from the sun using a process called photosynthesis. This process has evolved on planet earth over millions of years. How can we mess with plant DNA to improve on what nature has evolved? Three research teams–each comprised of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom–have been awarded a…

Commercial buildings use large amounts of electricity and natural gas. Significant reductions in energy use can be achieved by installing new modern systems but this requires a significant capital cost, It is possible to install modern control systems at much lower cost and these can also significantly reduce energy use, and improve comfort at the…

We are very concerned with the changing climate on Earth. The climate on other planets is more difficult to study, and direct observations are impossible, save some observations from the Mars rovers. Jupiter has an atmosphere that is very different from Earth’s. The prominent Giant Red Spot, a swirling anti-cyclonic storm larger than Earth, appears…

As the Eastern US ends what seems to have been the most severe winter in memory, it is hard to remember that the global climate is still warming. A severe winter in a region doesn’t mean that the entire hemisphere had an extreme winter. And it really doesn’t imply much about long term trends. A…

It has long been said by fitness trainers that building and maintaining muscle mass is important to vitality, stamina, and weight control as we age. But does it also contribute to longevity? Apparently it does! New UCLA research suggests that the more muscle mass older Americans have, the less likely they are to die prematurely.…

Climate scientists rely on models to predict how the weather and climate will respond to changes in variable such as CO2 emissions, natural methane emissions, solar intensity and a host of other factors. No individual model can claim to accurately predict future climate. So it is very important to look at multiple models and compare…

The federal Superfund program seems to go on forever for many sites. So it is good news that a large portion of the contamination at the former EL Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine, CA has been deemed remediated enough to be removed from the Superfund list. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week…