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April 15, 2013

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4:45 PM | Southern Hemisphere’s Biggest Wind Farm Opens
Australia’s 420 MW Macarthur Wind Farm, largest in the Southern Hemisphere, featuring Vestas V112-3.0 MW turbines officially opened last Friday. Vestas CEO Ditlev Engel participated in the event, which included leading Australian state and federal government officials. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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2:52 PM | The “future” of clean coal – is not in our future
A new report from the CRS reveals the sad state of what many believe is an impossible venture – “clean coal” that involves capturing the CO2 released as the coal is burned: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/293655-report-federal-clean-coal-power-project-faces-uncertain-future
Energy and the Future
Biology | Energy
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2:20 PM | Canada Digs (up) Arizona, Recognizing a Recycling Hero, Sir David Speaks Out
By The Editors Saving desert for last: What, so pumping your filthy tar-sands oil through the middle of the American Grain Belt isn't enough for you, Canada? Now you want to dig up and ruin our national forests, too? A Canadian speculative mining outfit is planning "to blast a mile-wide, half-mile deep copper mine on 4,000 acres of the [Santa Rita] mountains, 50 miles southeast of Tucson," in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest. The battle over the mine […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment
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1:19 PM | ‘Halo’ Solar House Being Built in Sweden
A team from the Chalmers University of Technology is building a solar-powered house for the Solar Decathlon, a biennial competition run by the U.S. Department of Energy which this year would be held in China. The Swedish entry to the competition is a round structure that goes by the name of Halo. Last week, the walls of the house were raised in a tent at Chalmers. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy

April 12, 2013

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8:23 PM | EIA Launches Probably the Best Interactive Energy Data Portal Yet
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has launched a new section of its website focusing on interactive energy data. Found at www.eia.gov/state, the state energy portal contains an interactive energy map, various data layouts, charts, summary statistics and more. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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7:11 PM | Method for Increasing Geothermal Well Power Output Successfully Applied
U.S. Department of Energy, Ormat Technologies, Inc. and GeothermEx Collaboration have produced 1.7 additional megawatts of electricity using in-field Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS)—a new method that increases geothermal well power output. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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6:51 PM | Sometimes, not seeing is believing: animated GIFs of disabled bacteria
This post goes well with the last about bacterial stress. What if the stress is only perceived because the cell is missing an important protein needed to respond to a given stress? Let’s look at an example from Azospirillum brasilense. The protein named ChsA, which breaks down the second messenger cyclic-di-GMP, was deleted from A. [...]
Taking Science to the People
Microbiology | Energy
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6:30 PM | Beer Saved Human Civilization Once. Now It's Our Turn
By Jessica Camille Aguirre Without beer, human civilization wouldn’t exist. Twelve thousand years ago, the transition of the human race from nomadic hunter-gatherers to village-bound farmers relied on a secure source of liquid sustenance -- and water just wouldn't do. It was too easily contaminated, too hard to purify, and really good at spreading disease. "The solution was to drink alcohol," writes author Steven Johnson in his book about London's 1854 […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment
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5:20 PM | New Project to Decrease Uncertainty About Offshore Wind Energy Production Levels
Neptune, an advanced project developed at the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC), will reduce the cost of wind measurement and mitigate uncertainty about electricity production for offshore wind farms. Two new products have been already developed to enable wind measurement at sea, in order to reduce the cost of offshore wind energy. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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2:23 PM | Weekend Reads: OJ Shortage, Who Wants Cicada Stir-fry?, You Might Want to Skip the World's Newest Country
By The Editors Five greenreads to think about while you start planting the garden this weekend:Michele Nijhuis for the New Yorker on ill oranges: Florida’s vast citrus groves are succumbing to a bacterial disease called citrus greening, which infects the fruit through an invasive Asian insect. Diseased trees develop yellow leaves and bitter, misshapen fruit. The potential for destruction is so great that the bacteria was classified as a tool for […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment
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1:27 PM | “White to Black” Nanoparticle Transformation Technology Helps Produce Hydrogen
An atomic-scale engineering method for transforming low-efficiency photocatalytic “white” nanoparticles of titanium dioxide (TiO2) into high-efficiency “black” nanoparticles could be the key to clean energy technologies based on hydrogen. Read more »

Chen, X., Liu, L., Yu, P. & Mao, S. (2011). Increasing Solar Absorption for Photocatalysis with Black Hydrogenated Titanium Dioxide Nanocrystals, Science, 331 (6018) 746-750. DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
Citation
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12:26 PM | How Will Scotch Lovers Drown Their Sorrows When the Scotch Runs Out?
By The Editors Oh, for the love of peat: There are a lot of precious non-renewable resources out there -- fossil fuels, rare earth minerals -- that we humans are using up awfully quick. Add a new one to your list of concerns: peat. This mush of partially decomposed plant matter is found in the cold, dank bogs of northern Europe, Canada, and Russia. Eventually, after millions of years, peat can become coal, but we humans have found a much more refined use […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment

April 11, 2013

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9:01 PM | U.S. Natural Gas Resources Increased Significantly
According to the press-release form the The Potential Gas Committee, which receives guidance from the Potential Gas Agency at the Colorado School of Mines, the United States possess a total technically recoverable resource base of 2,384 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) as of year-end 2012. This is the highest resource evaluation in the Committee’s 48-year history, exceeding the previous high assessment (from 2010) by 486 Tcf. Most of the increase arose from new evaluations of shale gas resources in […]
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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7:19 PM | Technology Suite to Prevent Biofuel Pond Crash Problem
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a number of complementary technologies that would help the algae industry to detect and quickly recover from algal pond crashes, an obstacle to large-scale algae cultivation for future biofuels. The research, which focuses on monitoring and diagnosing algal pond health, draws upon Sandia’s longstanding expertise in microfluidics technology, its bioscience research program and internal investments. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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4:13 PM | Sensors Installed in Roads Will Save Fuel
In many countries there are regulations in place to prevent trailer owners from overloading their vehicles. This leads to the need for periodic inspections. To weigh a large vehicle one obviously needs to stop it. After the inspection, when a vehicle accelerates to normal speed, it wastes a lot of fuel for no good reason. Advanced sensors installed in the road surface, combined with number plate recognition systems, will allow to detect incorrectly loaded trailers without stopping them. This […]
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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4:11 PM | Stress: It’s not just for humans; animated bacteria GIFs
My wife is a kindergarten teacher. She always talks about how stressful her job is, and I believe her. Stress can have horrible effects to our bodies. However, humans are not the only species that experience stress, but we are the most vocal about it. Bacteria can experience many different forms of stresses, depending upon [...]
Taking Science to the People
Microbiology | Energy
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2:06 PM | NREL to Create Solar Facilities Performance Database for Investors
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has launched an initiative to build an open-source database of real-world performance from solar facilities across the country. The Open Solar Performance and Reliability Clearinghouse (O-SPaRC),  which uses associated data collected from thousands of information systems, will give the private market an access to public capital and provide potential investors with all necessary information about solar companies (especially new ones) […]
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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1:12 PM | How to get paid big bucks
Yesterday I asked 'What is inversion?' and started looking at problems in geoscience as either forward problems or inverse problems. So what are some examples of inverse problems in geoscience? Reversing our forward problem examples: Given a suite of sedimentological observations, provide the depositional environment. This is a hard problem, because different environments can produce similar-looking facies. It is ill-conditioned, because small changes in the input (e.g. the presence of […]
Agile*
Energy | Geosciences

April 10, 2013

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6:59 PM | First Solar Sets World Record in Solar Cell Efficiency
First Solar, Inc., an American manufacturer of f thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules, has announced yesterday it set a new world record for cadmium-telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) module conversion efficiency, achieving a record 16.1 percent total area module efficiency in tests confirmed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The new record is a substantial increase over the prior record of 14.4 percent efficiency, which the company set in […]
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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6:44 PM | Climate Change Goes to School, Bird Flu Takes Flight, When NIMBYs Attack
By The Editors Climate change, coming to a school near you: American parents and educators have been bemoaning the pitiful state of science education for years, and for good reason: according to one study, less than a third of eighth graders could be called "proficient" in science. But that might change, thanks to the newly released Next Generation Science standards, which would push students to "apply scientific principles, weigh evidence, solve problems […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment
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5:46 PM | Electric Cars Could Run On Nanocrystals, Research Suggests
There are high hopes for the next generation of lithium ion batteries. Apart from anything else, they should revolutionise electromobility. A new nanomaterial by chemists from ETH Zurich could come into play here. [08.04.13]
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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4:55 PM | Gazprom Building Europe-2 Gas Pipeline to Slovakia and Hungary
Russian gas giant Gazprom has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Polish EuRoPol GAZ. According to this document, a new Europe-2 gas pipeline with the annual throughput of no less than 15 billion cubic meters (530 BCF) of natural gas would run towards Slovakia and Hungary via Poland. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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1:36 PM | Scientists Testing Nuclear Fusion-Powered Rocket Engine
They seek one day to harness the same energy that powers the stars and thus to open the door to deep space exploration. Among the first goals of a spacecraft with such an engine would most possibly be human travel to Mars. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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1:12 PM | What is inversion?
Inverse problems are at the heart of geoscience. But I only hear hardcore geophysicists talk about them. Maybe this is because they're hard problems to solve, requiring mathematical rigour and computational clout. But the language is useful, and the realization that some problems are just damn hard — unsolvable, even — is actually kind of liberating.  Forwards first Before worrying about inverse problems, it helps to understand what a forward problem is. A forward problem […]
Agile*
Energy | Geosciences
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12:21 PM | Impale the Bedbugs! Leave the Plastic Tray! All Hail the Iron Lady?
By The Editors K-k-k-killah: The United Nations is calling smog, which can cause pneumonia and cancer, an “underestimated scourge,” saying air pollution kills more people per year worldwide than AIDS and malaria combined. (More bad news for people in Beijing). The solution? Brace yourself, this one’s a shocker: increase investment in renewable energy. Leave it to the UN to provide radical insight. But the organization's data, originally compiled by […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment

April 09, 2013

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9:28 PM | Fasten Your Seatbelts: Climate Change Could Make for a Bumpy Flight
By Michael Lemonick This post originally appeared at Climate Central.It may be time to add another item to the growing list of problems likely to worsen with climate change. A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change argues that thanks to projected changes in the jet stream, one form of air turbulence will likely increase in intensity by between 10 and 40 percent in the North Atlantic by 2050, making for more white knuckle transatlantic flights and […]
OnEarth
Energy | Environment
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8:55 PM | Solar Cells Will Capture Up to 12 Times More Energy with Nanowires
A new study done at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EFPL) could lead to a creation of a solar panel that requires 10 000 less material than the existing ones and is much more efficient. Researchers expect this to become possible based on their experiments with nanowires—a material that could capture large quantities of light and produce energy with incredible efficiency at a much lower cost. Read more »

Krogstrup, P., Jørgensen, H., Heiss, M., Demichel, O., Holm, J., Aagesen, M., Nygard, J. & Fontcuberta i Morral, A. (2013). Single-nanowire solar cells beyond the Shockley–Queisser limit, Nature Photonics, 7 (4) 306-310. DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
Citation
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7:11 PM | Scientists Found a Way to Get More Sugar from Biomass
Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with support from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have found a way to significantly increase the catalytic of enzyme cocktails. This advancement will allow to get more sugar out of biomass, therefore making biofuel production much more efficient. Read more »

Fox, J., Jess, P., Jambusaria, R., Moo, G., Liphardt, J., Clark, D. & Blanch, H. (2013). A single-molecule analysis reveals morphological targets for cellulase synergy, Nature Chemical Biology, DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
Citation
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5:19 PM | EPA Standards Will Shift Power Plants to Natural Gas
In order to comply to the new strict EPA emission standards power plants would have to shift from coal to natural gas. A new study from the Duke University suggests that the air-quality regulations, especially the ones on on sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and mercury, will make nearly two-thirds of the nation’s coal-fired power plants as expensive to run as plants powered by natural gas. Read more »

Pratson, L., Haerer, D. & Patiño-Echeverri, D. (2013). Fuel Prices, Emission Standards, and Generation Costs for Coal vs Natural Gas Power Plants, Environmental Science & Technology, 2147483647. DOI:

The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
Citation
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1:14 PM | Iowa Army Ammunition Plant Implements Geothermal and Solar Energy Systems
Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, part of Joint Munitions Command that produces large caliber munitions for U.S. Joint Forces, is undertaking a two-phase installation of geothermal and photovoltaic systems at its administration building to help meet the U.S. Army mission to reduce energy demand by increasing the efficiency of traditional energy sources or utilizing new ones. Read more »
The Daily Fusion
Environment | Energy
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