Gold Nanoparticles Could Transform Trees Into Street Lights
Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don’t need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees, causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one – not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities. Photo © mrhayata The discovery came about accidentally after the scientists were looking for a way to create high-efficiency lighting similar to LED technology, but without using toxic chemicals such as phosphor powder. By implanting the gold nanoparticles into the leaves of the Bacopa caroliniana plants, the scientists were able to induce the chlorophyll in the leaves to produce a red emission. Lead photo © Paul Dex
Twelve Free Chemistry Databases
Just two years ago, trying to find free online chemistry databases was an exercise in futility. Now, they're sprouting up all over the Web like wildflowers after a wet Spring. What follows is a far-from-complete roundup of some of the more interesting places to start your chemical search. PubChem- The granddaddy of all free chemistry databases.
Russians Will Be First To Explore Untouched Antarctic Lake Vostok, In Hunt For Weird Life Forms
An oxygen-rich lake, unreachable for the past 14 million years and buried beneath a thick sheet of ice, is about to be penetrated by a drill bit from a faraway place. It's possible that special life forms have adapted to live in this extreme environment, and scientists hope to learn more once they can analyze water samples. No, sorry, it's not on Europa — it's in Antarctica. But the environment of Lake Vostok, which Russian scientists are about to drill open, is very similar to that Jovian moon and to Enceladus, a frozen satellite of Saturn. Astrobiologists are among those eager to uncover Lake Vostok's Miocene-era secrets. The Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, a body set up to protect the frozen continent, approved a Russian team's process to extract water from the lake while preventing contamination, according to New Scientist. The lake's water pressure will push the drilling fluid up into the borehole, where it will freeze. [New Scientist via Wired UK]
Einstein was right - honey bee collapse threatens global food security
The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc. The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia. Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live". Such "apocalyptic scenarios" are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind. However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa. This is the fastest growing and most valuable part of the global farm economy. China has its own problems. Einstein was not always wrong.
Shape-Shifting Battery Smooshes To Fit Sizes AA-D
Images via Yanko DesignRechargeable batteries are a solution for keeping batteries out of the landfill, but you still have to have the right size for your device, which means buying more batteries. What if you could buy just a small handful of batteries that fit all of your devices? That's the solution presented by The A to D Battery, a single nickel hydroxide battery core wrapped in memory foam that you can simply squish right into that remote control. The battery is a AA size core with a memory foam wrap that expands to fit larger slots, up to size D. Gadjitz writes, "Given the small capacity of the battery, it's hard to imagine that it would provide much life for any gizmo. SLIDESHOW: Best Green Tech Concept Gadgets of 2009 We fully agree - some devices call for D batteries because it needs that much juice to run. Designing more sustainable batteries is not an easy task, and most designers bomb on the idea.
Why is there salt in the ocean? | 200 Questions About Chemistry
Because it dissolves easily in water. Water in the oceans evaporates into the air, leaving solids like salt behind. The water vapor then rises and cools until it falls as rain. If the nearly pure water in the rain falls on land, it dissolves some of the dirt it falls on. Rain that has dissolved carbon dioxide in it is slightly acidic, and the acid helps to dissolve the dirt. Many things dissolve more easily than silica. So the solids in river water are mostly bicarbonate ions (from the carbon dioxide in the air), calcium, silica, sulfate, chloride, sodium, and magnesium, in that order. But when the river water gets to the sea, the organisms in the ocean start to remove ions from the water to build their shells. As the water evaporates and concentrates the ions, the less soluble ones precipitate out of the water and fall to the bottom of the ocean.
An Ant Diversity Sampler
[the following is a repost from Scienceblogs] With 12,000 described species, ants dominate global terrestrial ecosystems. Here are a few of them. Name: Nothomyrmecia macrops Distribution: Australia Famous for: The story of its rediscovery (As told by Bill Bryson)
Bees Solve Hard Computing Problems Faster Than Supercomputers
We already know bees are pretty good at facial recognition, and researchers have shown they can also be effective air-quality monitors. Here's one more reason to keep them around: They're smarter than computers. Bumblebees can solve the classic "traveling salesman" problem, which keeps supercomputers busy for days. They learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they find the flowers in a different order, according to a new British study. The traveling salesman problem is an (read: very hard) problem in computer science; it involves finding the shortest possible route between cities, visiting each city only once. Bees need lots of energy to fly, so they seek the most efficient route among networks of hundreds of flowers. To test bee problem-solving, researchers Lars Chittka and Mathieu Lihoreau tested bees' response to computer-controlled artificial flowers.
