In a speech yesterday, 2007 Nobel Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore called for a national effort to convert our electricity production from oil-based sources to renewable sources like wind, solar, and biofuels.
"Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans – in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen."
Can it be done? Monetarily, he claims that it will cost between $1.5 and $3 trillion - an amount that he says the United States will need to invest in new power plants anyway, just to meet the burgeoning demand for electricity. Scientifically, he points out that enough sunlight falls on the earth every hour which, if harnessed, could meet our energy needs for a year. The trick, of course, is harnessing the energy in an economically viable way.
A PDF transcript of his speech can be found here.
Developing new approaches for solar energy is a major focus of researchers at Northwestern and Argonne National Labs, through the ANSER project. Read a summary of the project.
Modern genetics is revealing an ever-clearer picture of mankind's ancestral migration out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago. This Scientific American article summarizes the science and the interesting conclusions of contemporary human evolutionary studies.
In addition to providing important details about our origins, these studies are changing our concepts of race. According to Pasteur Institute genetics researcher Lluis Quintana-Murci, “There is no race ... What we see [from the standpoint of genetics] is geographical gradients. There are no sharp differences between Europeans and Asians. From Ireland to Japan, there is no sharp boundary where something has changed completely.”
Northwestern researcher Vadim Backman was recently funded by the National Cancer Institute to continue his work on technology that may lead to a less expensive and less invasive test to detect colon cancer.
Backman's group has developed a molecular flashlight, of sorts. Using light from a xenon bulb, they have devised a method to detect miniscule changes in a cell's structure that are diagnostic for cancer. The technique is able to detect these changes before they can be seen with a microscope. As is true for all cancers, early detection is a key factor in survival rate.
Backman, professor of biomedical engineering at McCormick, is also working on a screening method for pancreatic cancer. This project was featured in a recent SiS Research Digest article, found here.
This Scientific American article explores the purported benefits of corn-based plastics (also known as polylactic acid, or PLA) over the more conventional petroleum-based plastic. The results may surprise you.
Although PLA is technically renewable, saves oil, and is less polluting to manufacture, its biodegradability is far from perfect. It's also a headache for recyclers because PLA "contaminates" the conventional plastic recycling process. The two must be separated, leading to higher costs for recycled plastic and lower overall demand.
Some experts have also suggested that the marketing of PLA as "green" plastic has led to rampant overpackaging and a proliferation of single-serving plastic containers.
A related 2006 Smithsonian Magazine article can be found here.
Northwestern University researchers led by Teresa Woodruff, director of the Center for Reproductive Research at the University's Feinberg School of Medicine, are approaching women's infertility from a new direction.
Woodruff and her team are looking at ovaries themselves, and how eggs are selected for ovulation, rather than the more traditional methods of studying genes and hormones. Frank Miller, professor of radiology at Feinberg, and his colleagues are developing a new way to image ovaries, allowing researchers to closely study an organ that, being small and deep, has previously been difficult to examine.
Woodruff's research was recently funded by a $6.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Scientific American has a feature story on a New Jersey resident that has not paid a gas or electric utility bill in two years - because his house is powered by solar-generated hydrogen. Part of the hydrogen he generates also goes to fuel his car.
The cost of this sunlight-capturing energy system? Approximately $500,000. But he thinks a similar system could be built today for only $90,000.
A new study from Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences suggests that the version of a gene associated with ADHD may actually prove beneficial for certain populations.
The study looked at the body mass index (BMI) and height of males from a tribe called Ariaal in northern Kenya. Some members of this tribe continue to live their traditional nomadic lifestyle, while others have recently settled and started to grow crops.
It turns out that those who are living the nomadic lifestyle with the genetic variant associated with ADHD fared much better than the settled tribesmen who also had the variant. According to Dan Eisenberg, lead author on the study, this suggests that it's "possible that, in a nomadic setting, a boy with this allele might be able to more effectively defend livestock against raiders or locate food and water sources, but that the same tendencies might not be as beneficial in settled pursuits such as focusing in school, farming or selling goods.”
Scientists attending the opening of the first World Science Festival in New York City had harsh words for US politicians and the low priority they have given science in recent years. Critics chided the government's stagnant federal funding for research, and the views of some officials that intelligent design is a scientific alternative to evolution.
Somewhat surprisingly, even the 2008 presidential candidates seem reluctant to tackle the tough scientific issues facing our country. The Science Debate 2008 initiative, supported by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and hundreds of universities (including Northwestern), has invited the Clinton, McCain, and Obama camps to an organized debate on issues of science and technology. Thus far, none of the candidates have agreed to participate.
A 422-million-mile, 10-month journey to Mars ended Sunday with the successful arrival of the Phoenix lander on the Martian surface.
The mission, to the northerly arctic region of Mars, is designed to gather chemical data from soil and water that will allow researchers to better understand the geologic history of water on Mars. This data will also provide clues as to whether biological life ever existed on this now cold planet.
A full description of the Phoenix mission can be found on NASA's website, complete with pictures, mission updates, and a very cool video summarizing the mission.
In what several scientists have termed “winning the astronomy lottery,” Princeton researchers were able for the first time to witness a supernova, or the explosive death of a star, as it happened.
Supernovae happen when the hydrogen fuel powering the star’s nuclear reactor “furnace” runs out. During a star’s lifetime, hydrogen is converted to helium, then to oxygen and carbon, then finally to iron. As this process nears its end, the star’s core becomes so heavy that it collapses on itself and explodes. The explosion sends the matter of the star - carbon, oxygen, iron, nitrogen, and other elements - hurtling into space. It is theorized that many elements on Earth, including those that make up our bodies, originated from supernovae.
As is true with many scientific discoveries, good fortune played a key part in the observation. Researchers were observing the remnants of an old supernova in the galaxy NGC2770 using an X-ray telescope when the new supernova occurred. The initial x-ray blast of a supernova is the earliest event in the explosion, and had never before been captured.
Even in the cosmos, it pays to be looking in the right place at the right time!
