Yet the instrument of pricing global CO2 emissions could generate a revenue of 32 trillion US dollars over the 21st century, exceeding by far the 12 trillion US dollars reduction of fossil fuel owners' profits, according to a study now published by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The analysis of the interference of CO2 emission pricing with fossil fuel markets adds key information to the debate on macro-economic effects of climate change mitigation.
Tech
BOSTON, Nov. 5, 2013 – Men who identify themselves as heterosexual are three times more likely to categorize bisexuality as "not a legitimate sexual orientation," an attitude that can encourage negative health outcomes in people who identify as bisexual, according to an analysis led by University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health researcher Mackey Friedman, Ph.D., M.P.H.
The results of the survey, sponsored by the Indiana University Bloomington, will be presented today at the American Public Health Association's 141st Annual Meeting & Exposition in Boston.
A quirk of nature has long baffled biologists: Why do animals push in directions that don't point toward their goal, like the side-to-side sashaying of a running lizard or cockroach? An engineer building a robot would likely avoid these movements because they seem wasteful. So why do animals behave this way?
University of Helsinki researchers have manufactured photochemically active polymers which can be dissolved in water or certain alcohols. The new soluble, photosensitive polymer was created by doctoral student Szymon Wiktorowicz.
In the study, a 365-nm laser was aimed at a solution into which the polymer was partially dissolved. When exposed to light, the polymer switched to its cis conformation, dissolving completely and leaving a clear form which was visible in the cloudy solution.
Using an in-orbit robot to capturing a malfunctioning satellite that is tumbling out of control is currently just a theoretical idea. However, research inspired by nature to be published in the forthcoming issue of International Journal of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, could take us a small step towards making such science fiction science fact.
Great civilisations have fallen because they failed to prevent the degradation of the soils on which they were founded. The modern world could suffer the same fate.
This is according to Professor Mary Scholes and Dr Bob Scholes who have published a paper in top scientific journal, Science, which describes how the productivity of many lands has been dramatically reduced as a result of soil erosion, accumulation of salinity, and nutrient depletion.
Physicists at the University of Basel have been successful in generating photons - the quantum particles of light – with only one color. This is useful for quantum information. The scientists have actively stabilized the wavelength of the photons emitted by a semiconductor thereby neutralizing the charge noise in the semiconductor. The results were developed in close collaboration with the Universities of Bochum, Paderborn and Lyon and have been published in the magazine «Physical Review X».
RICHLAND, Wash. – Scientists looking to create a potent blend of enzymes to transform materials like corn stalks and wood chips into fuels have developed a test that should turbocharge their efforts.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the most important signaling molecules in living cells, carrying messages within the brain and coordinating immune system functions. In many cancerous cells, levels are perturbed, but very little is known about how NO behaves in both healthy and cancerous cells.
Cambridge, Mass. – November 1, 2013 – It doesn't take a Watson to realize that even the world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines.
Our brains have upwards of 86 billion neurons, connected by synapses that not only complete myriad logic circuits; they continuously adapt to stimuli, strengthening some connections while weakening others. We call that process learning, and it enables the kind of rapid, highly efficient computational processes that put Siri and Blue Gene to shame.
The ever-increasing threat from "superbugs" -- strains of pathogenic bacteria that are impervious to the antibiotics that subdued their predecessor generations -- has forced the medical community to look for bactericidal weapons outside the realm of traditional drugs. One promising candidate is the antimicrobial peptide (AMP), one of Mother Nature's lesser-known defenses against infections, that kills a pathogen by creating, then expanding, nanometer-sized pores in the cell membrane until it bursts.
America's once-abundant tallgrass prairies—which have all but disappeared—were home to dozens of species of grasses that could grow to the height of a man, hundreds of species of flowers, and herds of roaming bison.
For the first time, a research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has gotten a peek at another vitally important but rarely considered community that also once called the tallgrass prairie home: the diverse assortment of microbes that thrived in the dark, rich soils beneath the grass.
Brooklyn, New York— Recent studies from two research teams at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) demonstrate how underwater robots can be used to understand and influence the complex swimming behaviors of schooling fish. The teams, led by Maurizio Porfiri, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NYU-Poly, published two separate papers in the journal PLOS ONE.
Chickens could be the unexpected beneficiaries of the growing biofuels industry, feeding on proteins retrieved from the fermenters used to brew bioethanol, thanks to research supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
It has long been known that the yeasty broth left over after bioethanol production is nutritious, but it has taken a collaboration between Nottingham Trent University and AB Agri, the agricultural division of Associated British Foods, to prove that Yeast Protein Concentrate (YPC) can be separated from the fibrous cereal matter.
Research into the best ways to arrange wind turbines has produced staggering results — quite literally.
The University of Delaware's Cristina Archer and her Atmosphere and Energy Research Group found that staggering and spacing out turbines in an offshore wind farm can improve performance by as much as 33 percent.
"Staggering every other row was amazingly efficient," said Archer, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering and geography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.