Green Tech

Many of the most exciting technologies being developed hope to address the enormous environmental problems we face today. I discuss two of these at Green Living Online, where I am their go-to-guy on science topics.

First, I take a look at new developments in nanotechnology solar panels. Building a solar panel from the atom up, it turns out, is a great way to harness the energy of the sun. It requires less raw materials, is more efficient at deriving power, and oddly enough it is quicker.

Second, I try to understand what the heck rare earth elements are and why they are so important. In essence they are a group of elements that are not found in very high concentrations around the world, so we have to mine dig up a lot of rock to get a little bit of these materials. However, all that work is worth the effort because these little gems are key to a lot of really great devices like new TVs, cell phones, even hybrid batteries.

The only catch is that we aren’t able to find as much of these rare earth elements as we need, leading some experts to think that we are running out. Talk about a major need for recycling.

Way cooler than airplanes

I thought making a paper airplane that could do a loop-de-loop was cool.  Now, I read in Wired, December 2007 that Japan’s Shigeru Ban makes paper houses. 

In fact, they make paper houses, libraries, domes, emergency structures, even bridges Wow. That’s cool. And, if it were recycled paper, then it is kind of environmentally friendly too.

At last I have found a use for my extensive library of science magazines….I could make an outhouse.

Cool New Books

I read about this neat book, “America from the Air“, in WIRED magazine’s reviews section. It is pictures of the USA taken from 35,000 feet and on major flightpaths. Apparently it is quite cool. Everytime I go flying I wonder what is below me. Now I could finally know.

I also heard about a cool new NASA pretty picture book, “Touch the Invisible Sky“. What makes it notable is that it is a book of outerspace pictures for the blind. All the pictures are coded in bumps and swiggles and raised portions to indicate the intensity of the colour. I personally can’t understand how it would work, but perhaps if you were blind this would be really cool. I like the idea of NASA being more inclusive of disabilities at least.

Pipe Dreams

From Discover, 2007 review, “Tubes made from LSCF [lanthanum-strontium-cobalt-ferric oxide] have the property of being permeable to oxygen ions – oxygen atoms with an electric charge – and little else. Using 15-inch-long tubes to filter oxygen from air, the researchers [from Newcastle University and Imperial College London] were able to burn hydrocarbons in the purified atmosphere to produce energy, steam and nearly pure carbon dioxide.”

So, I’m thinking that we attach a bundle of LSCF straws to the air intake of every car engine. It burns with pure oxygen, increasing the effectiveness and getting better mileage, plus we only emit pure CO2. Attach an air compressor or something on the tailpipe to capture the CO2, and then drop off the CO2 at your local fizzy drink manufacturer for carbon credits, or take the CO2 to your greenhouse to improve your locally grown bananas. Sound like a good idea?

Maybe not yet. But, a cool green technology anyway. Green Living or maybe Plenty.

Climate Change Monitoring

Discover Magazine, 2007 review, big map quantifying Global Warming. 

“A consortium of American states, Canadian provinces, and several other groups established registries this year to monitor greenhouse gas emissions of corporations, nonprofits, and municipalities within their jurisdiction.”

“More than 290 U.S. colleges and universities have pledged to strive for carbon neutrality by reducing or offsetting their greenhouse-gas emissions.”

In other news, I have also promised to keep track of how every breath I exhale (breath number 46799) and every fart I let rip (breath number 46800) so I can monitor my own personal CO2 (breath number 46801) and methane contributions (breath number 46802) to climate change. Think Apple has a Widget (breath number 46803) to keep track of this for me?

Go Gamma!

From Discover Magazine 2007 review, “Some astrophysicists believe that dark matter particles may occasionally annihilate each other, producing bursts of high-energy gamma rays. If the Milky Way has dark-matter satellites, and if they do emit gamma rays, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, scheduled for Launch in February, might detect them.”

Dark matter satellites annihilating each other in our own backyard, okay, how cool is that?!

I actually spoke with some of the NASA engineers and scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center outside Baltimore about GLAST two years ago. Sounded like a cool project, so I am glad to hear that they got the green light.

Unfortunately, the launch will not take place in the next few days but in May. Bummer for space enthusiasts, but opens up some opportunity for me to write an article about this neat new space telescope for Astronomy or Sky and Telescope.

Local Environmental Health Researchers

In Discover Magazine’s 2007 review they say, “A further study in October of last year found an average ratio of female to male births of 54:46 in about 90 Canadian communities, a shift that James Argo of the IntrAmericas Centre for Environment and Health in Ontario attributes to dioxin pollution from nearby oil refineries, metal smelters, coke ovens, and pulp mills.

Hmmmm…my daughter was born in 2006. Is she part of this growing trend of fewer boys?

Possible story angle for Environmental Health Perspectives or CFI’s Innovation Canada.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

So, about a week ago I was supposed to be in Boston, MA for the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship program’s 25th anniversary and three day conference on the Future of Science Journalism.  I couldn’t be there (long, unpleasant story), but Alfred Hermida was.

Hermida is a former BBC journalist, and he now teaches at the University of British Columbia.  He blogged about the conference, so I was able to almost feel like I was there.

He interviewed Clive Thompson (WIRED magazine columnist) about his blog and posted the short video online.  In the interview, Thompson suggests that he uses his blog to refine his ideas, using reader feedback to focus his writing.

Now, I’ve been looking for a good way to keep track of all my story ideas and pitches.  Random scraps of paper don’t work.  Neither do files named “Ideas January 2008″ saved on my desktop.  So, I am going to give the blogosphere a look into my Ideas Vault.

If anyone out there sees a story they think I should know something more about, they would like me to write about, or whatever, leave a comment.

Let the grand experiment begin. 

What, No Mention of Time Travel?!

Well, it’s that time of year when all the science journalists, engineers, and scientists swarm to the world’s largest science conference in the world: the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This year it’s in Boston, MA, home of MIT, Harvard, and the Boston Red Sox.

In one of the sessions at the AAAS, a panel of engineering experts described what kind of cool gadgetry and inventions we can look forward to in the next 100 years. Think cheap solar panels, energy from fusion, virtual reality that’s better than real life, and medicine that can cure any disease.

I write about the report and the session in an online feature article for Cosmos Magazine in Australia.

I think the report is good, but it is also fairly conservative. None of the goals sound like they are beyond present day technology or know-how (maybe just present day economics). I was really hoping for interstellar time traveling androids.

PI in the Sky

Ever since I watched Pathfinder land on the rust-colored surface of Mars back in 1997, I have been captivated by space, astronomy, and in fact all science.  But, space exploration has always held a soft spot in my heart.

I love the idea of traveling to other worlds, whether through robots or with actual humans.  These days, it seem, the robots are winning. But, during a lecture Wednesday night at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics I learned that private space flight tourists could be the dark horse that change the whole race.

Michael Belfiore, a New York based writer for Popular Science and Wired, gave a talk based on his book “The Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space” and blog “Dispatches from the Final Frontier.”  It’s a great book (I read half of it before his talk, and I am just finishing it up now).

The best part about his talk and the book is the look into the lives of the people daring to do what many felt was impossible:  build a spacecraft in your garage. Remarkably, I think that do it yourself attitude is true to science’s roots, and epitomizes many of the greatest leaps forward in human knowledge (Einstein working in a patent office anyone?).

However, the most exciting aspect (besides the obvious HOLY COW I MIGHT GET TO FLY IN SPACE SOON!!!) was that the winning of the X Prize might be a Kuhnian revolution in scientific thought.   Our entire paradigm of space exploration has been overthrown by these guys with spare time, some nitrous oxide, and a few million bucks.  Kudos to them.