Category: Plants & Technology
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U.S. Forests Being Stripped For European Wood Pellet Stoves. Birds Suffer
It looks like a rabbit pellet, speckled quail-egg brown, a cylinder perhaps an inch long, thick as a No. 2 pencil, with a shiny coat that brings to mind a sausage casing. There are no fillers, no binders, no added chemicals. Wood pellets are all-natural, made of nothing but wood. A single pellet is light […]
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If We Supercharge Crop Plants, Should We Supercharge Wild Plants, Too?
t now seems certain that supercrops with “turbocharged photosynthesis” will be growing in our fields in a few decades, if not sooner. This seems like great news in a world where demand for food, biofuels and plant materials like cotton continues to increase, and where global warming will have an ever greater impact on crop production. More productive plants means greater yields. But there is a danger too.
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Using Plants To Make Lithium-ion Batteries Sustainable
The battery is based on recovery and renewable biological material with an energy content corresponding to that of current lithium-ion batteries. Components of the battery are made of renewable organic biomaterials from alfalfa and pine resin, and can be recycled with a low energy input and non-hazardous chemicals, such as ethanol and water.
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Tracking Pilfered Endangered Plants With Forensic Science
Now, in a last-ditch attempt to save several endangered species from extinction, scientists are turning to forensic methods to see if tracking the history of suspect plants can help to bring illegal traders to book. But time is running out for the plants, which are even more threatened than the country’s emblematic rhinos.
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And A Blade Of Grass Shall Light Their Way: Biomimicry To Generate Electricity
Using a bio-mimicking analog of one of nature’s most efficient light-harvesting structures, blades of grass, an international research team has taken a major step in developing long-sought polymer architecture to boost power-conversion efficiency of light to electricity for use in electronic devices.
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Will You Be Driving On Dandelion Tires?
The tyre industry, which consumes about two-thirds of the world’s natural rubber, has long felt uneasy about its complete reliance on rubber-tree tapping in a handful of Southeast Asian nations which account for most of the $25 billion in annual natural-rubber output.
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Your Trendy Rayon Clothes Are Made Of Stolen Rainforest
“We would love to see a world where we don’t destroy any forests for fabric.”
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Mapping The Trees For The Forest
The work we’re doing can help put an economic value on forests. Policymakers and economists want to know forest carbon stocks at very fine spatial scales, and countries naturally need to improve their assessment of stocks to participate in a forest carbon market. This is a high-stakes game in the policy realm.
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Martian Soil Suitable For Farming
We report on the first large-scale controlled experiment to investigate the possibility of growing plants in Mars and moon soil simulants. The results show that plants are able to germinate and grow on both Martian and moon soil simulant for a period of 50 days without any addition of nutrients.
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Peru Maps Its Forest Carbon Sinks: Where Conservation Meets Economics
Asner believes that the high-resolution carbon maps he is producing can play a crucial role in changing the economic dynamic in tropical countries. If you know how much carbon is locked up in your forests and vegetation — in Peru’s case, his report estimates the amount at 6.92 billion metric tons — you can better place a value on it. And choose conservation over development.