June 2009

  • New Device to Protect Sea Turtles?

    By sarajean on 6/28/09 9:40pm
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    When I read stories like this one, two thoughts cross my mind. The first is, “Awesome! This is exactly what we need.” The second? “It’s about bloody time. Why haven’t we done this already?” Though sea turtle protection is long overdue—especially considering that all species of sea turtles are endangered—we can definitely welcome any protection now with open arms. Better late than never, right?

    Since many sea turtles meet their untimely deaths in fisherman’s nets, a new device is being developed to target these nets in order to protect turtles. Fishery managers are using a Cape Cod company to develop a device that will allow them to continue using fishing nets while still protecting sea turtles.

    Hopefully it’s not too good to be true.

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  • Synthetic Trees That Act Like the Real Thing

    By ecoscott on 6/22/09 10:09pm
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    Ok, this is awesome. Synthetic trees that capture carbon emissions.

    CNN reported out of London today that U.S. scientist are in the middle of creating a “synthetic tree” to collect carbon dioxide from the air.

    Seriously.

    "Each unit would take out a ton of CO2 a day -- which would be the amount of CO2 produced by 20 average automobiles in the U.S.A. And the cost of each unit would be about the cost of a Toyota. So that would mean if you added a five percent surcharge on automobile purchases that money could go to building units to remove the CO2 those vehicles are going to create."said Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wally Broecker of Columbia University.

    They say it will be capable of collecting carbon approximately 1,000x faster than a real tree. So, how does it work, right?

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  • Weird Gel Remote Hardens at a Touch

    By lisala on 6/18/09 8:35pm
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    This is so very very weird, that I'm going to quote from the official marketing blurb:

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