Earth Hour 2008

Accouncements of this fun activity have been popping up all over the 'net, but perhaps you haven't heard of it yet, so I figured I'd give it some coverage.
Last year, folks in Sydney Australia gathered together and made announcements for everyone to turn their lights off city wide for an hour. The event was to document how much energy was saved during that time and to send a message to the world about the need for action to slow global warming.
This year's event is worldwide, with cities from around the globe joining in, like Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane, Tel Aviv, and yes, San Francisco.
Even if you do not live in SF, you can participate in sending the message. First, check out the website, and second, find out events near you.
For those of us here in the Bay, lights out 8 pm on Saturday the 29th. Make a party of it, and then, go outside and up look at all those bright stars.
For the Earth Hour website

DNA increases LED power

Andrew Steckl has revealed an intriguing new piece of evidence that nature has more power than humans have yet to imagine. His work on photonics at the University of Cincinnati has focuses on intensifying the light produced by LEDs with biological material.
“Biological materials have many technologically important qualities — electronic, optical, structural, magnetic,” says Steckl. “DNA has certain optical properties that make it unique. It allows improvements in one to two orders of magnitude in terms of efficiency, light, brightness — because we can trap electrons longer.”
His big idea- using salmon sperm. His main focus is on creating products that are more environmentally sustainable. This material is a readily available bi-product of the fishing industry, and is thrown away by the ton.
Steckl believes that the use of biological materials has the potential to improve all our current electronic technologies, plus close the loop between industry and waste.
For the original article link here
For the hype at Tree Hugger and ignorant comments from the peanut gallery link here

Fungus Reveals New Forms of Energy Production

A surprising discovery published back in May reveals that some fungi can create energy with the help of melanin, a pigment also found in human skin. The fungi was first discovered within the contaminated chambers of the Chernobyl reactor, where the flourishing black masses were first observed by scientists Ekaterina Dadachova and her colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City.
In laboratory conditions, it was found that the fungi Cryptococcus neoformans, when exposed to radiation, uses this energy as a plants would use light, to produce growth. Scientists have long known certain fungi can digest plastics, oils and asbestos. Now they are hopeful that this breakthrough could provide insight as to how to deal with nuclear waste and produce food in conditions with high radiation levels. But this discovery is also important in that so far it was thought that only plants could make food through photosynthesis.
And what does this mean for the melanin in our bodies- is it possible that this plays some unknown role in humans?
Dadachova pointed out to Technology Review that "The mechanism of this process needs to be established. It took at least two decades and the work of several research groups to determine the mechanism of photosynthesis."

For the abstract in PubMed.com
Check out the interview with Dadachova in Technology Review

Frito Lays and Chip Carbon Count

Frito Lays sells under the name Walkers in the UK, where chips are called crisps. The biggest difference you'll find these days between the two names is the carbon rating on the Walker's bag, letting consumers know the amount of carbon created in producing the snack.
According to Terra Pass, "Walkers have been working with a government-funded organization called The Carbon Trust to calculate the carbon emissions caused by one bag of chips. It is the first company to begin carbon-labeling as part of a pilot scheme to label products with their environmental impact."
The shocking news is that to produce a 34.5 gram bag of chips, 75 grams of carbon are produced.
Check out the rest of the article for more statistics and pretty charts.
TerraPass newsletter link here

Waste Equals Food

In the Cradle to Cradle concept, where all of life operates on the basis of cyclical processes, we hear the phrase "waste equals food". Everything we create should in turn fuel the next cycle, and in this equation there is no end product, no grave.
Ecological engineer Bara Bihari Jana and his colleagues at the University of Kalyani, India, have discovered a new use for a waste we have in abundance- human urine. Commercial fisheries grow enormous amounts of Moina micrura, a zooplankton species commonly fed to hatchling fish in fisheries. The most common diet for these zooplankton is chemical fertilizers. But these fertilizers are expensive and not readily available in all countries. Jana initially tested poultry and cow dung for potential alternatives, and these showed promise. But when these microorganisms were fed a diet of human urine, they reproduced more quickly, lived longer and reproduced more offspring.
Because human urine starts out in solution and is stable in its original form, this makes it a very cheap alternative for the fish industry. This method could prove a viable means of treating our waste products without chemicals, and in turn return that product back into the food cycle.
Humans waste has so far not been readily used as an agricultural product, due to residual antibiotics and risk of disease transfer. "New and alternative uses for wastes and wastewater like this need to be identified," says Stephen Smith, an environmental biochemist at Imperial College London. "My only potential concern would be that the urine is from healthy individuals not taking medication or antibiotics as these could be excreted in the urine."
Jana and his colleagues are very aware of the risks of contamination by human waste, but so far have not encountered any of those problems with their zooplankton in their early lab tests.
For the original article in Nature