Self-Cleaning Clothes May Make Your Washing Machine History

Even thing as simple as washing your clothes can create a huge impact on our environment. The power that washing machines and dryers use produce carbon dioxide that we know is harmful to the environment. On top of this detergents used when washing clothes contain chemicals which may remain behind within waste water as it is washed through our water system. But, now  China has gifted the world with a new fabric which scientists say cleans itself.
Mingce Long and Deyong Wu say their fabric uses a coating made from a compound of titanium dioxide, .....Their report describes cotton fabric coated with nanoparticles made from a compound of titanium dioxide and nitrogen. They show that fabric coated with the material removes an orange dye stain when exposed to sunlight. Further dispersing nanoparticles composed of silver and iodine accelerates the discoloration process. The coating remains intact after washing and drying.

Self cleaning cloth's sample

Sorry, but this sounds a bit gross. Far be it for us to argue with science, but hanging your T-shirt in the sunlight to give it a clean is all too reminiscent of seeing laundry "airing" on hangers outside halls of residences inhabited by stoned students who can't be bothered to pause Call of Duty: Black Ops and go down to the communal laundrette.
But on the plus side, self-cleaning clothes would be better for the environment and in a week when the Durban climate change conference agreed on a "save the planet" strategy, it may be that Long and Wu's invention is one small but significant step for man. In self-cleaning clothes, of course.

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2010 Saw Biggest Jump in Global CO2 Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution

Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions jumped 5.9% last year, according to the Global Carbon Project. Yes, a record amount of CO2--500 million tons more than the year before--was loosed into the atmosphere in 2010. As the New York Times put it, it "was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003."

This, of course, comes right on the heels of lower-than-usual emissions in 2009 (which fell worldwide by 1.4%), which was due to the worldwide economic contraction. A few onlookers ventured murmurs that perhaps the recession would recalibrate the greenhouse gas emissions/economic growth coupling, or at least slow the ever-ascendant global emissions trajectory for a few years.

Alas, it was not to be. With industry again revving back up to pre-recession output, we humanfolk are back to spewing carbon at a breakneck pace all around the world. The record jump, of course, was in part due to global industry leapfrogging the slackened economic growth of 2009 and getting back to business as usual. And business as usual these days is an estimated 3% annual increase in global carbon emissions.

Clearly, this spells trouble. We have not succeeded in slowing the emission of greenhouse gases into earth's atmosphere at all. Europe and Japan have made some laudable efforts to rein in emissions, but without a framework for global cooperation, they register as merely cosmetic. China and India are now among the biggest carbon emitters in the world, and the United States still has been unable and unwilling to tamp down its goliath emissions output.

Though it is unlikely we'll continue to break such dubious records with much regularity going forward--it will be a consistent increase--we should be aware that we're still on track to cause catastrophic levels of warming. Unless, that is, a change is registered in worldwide emissions trajectory. The amount of emissions we're currently generating is placing us squarely into many scientists' 'worst-case' scenarios: Double-digit temperature rises by the end of the century, dangerous sea level rise, record droughts, etc.

In other words, we're well on our way to a much hotter world.

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Climate Changes Faster Than Species Can Adapt, Rattlesnake Study Finds

The ranges of species will have to change dramatically as a result of climate change between now and 2100 because the climate will change more than 100 times faster than the rate at which species can adapt, according to a newly published study by Indiana University researchers.

The study, which focuses on North American rattlesnakes, finds that the rate of future change in suitable habitat will be two to three orders of magnitude greater than the average change over the past 300 millennia, a time that included three major glacial cycles and significant variation in climate and temperature.

"We find that, over the next 90 years, at best these species' ranges will change more than 100 times faster than they have during the past 320,000 years," said Michelle Lawing, lead author of the paper and a doctoral candidate in geological sciences and biology at IU Bloomington. "This rate of change is unlike anything these species have experienced, probably since their formation."

The study, "Pleistocene Climate, Phylogeny, and Climate Envelope Models: An Integrative Approach to Better Understand Species' Response to Climate Change," was published by the online science journal PLoS ONE. Co-author is P. David Polly, associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.

The researchers make use of the fact that species have been responding to climate change throughout their history and their past responses can inform what to expect in the future. They synthesize information from climate cycle models, indicators of climate from the geological record, evolution of rattlesnake species and other data to develop what they call "paleophylogeographic models" for rattlesnake ranges. This enables them to map the expansion and contraction at 4,000-year intervals of the ranges of 11 North American species of the rattlesnake genus Crotalus.

Projecting the models into the future, the researchers calculate the expected changes in range at the lower and upper extremes of warming predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- between 1.1 degree and 6.4 degrees Celsius. They calculate that rattlesnake ranges have moved an average of only 2.3 meters a year over the past 320,000 years and that their tolerances to climate have evolved about 100 to 1000 times slower, indicating that range shifts are the only way that rattlesnakes have coped with climate change in the recent past. With projected climate change in the next 90 years, the ranges would be displaced by a remarkable 430 meters to 2,400 meters a year.

The timber rattlesnake could be displaced from much of its range in the eastern U.S. by climate change projected to take place by 2100

Increasing temperature does not necessarily mean expanded suitable habitats for rattlesnakes. For example, Crotalus horridus, the timber rattlesnake, is now found throughout the Eastern United States. The study finds that, with a temperature increase of 1.1 degree Celsius over the next 90 years, its range would expand slightly into New York, New England and Texas. But with an increase of 6.4 degrees, its range would shrink to a small area on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. C. adamanteus, the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, would be displaced entirely from its current range in the southeastern U.S. with a temperature increase of 6.4 degrees.

The findings suggest snakes wouldn't be able to move fast enough to keep up with the change in suitable habitat. The authors suggest the creation of habitat corridors and managed relocation may be needed to preserve some species.

Rattlesnakes are good indicators of climate change because they are ectotherms, which depend on the environment to regulate their body temperatures. But Lawing and Polly note that many organisms will be affected by climate change, and their study provides a model for examining what may happen with other species. Their future research could address the past and future effects of climate change on other types of snakes and on the biological communities of snakes.

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11 Degree Celsius Temperature Rise By 2100

 An 11 degree Fahrenheit global temperature increase by 2100. The finding comes from the typically conservative International Energy Agency, which revealed a new analysis of global energy consumption at this year's COP17 climate talks in Durban. If we continue consuming energy in the same fossil fuels-heavy manner, it notes, the world will become a hot, more unpleasant, and potentially hazardous place.

A place hot enough to "spell catastrophe for all of us."

Those are the words of the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who addressed world leaders and climate negotiators yesterday. The Washington Post has more:

"...heat-trapping emissions from the world’s energy infrastructure will lead to a 2-degree Celsius increase in the Earth’s temperature that, as more capacity is added to the system, will climb to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. Unless there is a shift away from some of the fossil fuel energy now used for electricity generation and transportation, Birol said, “the world is perfectly on track for a six-degree Celsius increase in temperature. Everybody, even the schoolchildren, knows this is a catastrophe for all of us,” he said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Upon hearing this dire news, Republicans in the US Congress (until now the number one impediment to forging a global climate treaty) reportedly rushed to convene an emergency session on how best to transition from our reliance on fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy sources.

But not instead, they most likely thumbed their noses at the allegation, and went about entertaining oil industry lobbyists in their mahogany-laden offices: 'Climate change. Can't believe that every top scientific institution, nearly every world government, indeed, almost everyone else on the planet fell for that hogwash. What dupes.'

Sad, but true. If the world is to collectively act to combat the advance of climate change, the United States, the largest historic greenhouse gas polluter, is going to have to play a leading role. And it won't, not so as long as one of its two major political parties does not believe that climate change exists.

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A New Model for Understanding Biodiversity

 Researchers have developed a unified theory of ecosystem change by combining spatial modelling and food web analysis.
Animals like foxes and raccoons are highly adaptable. They move around and eat everything from insects to eggs. They and other "generalist feeders" like them may also be crucial to sustaining biological diversity, according to a new study published this week in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

McGill biology researchers have developed a unified, spatially based understanding of biodiversity that takes into account the complex food webs of predators and prey. "Biodiversity exists within a landscape. Predators and prey are continuously on the move as their habitats change -- it's a complex dynamic system," says lead author Pradeep Pillai, a doctoral candidate at McGill.

Previous theories of biodiversity have either concentrated on the complex network of feeding interactions that connects all species into food webs or have focused on the way that species are connected in space. "A unified theory of ecological diversity requires understanding how species interact both in space and time, and this is what is different about our work," explains co-author Michel Loreau, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Community and Ecosystem Ecology.

What they discovered was that a "branching network" maintained by generalist species, like foxes or coyotes, that are able to move around and prey on different species in different locations, have an important role in promoting complex food webs and thereby in maintaining biodiversity. The researchers concluded that these generalist species have the advantage of being able to find prey no matter where they are as they move from one place to another, and this sustains the network.

This theory also lays a foundation for understanding the effects human activities -- like deforestation -- are likely to have not simply on a single species but on whole food webs. The researchers show how food webs are eroded by species extinction when disturbed by habitat destruction. "The theory is useful because it helps us understand how biodiversity is maintained, but also the impacts humans have when they disrupt ecological networks by destroying and fragmenting habitat," concludes co-author Andrew Gonzalez, Canada Research Chair in Biodiversity Science and Director of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science.

This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies.

To read an abstract of the paper:http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/11/09/1106235108.abstract?sid=fcec9d4e-49e9-43b3-9a40-6cdc94dbb268

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Handheld Application to Detect Plant Diseases

How do you identify plant diseases, keep pathogens from spreading and help protect the food supply? The old way was to collect field samples, send them to a lab ... and wait. The new way: An app that works with an iPod Touch or Android-based tablet (how inclusive) and can ID a plant pathogen in 10-30 minutes. The technology, called Gene-Z, was developed by Michigan State University scientists and is being developed for the market. Gene-Z is not only a gee-whiz project; it's designed to speed treatments and keep pathogens from spreading.In more detail, the Gene-Z invention can detect cancer in plants and crops. It was developed by Syed Hashsham, professor of civil and environmental engineering at MSU, and has already been used to detect a new disease devastating cucumber crops in the United States. The app was unveiled and demonstrated for the first time in public at a recent National Plant Diagnostic Network conference in Berkeley, California.

To use Gene-Z, you take a swab for pathogens, transfer the sample to a microfluidic chip, and insert it into the device. In 10-30 minutes, the app can ID the pathogen, its genotype and its amounts.

“We’ve already successfully proven Gene-Z’s capacity for quantifying cancer markers,” Hashsham says. “With this application, we can speed the analysis of pathogens in plants, water and food with the ultimate goal of improving the safety and security of food supplies anywhere in the world.”

MSU researcher Syed Hashsham has invented a handheld, low-cost application that can perform genetic analysis

That hopefully also means less pesticide use and more sustainable farming operations. Hashsham is working with MSU Technologies to commercialize the product. So some day, a farmer may be able to download and use it. The project was paid for with a grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and AquaBioChip, the latter of which also is working on quick pathogen identification in air and water.

Besides Hashsham, others involved in the development included James Tiedje, MSU distinguished professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, a team of graduate students led by Robert Stedtfeld (now an MSU postdoctoral researcher), and a wolverine: Erdogan Gulari, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.

                

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Lower Biodiversity Hurts Species' Chances To Adapt To Climate Change

Interesting new research explaining how what, to me at least, seems intuitively true: The greater the biodiversity in an ecosystem, the greater chance that any species will be able to adapt to climate change. It applies to communities and human economies too. But first, the research.

Published in Evolutionary Applications, research for the National Institute for Mathematical and Billogical Synthesis shows,

In some cases evolution can rescue plant-pollinator mutalisms that would otherwise become extinct as a result of climate change. Whether a mutalism survives, however, can depend on upon the density and distribution of other species in the community. For example, under many circumstances, the presence of alternative pollinators available to the focal plant can help to protect both the focal plant and the focal pollinator from extinction.

More basically, say there are two species who have evolved to be dependent upon one another -- a plant depends on a particular insect to pollinate it and the insect depends on that plant in return. If climate change has differing impacts at differing times to each of them -- say, the plant starts flowering before the insects arrive, or the insects arrive earlier because of changing temperatures elsewhere and the plant isn't yet flowering -- then both species may be in danger of extinction. Or at least face a much harder time adapting to the changing climatic conditions. But if there is greater biodiversity, there may be alternative pollinators to take up the slack, if you will.

In even greater brevity: When you reduce biodiversity, you reduce possible interactions, you reduce possible avenues of change, you start closing off differing ways of coping.

Paper lead author Tucker Gilman says,

Habitat fragmentation or loss of native pollinators might compound the threat of climate change to mutalisms. The results are troubling because anthropogenic climate change is thought to be happening up to ten times faster than any natural climate change in the past 500,000 years. This means that mutalisms that have survived past climate change events may still be vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change.

Really, as I started to say, this applies to communities and economies as well. The greater the diversity of business, people, thoughts, ways of expression (here, the loss of differing languages and cosmologies is apropos to environmentalism), the greater the number of possible permutations of the expression of consciousness and existence itself and the easier it is for these to become manifest.

A city or nation that devotes itself to too few types of economic activity is more easily shocked when that source of prosperity is disrupted (for whatever reason). A community with a tightly circumscribed boundary around the types of people that live there, the political, cosmological or ethical viewpoints, is more easily shocked. On a personal level it applies as well, in terms of the types of viewpoints that you regularly hear on any given subject.

Of course, simply having this diversity is no guarantor that the best path forward in any given circumstance will be chosen -- just as having ample biodiversity is no guarantee that any specific species will be able to adapt to climate change. But the more routes around disaster, disruption, or just distraction are present, the easier it is to avoid it.

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Internet Sucks Up 2% of Global Energy, Study Estimates

Estimating the amount of energy the Internet uses is no small task. We have to take into account everything -- from the embodied energy of Internet-connected devices like smart phones, laptops, e-readers, desktops, cables and wires and of course the servers themselves, as well as the energy consumption of the servers and devices and more. It's a huge task, but two researchers from University of California, Berkeley, Justin Ma and Barath Raghavan, came up with an estimate they think is reasonable.

The study, called "The Energy and Emergy of the Internet" (PDF) looks at a whole slew of information. The team's estimates include 750 million of each desktops and laptops; 1 billion smartphones; 100 million servers; 1 million routers and router-like devices; 100 million LAN devices; 5 million cell towers; 75 million telecom switches; 1.5 billion km of fiber optic cabling; and 3.5 billion km of copper cabling for global telecommunications. Estimates on embodied energy of devices are based on previous studies.

The team concludes that the Internet consumes between 170 and 307 GW, which is equal to between 1.1% and 1.9% of the 16 TW used by humans worldwide. Embodied power is responsible for about 53% of that total.

The team concludes that there are some obvious ways to reduce the energy consumption of the Internet, which includes reducing the embodied energy of new devices, as well as reducing the number of new devices by keeping older devices functional longer. They state that doubling the replacement timespan for all components they listed in their estimates could reduce the Internet's embodied power by 43-82 GW. That's a hefty amount of the total.

But again, the team estimates that the Internet is roughly less than 2% of the total energy use. They note that transportation takes up a far more substantial amount, and that there could be a beneficial tradeoff of increasing the Internet's use in reducing the need to travel as much. A little boost in the Internet's energy consumption could mean a big reduction in energy consumption in planes, trains and automobiles.

The team writes:

First, suppose we replace some fraction of business air travel worldwide with teleconferencing. Each year there are 1.8 billion air passenger (one-way) trips; suppose 25% of those trips are eligible for elimination and are replaced with video conferencing. This yields 400 million passenger trips eliminated yearly, each of which uses roughly 20 GJ, saving 285 GW total. Thus, by replacing one in four plane trips with videoconferencing, we save about as much power as the entire Internet, and in particular we save a lot of oil.

Their conclusions are not particularly novel or surprising -- we've been aware for a long time that reducing the consumption of devices, keeping old device useful, and using recycled materials in the construction of new devices are key parts of keeping the carbon footprint (and therefore energy footprint) of electronics low. And Greenpeace has been on the IT industry for years to acknowledge its impact on the environment and move toward using renewable energy for data centers  and improving the energy consumption of the data center as well as the servers it houses. Not to mention boosting the use of the internet for communication and virtual meetings to help reduce how much we travel. But the study's methods and results still spark critical thought about the impact of the Internet -- something most of us couldn't imagine our lives without.

One thing will catch your eye in the paper -- a sentence that simply states, "Although we are certain our answer is wrong, we hope to raise awareness on the study of this important topic."

If there's two things this study leaves us with, it is gratitude for a solid guess and curiosity for what the real answer actually is.New Scientist reports that the research will be presented next month at the Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Impact of Money in Environment

 Paper money is lighter and cheaper to make but, on the other hand, coins last a lot longer. Let's find out which has a lower footprint. We'll also learn what's behind the Mint's stockpile of unwanted $1 coins.

National Public Radio (NPR) has recently reported on the Federal Reserve's $1 Billion stash of $1 coins that nobody  wants NPR reports that "the coins are the wasteful byproducts of a third failed congressional effort to get Americans to use one-dollar coins in everyday commerce." The current incarnation of the $1 coin features presidential portraits, George Washington through Ulysses S. Grant so far, and 20% of US coins are required to carry the image of Sacagawea.

US $1 coins weigh 8.1 grams are made from copper (88.5%) with a manganese brass cladding (6% zinc, 3.5% manganese, and 2% nickel) so the $1 billion in coins contain:

• 7,168.5 metric tons of copper, worth at least $63.2 million dollars at today's prices,
• 486 metric tons of zinc, worth $1 million,
• 283.5 metric tons of manganese, worth $1 million, and
• 162 metric tons of nickel, worth $3.5 million.

A formal Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) on the $1 coin and banknote was performed back in 2007 by students at Michigan State University, before the current stockpile was minted. Their study was intended to answer "which is better, coin or paper?" and looks at the entire life-cycle of coins and paper money, from resource extraction all the way through to recycling/disposal.

What Is The Impact Of Making The Coins?

The impact of making the coins extends far beyond the US Mint. The impact begins with resource extraction, namely mining. Mining can result in erosion, siltation of streams, contamination from leachates and processing chemicals, and many other impacts, not to mention the human impact. One of the easiest impacts to quantify is the impact on climate change through emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG) associated with each material. The GHG emissions from the copper alone can be estimated at around 14,840 metric tonnes of CO₂-equivalents, or the equivalent of 2,700 average U.S. passenger vehicles. 

What Is The Impact Of Making Dollar Bills

A US $1 banknote weighs only 0.917 grams and is not actually made from paper pulp but rather from 75% cotton and 25% linen (the fibers from a flax plant). The  environmental impacts of growing cotton are well known; herbicide/pesticide use, heavy water use, and the use of defoliant chemicals. While coins tend to last many years or even decades, the average dollar is replaced after 42 months of circulation due to wear. After this it is partially recycled into roofing material but mostly sent to the landfill. On the other hand, dollar coins remain in circulation about 17 times longer and are fully recyclable in the end.

The GHG emissions associated with the materials in a US dollar can be estimated at around 3 grams of CO₂-equivalents, so the emissions are about one fifth that of the coins. When you take into account the longer lifespan of the coins though, the benefits of coins become clear. The coins cause only one third the greenhouse gas emissions as the equivalent US Dollar bills.

What Is The Impact Of Coin Weight?

When the $1 coins are finally released their heavier weight will have a small incremental, yet potentially significant impact on transportation emissions. This is not only the case when coins are transported from the US Mint to Reserve Banks and individual retail banks, but also in the weight that they add to our own transportation footprint. The emissions from air travel, for example, are highly dependent on the weight being transported. This may seem trivial but just imagine if every American commercial air travel passenger carried just one $1 coin over the 500 million passenger-miles traveled last year. If some airline have considered urging passengers to empty their bladders prior to departure then a couple of grams per customer in excess coinage must also have an impact. In aggregate, this would result in an estimated 1,350 kilograms of extra GHG emissions! Ok, so that's only one quarter of the emissions of the average US passenger vehicle, so the US Dollar coin is still environmentally preferable.

The bottom line is that few people want heavy coins weighing down their pockets and purses, as is evidenced by the growing stockpile of unwanted coins in the US Mint's vaults. But one organization is working to change that. The Dollar Coin Alliance is trying to promote the use of dollar coins for their environmental and economic advantages. But today less and less people are using cash anyway.

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What if Nutrition Labels Included Carbon Emissions?

A sample of label including carbon emmisons

We all know that the foods we eat carry a carbon footprint. And in fact, the diet we choose can have a huge impact on our personal footprint. But what if you could find out right on the nutrition label, next to fat, calories, and protein? It would make it easier to know your impact in whatever food you choose. The Swedes were the first to include carbon footprints on nutrition labels followed by the British, who added carbon footprints to produce.
The Global Warming Diet designed what such a label would look like. Just below the protein label you'll find the carbon footprint first by serving and then for the entire product. The label also included the place of origin and the method of transportation used to get it to you. Finally, the label included a carbon rating. This is all information crucial to individuals adjusting their food choices in order to reduce their impact.
Unfortunately, we’re not there yet but that doesn’t mean that you can’t calculate your own result. Clean metrics has a helpful food calculator which can help you estimate your food choices. Clean Metric's Food Carbon Emissions Calculator allows you to break food down into categories including beans, dairy, fish, shellfish, fruits, grains, meat, poultry, nuts, oils, fats, and vegetables. Input the transport, the weight, and how much waste the product generates. It calculates production emissions from cradle to farmgate, transportation emissions, and waste emissions. This way you can start reducing your diet's impact by choosing plant-based, minimally processed foods, produced close to home.

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Waging War On Invasive Plant Species: Effects of Invasives Persist Even After Removal

Invasive species cost an estimated $1.4 trillion annually in their environmental and economic impacts worldwide and are second only to habitat loss as a threat to biodiversity. As scientists struggle with the challenge of controlling invasive species, the question of why some species are so successful continually arises.

Mikenia micrantha a invasive plant threatening the Chitwan National Park

Recent research conducted by Dr. Alison Bennett and Dr. Sharon Strauss at the University of California, Davis and Dr. Meredith Thomsen at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse has shed some light on this complex question. Most previous studies addressing the issue of species success have focused on the effect of individual factors, such as release from native enemies, disturbance, or allelopathy, but the interactions among these factors have not been taken into consideration. Bennett and colleagues investigated the effects of four primary mechanisms that potentially contribute to the success of invasive velvetgrass, Holcus lanatus. Their findings are published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Botany.
Bennett and colleagues focused on the effects of H. lanatus on a native daisy, Erigeron glaucus, at the Bodega Marine Reserve in Bodega Bay, California. In a series of greenhouse and field experiments, these researchers studied the effects of direct competition, changes to the soil community, indirect competition due to changes in herbivore feeding, and interference competition due to allelopathy.
They found that H. lanatus clearly hindered the germination, growth, and establishment of E. glaucus. Bennett and colleagues discovered that direct competition between the two species was responsible for much of the negative impact on E. glaucus. H. lanatus primarily effects E. glaucus due to the dense growth of H. lanatus as well as the dense litter layer and high propagule pressure associated with this invasive species.
"Direct competitive effects of H. lanatus are most important during the invasion process, and they have the greatest effect on plant community structure," Bennett said. "Reduction of the direct competitive effects of H. lanatus should aid in native plant community conservation."
However, Bennett and colleagues also found that the presence of H. lanatus altered soil communities. Due to the overwhelming effects of direct competition, this did not have a large role on the current interactions between H. lanatus and E. glaucus, but these changes likely have a negative impact on E. glaucus and other native species after H. lanatus is removed. Invasive plants are known to affect soil communities as a result of negatively affecting arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which can have damaging impacts on nearby native plants. Holcus lanatus changes the soil AM fungal community in a manner that reduces the benefit of association with AM fungi for E. glaucus, without reducing the benefit for itself. Bennett and colleagues observed a reduction in germination and growth of E. glaucus in soil in which H. lanatus had previously grown, demonstrating that the effects of H. lanatus may linger even after removal of the species.
"Invasive species can strongly influence plant communities while they are present via multiple mechanisms," Bennett commented, "but the effects of invasive species on plant communities can persist long after they have been removed because they can negatively alter soil communities."
This has important implications for mitigating the effects of invasive species. Bennett's future work may focus on how to revert the negative effects of invasive species on soil communities that persist long after the removal of invasive species.

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Global Warming May Cause Higher Loss of Biodiversity Than Previously Thought

If global warming continues as expected, it is estimated that almost a third of all flora and fauna species worldwide could become extinct. Scientists from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Center (Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum, BiK-F) and the SENCKENBERG Gesellschaft für Naturkunde discovered that the proportion of actual biodiversity loss should quite clearly be revised upwards: by 2080, more than 80 % of genetic diversity within species may disappear in certain groups of organisms, according to researchers in the title story of the journal Nature Climate Change. The study is the first world-wide to quantify the loss of biological diversity on the basis of genetic diversity.
Most common models on the effects of climate change on flora and fauna concentrate on "classically" described species, in other words groups of organisms that are clearly separate from each other morphologically. Until now, however, so-called cryptic diversity has not been taken into account. It encompasses the diversity of genetic variations and deviations within described species, and can only be researched fully since the development of molecular-genetic methods. As well as the diversity of ecosystems and species, these genetic variations are a central part of global biodiversity.

White branches show lost genetic lineages (no climatically suitable areas projected) in 2080 if global temperature increases by four degrees.

In a pioneering study, scientists from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) and the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturkunde have now examined the influence of global warming on genetic diversity within species.
Over 80 percent of genetic variations may become extinct
The distribution of nine European aquatic insect species, which still exist in the headwaters of streams in many high mountain areas in Central and Northern Europe, was modelled. They have already been widely researched, which means that the regional distribution of the inner-species diversity and the existence of morphologically cryptic, evolutionary lines are already known.

If global warming does take place in the range that is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these creatures will be pushed back to only a few small refugia, e.g. in Scandinavia and the Alps, by 2080, according to model calculations. If Europe's climate warms up by up to two degrees only, eight of the species examined will survive, at least in some areas; with an increase in temperature of 4 degrees, six species will probably survive in some areas by 2080. However, due to the extinction of local populations, genetic diversity will decline to a much more dramatic extent.
According to the most pessimistic projections, 84 percent of all genetic variations would die out by 2080; in the "best case," two-thirds of all genetic variations would disappear. The aquatic insects that were examined are representative for many species of mountainous regions of Central Europe.
Slim chances in the long term for the emergence of new species and species survival
Carsten Nowak of the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) and the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturkunde, explains: "Our models of future distribution show that the "species" as such will usually survive. However, the majority of the genetic variations, which in each case exist only in certain places, will not survive. This means that self-contained evolutionary lineages in other regions such as the Carpathians, Pyrenees or the German Central Uplands will be lost. Many of these lines are currently in the process of developing into separate species, but will become extinct before this is achieved, if our model calculations are accurate."
Genetic variation within a species is also important for adaptability to changing habitats and climatic conditions. Their loss therefore also reduces the chances for species survival in the long term.

New approach for conservation
So the extinction of species hides an ever greater loss, in the form of the massive disappearance of genetic diversity. "The loss of biodiversity that can be expected in the course of global warming has probably been greatly underestimated in previous studies, which have only referred to species numbers," says Steffen Pauls, Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), of the findings. However, there is also an opportunity to use genetic diversity in order to make conservation and environmental protection more efficient.
A topic that is subject to much discussion at present is how to deal with conservation areas under the conditions of climate change. The authors of the study urge that conservation areas should also be oriented to places where both a suitable habitat for the species and a high degree of inner-species genetic diversity can be preserved in the future. "It is high time," says Nowak, "that we see biodiversity not only as a static accumulation of species, but rather as a variety of evolutionary lines that are in a constant state of change. The loss of one such line, irrespective of whether it is defined today as a "species" in itself, could potentially mean a massive loss in biodiversity in the future."

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Biodiversity Critical for Maintaining Multiple 'Ecosystem Services'

As biodiversity declines worldwide, there is concern that this will lead to declines in the services that ecosystems provide for people, such as food production, carbon storage, and water purification. But until now it has been unclear, whether just a few or in fact a large number of the species in an ecosystem are needed to provide ecosystem services.
By combining data from 17 of the largest and longest-running biodiversity experiments, scientists from universities across North America and Europe have found that previous studies have underestimated the importance of biodiversity for maintaining multiple ecosystem services across many years and places.

"Most previous studies considered only the number of species needed to provide one service under one set of environmental conditions," says Prof. Michel Loreau from McGill University's biology department who supervised the study. "These studies found that many species appeared redundant. That is, it appeared that the extinction of many species would not affect the functioning of the ecosystem because other species could compensate for their loss."
Now, by looking at grassland plant species, investigators have found that most of the studied species were important at least once for the maintenance of ecosystem services, because different sets of species were important during different years, at different places, for different services, and under different global change (e.g., climate or land-use change) scenarios. Furthermore, the species needed to provide one service during multiple years were not the same as those needed to provide multiple services during one year. "This means that biodiversity is even more important for maintaining ecosystem services than was previously thought," says Dr. Forest Isbell, the lead author and investigator of this study. "Our results indicate that many species are needed to maintain ecosystem services at multiple times and places in a changing world, and that species are less redundant than was previously thought."

The scientists involved in the study also offer recommendations for using these results to prioritize conservation efforts and predict consequences of species extinctions. "It is nice to know which groups of species promoted ecosystem functioning under hundreds of sets of environmental conditions," says Isbell, "because this will allow us to determine whether some species often provide ecosystem services under environmental conditions that are currently common, or under conditions that will become increasingly common in the future." But Michel Loreau, of McGill, adds au cautionary note: "We should be careful when making predictions. The uncertainty over future environmental changes means that conserving as much biodiversity as possible could be a good precautionary approach."

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Scientists Harness The Power Of Plant Photosynthesis With Biophotovoltaics

If you think powering your gadgets with plants sounds like a strange idea, think again. Scientists at Cambridge University are working with designers to develop the next generation of photovoltaics that harness the biological power of plant photosynthesis. To give a visual idea of how these biophotovoltaics (BPVs) may look like, doctoral candidate Paolo Bombelli collaborated with designers Alex Driver and Carlos Peralta to produce these intriguing concept designs, ranging from a moss-powered lamp to a colony of 'solar masts'.
Some of the other ideas introduced by the team include BPV panels intended for domestic use (pictured above), as well as an offshore power plant capable of generating 5-6 watts per square meter and which also resembles something like gigantic lily pads -- with each pad actually consisting of many algae-coated panels. According to the designers, this power station would even "generate energy during the night as a result of excess electrons being stored inside the algal cells during daylight hours."

They've also designed 'solar masts' that look like vertical towers covered with algae -- a fast-growing plant -- to collect and transform sun energy. Water can also be harvested from underground to feed the plants so that the system can be self-sufficient.
Biophotovoltaic masts filled with algae can also collect the requisite rainwater instead in this alternative design.

It may be five to ten years before we might see biophotovoltaics as a competitor to conventional solar panels. But in the meantime, these plant-powered ideas will be exhibited during London Design Week 2011 from September 22 to 25, 2011.

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Species Reemergence After Collapse: Possible but Different, Mathematical Model Shows

Species pairs that disappear through hybridization after human-induced changes to the environment can reemerge if the disturbance is removed, according to a new mathematical model that shows the conditions under which reemergence might happen.

The findings, published in the journal Evolution, are important for conservationists and ecosystem managers interested in preserving, or even restoring, systems that have been disturbed by human activity.
By simulating environmental disturbances that reduce the ability of individuals to identify and select mates from their own species, the model explores the mechanisms that cause hybridization between closely-related species. Hybridization can lead to population decline and the loss of biodiversity. For instance, certain species of stickleback fish have collapsed into hybrid swarms as water clarity in their native lakes has changed, and certain species of tree frogs have collapsed as vegetation has been removed around their shared breeding ponds. Such hybrid swarms can replace the original species.
"What is happening isn't just speciation in reverse. The model shows that populations after collapse are likely to be different from the parental populations in ways that affect the future evolution of the system," said Tucker Gilman, postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis and the paper's lead author.
According to the model, the reemergence of species pairs was more likely when disturbances were strong than when they were weak, and most likely when disturbances were quickly corrected. However, even temporary bouts of hybridization often led to substantial homogenization of species pairs. This suggests that ecosystem managers may be able to refill ecological niches, but probably won't be able to resurrect lost species after species collapse.
"The encouraging news from an ecosystems service point of view is that, if we act quickly, we may be able to refill ecological niches emptied by species collapse. However, even if we can refill the niches, we probably won't be able to bring back the same species that we lost," Gilman said.

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