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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