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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