ZapRoot: The Truth about Recycling
Discover what really happens with your recyclables. It’s time for another round of That’s Just Weird.
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Emissions from Plastic Manufacturing Damaging Cattle DNA
Published on March 25th, 2009
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Courtesy of Scientific American and Environmental Health News, another reason to despise plastic. According to an article by Matthew Cimitile, researchers believe that airborne pollution from plastics manufacturing may change the DNA of cattle.
It all started when ranchers living 4 miles downwind from the Formosa Plastics facilities in Point Comfort, Texas noticed that their steers were losing weight, their cows were miscarrying and having stillborn calves and some of the calves were being born with abnormalities like missing limbs:
Tests have revealed that herds as far as six miles downwind of the factories have more DNA disturbances than other herds not downwind, according to scientists at Texas A & M University. The changes in chromosome structure and other genetic damage can increase the animal’s risk of cancer and reproductive damage
Everyday Life — How to Really Change the Environment
Published on March 25th, 2009
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If you don’t eat for a day, you know it. If you stay inside all day, you feel it and it makes a strong impression on the character of the day. These are two critical parts of our day — what we eat and where we go.
If we want to be Green, if we want to make a decision to help the environment, these daily issues are about as big as it gets. If we buy a green product — an organic cotton t-shirt, a hemp bag or wallet, a recycled chair — we are, basically, doing one environmental action. If we decide to make our eating and transportation habits environmentally friendly, however, we are make several environmental actions everyday.
We see many figures showing us that transportation and food are the largest contributors to the global warming crisis and to many other environmental issues (water quality, air quality, etc.), but do we take this home and say, “this is what I need to change”?
Here are three or four ways to make that change we have been waiting for.
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Alaska’s Coast Melting Faster than Ever
Published on March 5th, 2009
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A recent study shows that Alaska’s coast is melting faster than ever, and that along with the melting ice, more and more of the land is eroding into the ocean as well. The causes of the erosion also seem to be changing — in the past it was largely due to storms but that is no longer the case.
From 2002 to 2007, Alaska’s coast eroded at a rate that was more than twice that of the years 1955-1979. It is not just land that the sea is taking in these days either. It has swallowed a historic ghost town (Esook) and a historic whaling boat as well as an oil well (and probably more soon).
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Is Miracle, Safe Sanitizer Too Good to be True?
Did you know that by mixing tap water and table salt you can create a substance that degreases, kills bacteria, cleans and costs less than a penny a gallon? Too good to be true, right? But for decades, this method has been used in Russia and Japan, and it’s slowly gaining acceptance in the U.S.
The thing is, you can’t just pour some salt in a container of water and shake it up. You have to scramble the ions in the salted water with an electric current and create electrolyzed water. Most of us don’t have electrolysis machines in our home, but some U.S. businesses are buying them and finding the results favorable.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Sheraton Delfina in Santa Montica is using the electrolyzed water for cleaning rooms and disenfecting produce in the kitchen and the staff, the workers who actually use the stuff, are calling it “el liquido milagroso - the miracle liquid.” Read the rest of this entry »
Charles Darwin in Church
Hey, you know that old conflict between religion and science? Remember the Scopes monkey trial in 1925 or the 1960 film about the case? How about the legislative battles of the last few years in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Kansas over the mandatory inclusion of intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools?
Waiting for worldviews to change to accommodate new science is like watching the emergence of multicellularity. Keep in mind that Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is only 150 years old. Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was published in 1543. That book wasn’t completely dropped from the Vatican’s list of banned books for another 300 years. (I wonder if foundation-shattering books would fly under heresy radars if the titles didn’t start with “On the…”)
Chuck, on the other hand, just got fast-tracked! On Darwin’s 200th birthday, the Vatican is officially on board with evolution! Also, more than 800 pastors and rabbis are celebrating “Evolution Weekend” following Darwin’s 200th birthday February 12.
Japanese Researchers Turn Cow Dung Into Fuel; Say Can Use Human Waste, Too
Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Professor Junichi Takahashi and the Sumitomo Corporation research group (both in Japan) have jointly developed technology to produce hydrogen from cattle dung and urine for use in fuel cells. They say the same can be done with human waste.
The researchers say the process allows for the production of hydrogen without producing unwanted carbon dioxide. Given its potential utility with human waste, the idea also may open pathways to household toilet technology: “toilet generators.” Read the rest of this entry »
Baylor University Researchers Find New Uses for Coconut Husks to Make Car Parts
Researchers at Baylor University have been working on designing multiple low-cost products that can be derived from coconuts in poor coastal regions, where the fruit grows in abundance and is a renewable resource. The group, led by Dr. Walter Bradley, Distinguished Professor of Engineering, has found an innovative way to use coconut husks in automotive interiors.
They are are using coconut fibers in place of currently used synthetic fibers to make compression-molded composites for automobile parts such as bed liners, floorboards, sun visors and inside door covers. The idea for new uses of the coconut grew out of a desire to aid poor coconut farmers in coastal regions in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Ghana and Sri Lanka. In most developing countries, the coconut husk is basically a throwaway material.
Honey Bees on Cocaine Change Ideas about the Insect Brain
By doping honey bees with cocaine, researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered evidence that the insect brain has a reward system.
The famous “waggle” dance of honey bees is a complex language that allows foraging bees to communicate the distance, direction and quality of a food source to the rest of the hive. The study showed that honey bees on cocaine tend to dance more, without relation to the quality of food or state of the hive. Given the effects of cocaine on people, hyperactivity may seem like a fairly obvious reaction. However, the implications of the study suggest something that has not been found before: a reward system in the insect brain. Read the rest of this entry »
Sustainable Communities: N55 Grows Our Human Potential
Occam’s Razor: the scientific principle that the most simple, elegant solution to a given problem is the one most likely to be true.
N55 takes the notion of assembling the world into a sustainable community with a fair mechanism for exchanging resources and simplifies it to its very barest elements. You will find little elaboration on the N55 site. You will find little philosophical jargon.
But what you will find is astonishing innovation, ingenious trial concepts that simplify and minimize our human needs into manageable, bite-sized alternatives (like HYGIENE SYSTEM and MICRODWELLING). You will also find a series of solutions and protocols for interaction that can be cut and pasted onto just about any society of human beings.
Take ROOMS, for example. The following is excerpted from their “Manual for ROOMS.”
“ROOMS gives access to rooms. Any person can use ROOMS. ROOMS can be established anywhere supplying different functions like rooms for sleeping, making food, reading, meeting, producing things etc.
“ROOMS is a system that can be used for sharing rooms with other persons. ROOMS consists of rooms in different places in the world. The rooms are included in ROOMS by persons who guarantee that anybody can use them according to the function they are initiated with and within given periods of time.
“Any person can expand ROOMS by providing one or more rooms. These rooms can be in existing buildings, they can be mobile rooms, or they can be built for ROOMS. Positions of ROOMS can be found in Manual for ROOMS. The manual is continuously updated. A current version can also be obtained by contacting N55.”
It’s the cleanest, simplest definition possible–as a result, it can be easily adapted and interpreted for the diverse situations and peoples found across the planet.
You or I could add a ROOM. You or I could use ROOMS. The same is true for LAND, SHOP, FACTORY, etc. Talk about universal! Read the rest of this entry »
