New rooftops in France to go green
Paris (AFP) March 19, 2015 -
Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved on Thursday.
Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer.
They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favouring biodiversity an ...
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Nearly all fuel inside Fukushima reactor melted: TEPCO
Tokyo (AFP) March 19, 2015 -
New tests show almost all of the fuel inside one of the Fukushima plant's reactors has melted, its operator said Thursday, the latest step in the clean up after Japan's worst ever nuclear crisis.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the technology, which uses elementary particles called "muon" to create x-ray style images, gave the most concrete evidence yet the fuel had dropped to the bottom of th ...
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Statoil 'highly impacted' by low oil prices
Stavanger, Norway (UPI) Mar 19, 2015 -
Norwegian energy company Statoil said Thursday its productivity for full-year 2014 was strong, though financial results are "highly impacted" by low oil prices.
Statoil said full-year equity production of 1.93 million barrels of oil equivalent for 2014 was a 4 percent increase from the previous year. The company said results show it's among the leading companies in the industry.
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Global Solar PV Capacity to Reach Nearly 500 GW in 2019
El Segundo CA (SPX) Mar 20, 2015 -
Total global solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity is forecast to reach 498 gigawatts (GW) in 2019, which is 177 percent higher than 2014, according to IHS (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of critical information and insight. While total global solar PV demand is projected to grow steadily, the large number of discrete country markets at the gigawatt-level will help reduce demand volatility. ...
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New research holds great promise for advancing sustainable energy
Piscataway NJ (SPX) Mar 20, 2015 -
New research published by Rutgers University chemists has documented significant progress confronting one of the main challenges inhibiting widespread utilization of sustainable power: Creating a cost-effective process to store energy so it can be used later.
"We have developed a compound, Ni5P4 (nickel-5 phosphide-4), that has the potential to replace platinum in two types of electrochemi ...
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Japan to Restart Nuclear Reactor in June, First Since Fukushima Disaster
Moscow (Sputnik) Mar 20, 2015 -
In March 2011 Japan shut down all its 48 nuclear reactor following the meltdown of Fukushima nuclear plant caused by an earthquake and tsunami. The incident was the biggest of a kind since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
The nuclear regulator approved the plan of construction works that Kyushu Electric Power, the plant's operating company, should conduct to make the reactor meet new safety ...
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You can't play checkers with charge ordering
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Mar 20, 2015 -
CIFAR fellows were among physicists who observed the shape of a strange phenomenon that interferes with high-temperature superconductivity called charge ordering, discovering that it is stripy, not checkered, and settling a long-standing debate in the field.
Charge ordering creates instability in some metals at temperatures warmer than about -100 degrees Celsius, causing some electrons to ...
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Electric cars combat urban heat problem: study
Paris (AFP) March 19, 2015 -
Electric vehicles are a useful tool for fighting sweaty city summers, according to a study published on Thursday.
Switching from vehicles powered by fossil fuels to plug-in equivalents would ease a phenomenon called urban heat island, it said.
The term describes what happens when city temperatures are driven higher by heat from traffic and air conditioners and by warmth, stored during th ...
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Superconductivity breakthroughs
Saskatoon, Canada (SPX) Mar 20, 2015 -
The Canadian research community on high-temperature superconductivity continues to lead this exciting scientific field with groundbreaking results coming hot on the heels of big theoretical questions.
The latest breakthrough, which will be published March 20 in Science, answers a key question on the microscopic electronic structure of cuprate superconductors, the most celebrated material f ...
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Low oil prices may hurt Colorado economy
Denver (UPI) Mar 19, 2015 -
Revenue growth for Colorado for the next fiscal year will be lower by $43.7 million in part because of the slowdown in the oil industry, a state budget report said.
The Colorado Office of State Planning and Budget said the state's general revenue fund for fiscal year 2014-14 was relatively unchanged, with growth expected at 8.8 percent. Revenue growth for the fiscal year ending in 2016 ...
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Japan Aims to End Nuclear Power Ban in June
Moscow (Sputnik) Mar 20, 2015 -
A reactor in Japan cleared another regulatory hurdle Wednesday, marking progress toward the country's return to nuclear power after all units were shut down for safety checks following the 2011 Fukushima atomic disaster.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said a reactor at a Kyushu Electric Power Co. plant had received approval for construction works upgrading the unit's basic design t ...
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New cheap and efficient electrode for splitting water
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Mar 20, 2015 -
UNSW Australia scientists have developed a highly efficient oxygen-producing electrode for splitting water that has the potential to be scaled up for industrial production of the clean energy fuel, hydrogen. The new technology is based on an inexpensive, specially coated foam material that lets the bubbles of oxygen escape quickly.
"Our electrode is the most efficient oxygen-producing elec ...
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2,000 snow geese die in US, avian cholera suspected
Washington (AFP) March 18, 2015 -
Two thousand migrating snow geese have died in the northwestern US state of Idaho likely due to avian cholera, according to the state's fish and game department.
The white birds with distinctive black wingtips were headed north to their nesting grounds in northern Alaska when they died at wildlife areas in Idaho.
Carcasses of the dead geese were collected and will be incinerated to preve ...
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Too haute to handle? French cuisine hard to swallow in China
Beijing (AFP) March 18, 2015 -
With its unusual cutlery, bizarre names and complex etiquette, French haute cuisine is as daunting as it is appealing to Chinese diners, despite the Asian country's own proud culinary tradition.
French cuisine has an unrivalled reputation but some critics see standards as slipping and last year a British magazine only included five Gallic establishments in its World's 50 Best Restaurants - ...
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Cold comfort in Ulan Bator, world's chilliest capital
Ulan Bator (AFP) March 18, 2015 -
Clad in a fox fur hat and dog hair boots, Mongolian merchant Undrakhiin Batulzii says his compatriots have over centuries mastered the art of beating the brutal winters of the steppes.
Ulan Bator is regarded as the world's coldest national capital and can see bone-chilling winter lows of minus 40 degrees Celsius, tough even for the hardy descendants of Genghis Khan.
For a newcomer the t ...
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Mount Fuji climbers should wear helmets: Japan officials
Tokyo (AFP) March 18, 2015 -
Climbers tackling Japan's highest peak Mount Fuji will be urged to wear a helmet and goggles, authorities said Wednesday, after more than 60 people died when a nearby volcano erupted without warning last year.
The 3,776-metre (12,389-foot) Fuji last erupted in 1707 but geologists have included it as one of 47 volcanoes in Japan believed to be at risk of eruption in the coming century.
De ...
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Britain to create world's biggest protected marine reserve
London (AFP) March 18, 2015 -
Britain on Wednesday said it intended to create what will be the world's biggest fully-protected marine reserve, covering an area nearly the size of France and Germany put together in the Pacific Ocean.
The reserve will be based around the remote Pitcairn Islands archipelago, a British overseas territory that is inhabited by descendants of the sailors who staged a famous mutiny on the Bounty ...
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Aid starts flowing to Vanuatu as remote islands plead for help
Tanna, Vanuatu (AFP) March 18, 2015 -
Aid began arriving in some of cyclone-hit Vanuatu's worst affected islands Wednesday but others remain isolated, with flights over the Pacific nation showing desperate villagers spelling out the letter "H" for help.
Relief agencies are battling logistical challenges in the sprawling archipelago with a lack of landing strips and deep water ports hampering their efforts to reach distant island ...
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NASA spacecraft in Earth's orbit, preparing to study magnetic reconnection
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Mar 17, 2015 -
Following a successful launch at 10:44 p.m. EDT Thursday, NASA's four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft are positioned in Earth's orbit to begin the first space mission dedicated to the study of a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. This process is thought to be the catalyst for some of the most powerful explosions in our solar system.
The spacecraft, positioned one on top of ...
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Isolated tribe ventures out of threatened Peru forests
Lima (AFP) March 17, 2015 -
Dressed in loincloths and speaking an unknown language, the Mashco-Piro, one of the last isolated peoples on Earth, are increasingly venturing out of their forests in Peru - to the government's distress.
Authorities say encroachments on the Amazon rainforest by illegal loggers may be forcing the Mashco-Piro, a tribe of hunter-gatherers, into some of their first recorded contacts with the ou ...
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Big toe's big foot holds evolutionary key
Johannesburg, South Africa (SPX) Mar 19, 2015 -
Our skeletons hold tell-tale signs that show that human bipedalism - walking upright and on two feet - are unique to humans especially when compared to our closest living relatives, apes. Exactly when these signs first appear in our evolutionary history is one of the fundamental questions driving the study of human evolution, or Palaeoanthropology, today.
An interdisciplinary team led by s ...
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New lake surface temperature database will help to study climate change
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Mar 19, 2015 -
A group of York University investigators and their international counterparts have jointly created a database of lake surface temperatures, to help study ecological effects of climate change.
"There has been a significant need to put together a database like this, considering the rapid warming of lakes," observes Professor Sapna Sharma in the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science ...
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Research 'measures the pulse of planet Earth' to reveal hidden patterns of climate change
Leicester UK (SPX) Mar 19, 2015 -
An international research team led by the University of Leicester has for the first time harnessed technology typically used to diagnose heart disease in order to measure planet Earth's pulse - and has uncovered hidden patterns of climate change often overlooked by other types of measurement.
The statistical method is called 'multi-scale entropy analysis' and has not been used to study cli ...
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Tracking marine plankton provides new information to reconstruct past climate
Miami FL (SPX) Mar 19, 2015 -
A new study from an international team of scientists uncovered new information about the tiny, globetrotting organisms commonly used to reconstruct past climate conditions. The findings can aid in improving our understanding of past global climate conditions.
Using a state-of-the-art biophysical computer model developed by University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sci ...
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In climatic tug of war, carbon released from thawing permafrost wins handily
Berkeley CA (SPX) Mar 19, 2015 -
There's a carbon showdown brewing in the Arctic as Earth's climate changes. On one side, thawing permafrost could release enormous amounts of long-frozen carbon into the atmosphere. On the opposing side, as high-latitude regions warm, plants will grow more quickly, which means they'll take in more carbon from the atmosphere.
Whichever side wins will have a big impact on the carbon cycle an ...
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