1. seed
  2. Full Speed Ahead?

Full Speed Ahead?

By milhayser on February 14, 2012.

On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham reports that scientists have genetically enabled E. coli to digest a sugar found in algae. Bonham writes, "Scientists have been picking this bug's locks for decades, and it's already been engineered to make not just ethanol, but many other useful products as well." With the ability to metabolize sugar from a source as prolific, low-maintenance, and renewable as algae, E. coli could become a much bigger player in biofuel production. Meanwhile, Greg Laden considers the State of the Union address from an environmental perspective. Laden gives President Obama a pass for his pragmatic approach to an incendiary political issue, but admits that some of us might have preferred "a fire and brimstone demand to step up our national efforts to address Global Warming and the other issues related to the high rate of release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere." Laden says we must first elect a more unified Congress willing to enact science-based policy. In the meantime, the USDA's revised plant hardiness map shows that "all the climate zones have moved north permanently." And in 2012, that's just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Tags
alternative energy
climate change
E. coli

More like this

Fuel from Seaweed
I grew up on the coast of California, and I loved to surf. At my favorite break, Pleasure Point, the best waves were often at low tide, but low tide also meant seaweed. Lots of seaweed. [Source] The giant kelp of Monteray Bay is an astonishing organism. It's not actually a plant, it's a brown…
New Avenues to Knowledge
Science publishing is at a crossroads. On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham says that early scientists "communicated amongst themselves in person or in letters or in books. They shared discoveries freely and it was possible for an individual human to be aware of almost the entire sum of human knowledge…
Alternate fuels: community ecology informs energy policy
There's little doubt that we need to move America off of its addiction to rapidly depleting fossil fuels. The challenge is that our current energy infrastructure is heavily dependent on there being a common currency of energy; cars and trucks all run on different formulations of the same product,…
Nobel Winners Announced
Recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prizes were announced the week of October 3. The winners in medicine were honored for their work in immunology, as reported on Tomorrow's Table. Steinman "discovered a new class of cell, known as dendritic cells, which are key activators of the adaptive immune system…