kerkko.fi

Scientists at Tulane University have discovered a novel bacterial strain, dubbed TU-103, that can use paper to produce butanol, a biofuel that can serve as a substitute for gasoline. They are currently experimenting with old editions of the Times Picayune newspaper with great success.
 TU-103 is the first bacterial strain from nature that produces 
butanol directly from cellulose, an organic compound.


"Cellulose is found in all green plants, and is the most abundant organic material on earth, and converting it into butanol is the dream of many," said Harshad Velankar, a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University’s Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. "In the United States alone, at least 323 million tons of cellulosic materials that could be used to produce butanol are thrown out each year."

http://tulane.edu/news/releases/pr_082511.cfm

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed. The reactors began to melt down. The disaster exposed poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, no one has yet died of radiation.

Some greens have exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at this graphic. I am not proposing complacency, but perspective. Atomic energy has just been subjected to the harshest possible test, and the impact on people has been small.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima/print

For decades, the Arab world has settled for corrupt, ignorant, treacherous despots as their leaders. For a generation, and in some cases two, Arabs lived in constant fear of expressing dissent, a fear so crippling it deemed them useless, incompetent and ultimately irrelevant . But the region has now been revived by its youth who have shown in Tunisia, Egypt, and now Libya that they know no fear, that they would rather die standing than live on their knees.

Still, the West fails to understand that they can not continue to do business with dictators and still say it is "friends of the people." The EU buys 79% of Libya's oil. US companies have practically taken over parts of Libya in recent years as the "free world" began to flirt with Gaddafi in the most scandalous of relationships. How can Europe put pressure on the Libyan government to immediately stop the butchering of innocent civilians when 10% of Europe's oil originates in Libya?

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/02/21/what-next-mad-dog-libya

A leaked German study has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Centre, a German military think tank. The team of authors, led by Lt Col Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets," and of serious political and economic crises.

Researchers have figured out a way to make the world's first urine-powered fuel cells. Chemistry postdocs Shanwen Tao and Rong Lan at Heriot-Watt University's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences in Edinburgh are turning pee into electricity and clean water with a prototype fuel cell system.

The Carbamide Power System prototype can break urea or urine from humans or animals down into water, nitrogen, and CO2, and also produce electricity. Municipalities currently spending a ton of money and energy removing urea from wastewater, could help reduce those costs by incorporating a system like this.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100827/981/tsc-urine-powered-fuel-cells-to-offer-pe_1.html

http://finrosforum.fi/russia-will-never-catch-up

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdpxhs_the-daily-show-an-energy-independen_news

Chemical engineers at the University of Michigan hope to make fuel in minutes. They are applying heat and pressure on microalgae, exploring a method to create affordable biofuel that could replace fossil fuels. They also hope to use the byproducts of bio-oil production as feedstock for more biofuel.

"The vision is that nothing would leave the refinery except oil. Everything would get reused," chemical engineering professor Phillip Savage said in a statement. "That is one of the things that makes this project novel. It’s an integrated process. We are combining hydrothermal, catalytic and biological approaches."

"We make an algae soup," Savage said. "We heat it to about 300 degrees and keep the water at high enough pressure to keep it liquid as opposed to steam. We cook it for 30 minutes to an hour and we get a crude bio-oil. We are trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we do not want to wait millions of years."

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/university-of-michigan-bio-oil/

Thanks to a new discovery, we may in the future be using solar energy during the day and hydrogen turbines or fuel cells during the night:

A new technique can convert 60% of sunlight energy absorbed by an electrode into hydrogen gas. Organic molecules have been used before to perform the same feat. But they are quickly bleached by the sunlight they are collecting, rendering them inefficient after a few weeks.

The inorganic materials used in the University of East Anglia's system are more resilient. Their first generation proof of concept is "a major breakthrough" thanks to its efficiency of over 60% and ability to survive sunlight for two weeks without any degradation of performance.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18511-sunpowered-water-splitter-makes-hydrogen-tirelessly.html