In creating fuels from the woody materials of plants – the most abundant source of biomass on earth – scientists must separate the desirable sugars from byproduct chemicals including toxins. A team from the University ...
Materials Science
Jan 30, 2017
0
7
India has millions of small farms, many an acre or less in size, cultivating rice, wheat, sugarcane, and other staple crops. And twice a year, when the harvest is done, these farms go up in flames.
Biotechnology
Jan 26, 2017
7
454
To make biofuels, tiny microbes can be used to break down plant cells. As part of that digestive process, specialized enzymes break down cellulose—a major molecule that makes plant cell walls rigid. Scientists showed that ...
Biotechnology
Jan 24, 2017
0
12
Recently paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman suggested that humans may have had a significant impact on the Earth's climate already thousands of years ago—through carbon and methane emissions originating from biomass burning ...
Environment
Jan 19, 2017
0
8
For centuries drought has come and gone across northern sub-Saharan Africa. In recent years, water shortages have been most severe in the Sahel—a band of semi-arid land situated just south of the Sahara Desert and stretching ...
Environment
Jan 10, 2017
0
80
The use of residual forest biomass for rural development faces significant economic hurdles that make it unlikely to be a source of jobs in the near future, according to an analysis by economists at Oregon State University.
Environment
Dec 28, 2016
0
171
March 2012 was unusually warm. Biomass crops around the Midwest were well established and thriving. But when a late frost came in mid-April, all of that changed.
Biotechnology
Nov 30, 2016
0
6
Beneath the land are subsurface aquifers in which deposits of gravels, sands, silts, and clays mix with water and microbial communities. These subsurface gatherings of microbes, metabolically influenced by the mineral mixes ...
Biochemistry
Nov 24, 2016
0
182
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) made the surprise discovery that a metabolic pathway to take up CO2 exists and functions in a microorganism capable of breaking down ...
Biotechnology
Nov 1, 2016
3
456
The indirect effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, such as changes in soil moisture and plant structure, can have a bigger impact on ecosystems than previously thought.
Environment
Oct 26, 2016
0
42
