Chemists designed a nickel catalyst that easily transforms petroleum feedstocks into valuable compounds like fatty acids. The process is environmentally friendly: not only it works at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, but also recycles carbon dioxide, contributing to the fight against climate change.

Fatty acids are key in several industrial processes like the manufacture of soaps, plastics –such as nylon– and dyes. Experts estimate that the global market for these compounds could reach $20 billion in the next few years. Classical synthetic methods to obtain fatty acids often require toxic and hazardous reagents like carbon monoxide and extreme conditions of pressures and temperatures. Alternative methods like the derivatization of natural products are less dangerous, but lead to complicated mixtures of products that require tedious purifications.

A WSU research team for the first time has developed a promising way to recycle the popular carbon fiber plastics that are used in everything from modern airplanes and sporting goods to the wind energy industry.

The work, reported in Polymer Degradation and Stability, provides an efficient way to re-use the expensive carbon fiber and other materials that make up the composites.

Mercury is a powerful poison. It can cause brain damage, tremors, paralysis and death.

But two researchers at the University of Ottawa’s Department of Biology have found a way to neutralize this toxic metal by pitting it against a small but mighty foe — a group of microorganisms known as purple non-sulphur bacteria.

Researchers from the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven have succeeded in developing a process that purifies air and, at the same time, generates power. The device must only be exposed to light in order to function.

A new study by scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Cornell University and Duke University is the first in a series to understand how marine mammals like porpoises, whales, and dolphins may be affected by the construction of wind farms off the coast of Maryland. The new research offers insight into previously unknown habits of harbor porpoises in the Maryland Wind Energy Area, a 125-square-mile area off the coast of Ocean City that may be the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm.

Thanks in large part to satellite measurements, scientists' skill in measuring how much sea levels are rising on a global scale - currently 0.13 inch (3.4 millimeters) per year - has improved dramatically over the past quarter century. But at the local level, it's been harder to estimate specific regional sea level changes 10 or 20 years away - the critical timeframe for regional planners and decision makers.

That's because sea level changes for many reasons, on differing timescales, and is not the same from one place to the next. Developing more accurate regional forecasts of sea level rise will therefore have far-reaching benefits for the more than 30 percent of Americans who currently reside along the Pacific, Atlantic or Gulf Coasts of the contiguous United States.

Expanding its work in renewable energy, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is launching a three-year project to develop specialized forecasts for a major wind and solar energy facility in Kuwait.

"We're putting our expertise and technology to work around the world," said NCAR Senior Scientist Sue Ellen Haupt, the principal investigator on the project. "This landmark project meets our mission of science in service to society."

A recent discovery by Sandia National Laboratories researchers may unlock the potential of biofuel waste — and ultimately make biofuels competitive with petroleum.

Fuel made from plants is much more expensive than petroleum, but one way to decrease the cost would be to sell products made from lignin, the plant waste left over from biofuel production.

Lignin typically is either burned to produce electricity or left unused in piles because no one has yet determined how to convert it into useful products, such as renewable plastics, fabrics, nylon and adhesives. The electricity isn’t even available to the general public; it’s only used by companies that create large amounts of lignin, like pulp and paper manufacturers. Now Sandia scientists, working with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, have decoded the structure and behavior of LigM, an enzyme that breaks down molecules derived from lignin.

Garden and potted plants with white spots on their leaves are so popular that they are specially selected for this feature. An international research team has now identified a new mutation in the plant Lotus japonicus which gives leaves with white spots. These results could be important for the improvement of garden and potted plants.

Central parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet have been stable for millions of years, from a time when conditions were considerably warmer than now, research suggests.