(European Commission Joint Research Centre) The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published today a study mapping the potential of renewable energy sources in Africa. The report analyses the current energy consumption in Africa and assesses potential of renewable energy sources -- solar, wind, biomass and hydropower -- and their cost efficiency and environmental sustainability. Its publication coincides with the official European Launch of UN's Year on "Sustainable Energy for All" being held today in Brussels.
(Elsevier) Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the launch of Energy Strategy Reviews, a new quarterly, peer-reviewed journal focusing on energy strategy, planning and decision making.
(New York University) Obstacles in an organism's path can help it to move faster, not slower, researchers from New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences have found through a series of experiments and computer simulations. Their findings have implications for a better understanding of basic locomotion strategies found in biology, and the survival and propagation of the parasite that causes malaria.
(University of Cambridge) New solar cells could increase the maximum efficiency of solar panels by over 25 percent, according to scientists from the University of Cambridge.
(City College of New York) In research to develop a novel, eco-friendly filter to remove toxic gases from the air, scientists at The City College of New York found that a material made from used coffee grounds can sop up hydrogen sulfide gas, the chemical that makes raw sewage stinky.
(University of New Hampshire) An ocean mapping expedition has shed new light on deepest place on Earth, the 2,500-kilometer long Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean near Guam. Using a multibeam echo sounder, state-of-the-art equipment for mapping the ocean floor, scientists from the University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center found four "bridges" spanning the trench and measured its deepest point with greater precision than ever before.
(University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science) University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science graduate student Sean Bignami received a Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation scholarship for his studies of how the changing chemistry of marine waters as a result of ocean acidification might affect the early development of large marine fish.
(University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science) The University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science announced that it has received a challenge grant for $700,000 from the Miami-based Batchelor Foundation to support its exploration research efforts. The funds will be applied toward the acquisition of a helicopter outfitted with a suite of scientific equipment that will serve as the basis for a one-of-a-kind platform for environmental observations at the School.
(University of Washington) Scientists have advanced a method that allowed them to single out a marine microorganism and map its genome even though the organism made up less than 10 percent of a water sample teeming with many millions of individuals from dozens of identifiable groups of microbes.
(University of California - San Diego) Internet information giant Google updated ocean data in its Google Earth application this week, reflecting new bathymetry data assembled by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, NOAA researchers and many other ocean mapping groups from around the world.
Shell and HP are working on a new ERPforIT branded IT capability leveraging ongoing service provision, HPs configuration management and TRIM-now with added Autonomy/IDOL.
Neil McNaughton gets tangled up in the thorny subject of shale gas. On the one hand, environmentalists now have the whole industry in their sights. On the other hand, natural gas production is victim of its own success with prices in free fall. On the other other hand, this means an oil to gas energy cost ratio of 6:1. When will we see 40cents per gallon equivalent CNG at the pump?
Invensys has just signed a multi-million contract with Shell for simulation software. Harpreet Gulati talks to Oil IT Journal about how common reconciled data has laid the foundation of enterprise simulation in the downstream, how the approach is moving upstream, and the big gotcha.
The US government says that a huge earthquake risk lurks in the heart of the country, where a series of large shocks hit 200 years ago. Seth Stein says that kind of warning is dead wrong.
