Energy Trends: Megaprojects delayed but not all dead

Image: Megaprojects
Masdar

The economic downturn and engineering obstacles have derailed green megaprojects such as Abu Dhabi's planned Masdar City, a carbon-neutral, zero-waste community in the oil-rich nation, shown here in an artist's rendering, and Texas oil-tycoon T. Boone Picken's much-hyped plan to build 1,000 MW of wind power in the Texas panhandle.

But not all green megaprojects are dead in the water, according to Clean Edge. For example, the clean-tech research firm has its eyes on 2,000 megawatts worth of concentrating solar power plants under construction in China, a 1,000-megawatt wind farm in India, and the rollout of smart meters and distributed solar throughout Southern California.

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Dinosaurs' Living Descendants

China's spectacular feathered fossils have finally answered the century-old question about the ancestors of today's birds
 

A key Chinese discovery was a primitive bird called Confuciusornis, identified by Zhou Zhonghe.



Discoverer of more dinosaur species than any other living scientist, Xu Xing, with a cast of parrot-faced Psittacosaurus, says some dinosaurs have birdlike traits, including feathers.

Some paleontologists now say Archaeopteryx may have been a feathered non-avian dinosaur.





One of the most unexpected Chinese fossils in Microraptor. It had four feathered limbs and almost certainly could fly. But unlike birds, it did not escape extinction.



The Yixian Formation also yielded Sinosauropteryx, the first physical evidence of a feathered dinosaur.


Some dinosaurs engaged in distinctly birdlike behaviors, such as nesting and brooding. Shown here is a partially reconstructed Oviraptor fossil from Mongolia with 20 eggs.

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Ancient Feathers in Amber: A clear example

An isolated, unpigmented feather barb and a mite preserved in Canadian Late Cretaceous amber. 

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Floating Wind Farms in the Middle of the Ocean

There's been plenty of talk of developing offshore wind farms to supply electricity, but as the chronically-delayed effort to build the CapeWind project in Nantucket Sound demonstrates, it's not that easy to convince people in coastal areas that wind turbines won't mar the natural beauty of their surroundings or damage delicate marine ecosystems [source: Lindsay]. That's why the ultimate solution may be to put wind farms hundreds of miles from coastlines, conveniently out of view, and to have them float on the surface of the water, tethered rather than attached to a structure to the ocean floor.

In addition to being less obtrusive, floating wind turbines have a much greater potential to generate power. They can capture the energy of winds in the open ocean, which can reach speeds at least twice as fast as winds near land [source: Economist]. Some reports suggest that wind farms could provide up to 15 percent of the world's future energy needs [source: Jacquot].

In late 2011, the first such offshore floating wind farm, a $30 million prototype called WindFloat, was put in place 217 miles (349 kilometers) off the coast of Portugal [source: Scientific American]. It uses a 2-megawatt turbine manufactured by a Danish company, Vestas, which is bolted onto a triangular floating platform made by Seattle-based Principle Power. The platform is moored with four lines, two of which are connected to the column stabilizing the turbine, which helps to reduce excess motion. As the wind shifts direction and places loads on the turbine and foundation, pumps will shift ballast water between chambers in the platform, enabling the installation to cope with more powerful offshore weather. As Antonio Vidigal, CEO of EDP Inovacao, one of the partners in the project, told Scientific American: "The deep ocean is the next big energy frontier" [source: Scientific American].

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‘Biggest Dinosaur Ever’ Unearthed in Argentina

Move over, Godzilla.

The largest dinosaur ever known to walk the earth has been unearthed in Argentina, and it really is a monster.

Based on its thigh bones, the dinosaur was 130 feet long and 65 feet tall, and at 85 tons, it was the weight of 14 African elephants. Basically, picture a seven-story building as long as a large yacht, and then add a set of teeth.

Scientists believe it is a previously undiscovered species of titanosaur — a herbivore, luckily for other dinosaurs who lived during the Late Cretaceous period.

The remains were discovered in the desert La Flecha about 135 miles west of Patagonia by a local farm worker, and excavated by paleontologists from Museum of Palaeontology Egidio Feruglio. About 150 bones have been found “in remarkable condition,” researchers said.

The huge herbivore lived in the forests of Patagonia between 95 and 100 million years ago, the team said.

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A real-life Jurassic Park?

Birds could be theoretically 'de-evolved' back to dinosaurs

Oxford biochemist says dinosaurs and Woolly Mammoths could be brought back to life - but dinosaurs could be trickier.

Dr Alison Woollard said it would be theoretically possible to recreate ancient animals, through the DNA of birds.

By identifying and altering certain genes found in the DNA of modern birds, she believes scientists may be able to “design” genomes of the prehistoric creatures.

The theory echoes the plot of Jurassic Park, but comes after a recent attempt to bring back the animals using techniques more faithful to those used in the 1993 film failed.
The Steven Spielberg production saw geneticists recreate dinosaurs using DNA recovered from bloodsucking insects which had been caught in sticky tree sap before it turned to amber.

 A mosquito was recently discovered which had the blood of another animal in its stomach dating from dating back 46 million years, not quite the age of dinosaurs, but tantalisingly close.

However, hope vanished when a team at Western Australia’s Murdoch University found that DNA cannot survive for more than 6.3 million years. Most dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period.

However Dr Woollard, from Oxford University’s Department of Biochemistry, has suggested the feat could be achieved by “de-evolving” birds.

“We know that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs, as proven by an unbroken line of fossils which tracks the evolution of the lineage from creatures such as the velociraptor or T-Rex through to the birds flying around today,” said Dr Woollard.

“The most famous of these is the Archaeopteryx, a fossil which clearly shows the transition between feathered dinosaurs and modern birds.

“This evolution implies that buried deep within the DNA of today’s birds are switched-off genes that control dinosaur-like traits.  

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Dinosaurs are alive and well

Ancient species have evolved over millions of years into birds, finds Oxford University study  

 

Dinosaurs are not extinct, but have simply shrunk to become the 10,000 species of birds that are alive today, academics at Oxford University have claimed.

A study of the evolution of 426 dinosaur species over millions of years revealed that dinosaurs gradually became smaller in size until they evolved into birds.

Researchers have shown that shrinking was key to their survival and allowed them to become one of the most diverse and abundant families of animals alive today.

Dr Roger Benson, from Oxford University, said: “We wanted to understand the evolutionary links between this exceptional living group, and their Mesozoic relatives, including well-known extinct species like T rex, triceratops, and stegosaurus.”

The scientists found that dinosaurs underwent rapid changes in body size shortly after they first appeared, around 220 million years ago. Thereafter only the evolutionary line leading to birds continued to change size at such a fast rate, and did so for a further 170 million years. The study was published in the online journal Public Library of Science Biology. 



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Energy Trends: Carbon dioxide, a value-added product?

Charlie Riedel  /  AP

Pernick sees signs of a nascent industry that uses carbon dioxide from industrial operations such as coal-fired power plants and breweries to create products such as calcium carbonate, a key component of Portland cement, and algae fuels.

"This whole idea of industrial ecology that has been around for decades hasn't really reached an inflection point yet," he says, "but I think we're close — where all of the sudden waste streams become value-added products and services."


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Ancient Feathers in Amber: Color-Producing Cells

A feather barb that shows some indication of original coloration. The oblong brown masses within the image are regions of color within the barbules. In this specimen, the overall feather color appears to have been medium- or dark-brown. 



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10 Weirdest Dinosaurs: #1 Therizinosaurus

Not all dinosaurs (or archosaurs, or pterosaurs) sported the same plain-vanilla body plans. Some of these creatures stood out even by the bizarre standards of the Mesozoic Era, with strange adaptations that continue to puzzle paleontologists to the present day.

Kind of like Big Bird crossed with Count Dracula, Therizinosaurus was a large type of theropod dinosaur known as a therizinosaur, with a squat trunk, a long neck, a tiny head, and a trio of three-foot-long claws on each of its hands (hence its name, Greek for "reaping lizard"). Despite its fearsome appearance (which may or may not have included brightly colored feathers), Therizinosaurus was a strict vegetarian, or at worst an omnivore.

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Energy Trends: Growing investment in smart grid and grid infrastructure

Charlie Riedel  /  AP file
 
The electricity grid brings energy from wherever and however it is generated to the people who use it. Lots of technologies have emerged in recent years that promise to make use of this electricity more efficiently, such as sensors that shut off unnecessary appliances when demand spikes, and meters that let people know when rates are lowest for energy-intensive activities such as washing dirty clothes.

Investment in these types of smart grid technologies is destined to grow, according to Pernick, whose firm recently launched an index to track the sector. In addition, the grid itself is bound to grow in coming years as utilities shuttle new sources of generation, such wind energy from rural, windy locales, to people in big cities on the coasts. 


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Inside China's Energy Machine

Capturing the Gobi’s Solar Power

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

In Gansu Province, two people walk amid an array of solar panels designed to soak up the Gobi Desert's abundant sunshine.

China is only sixth or seventh among nations in solar capacity, but its installations are growing at breakneck pace, especially after a new feed-in tariff to encourage development. Installations doubled last year, and this year the country plans to add three gigawatts—double its current solar capacity.

By 2015, China aims to have installed solar generating capacity of at least 15 gigawatts. That goal, announced in December, ratcheted up the nation's previous solar target by 50 percent.

China already is the world leader in the manufacture of solar panels, with 51 percent of the market. The nation that developed solar technology in the 1950s, the United States, has about 6 percent of the market. And U.S. photovoltaic manufacturers are under pressure as their Chinese competitors drive down the price of the product.

President Barack Obama's administration is to weigh in next month on whether to take up the cause of a coalition of seven U.S. solar manufacturers that charge the Chinese producers of dumping large volumes of unfairly subsidized photovoltaic cells at undercut prices in an attempt to dominate the American market.

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Dinosaur Chase!

The most famous dinosaur chase scene outside of those in “Jurassic Park” was found at the Paluxy River dinosaur tracksite in Dinosaur Valley Sate Park near Glen Rose, Texas. The 110 million-year-old tracks appear to be made by a theropod chasing a sauropod. Because of the way they were removed and stored, some of the tracks have been lost. Recently, a team of researchers used 3D imaging software, 17 old photographs and what’s left of the fossils to digitally recreate the chase tracks.

In 1940, Dr. Roland T. Bird, paleontologist and dinosaur track expert from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, photographed the tracks, mapped the area using string and then removed the 30-foot-long trackway from the Paluxy River by breaking up the foot-or-more-thick sheet of limestone. He numbered the pieces and shipping them back to New York by rail. Some of the trackway was reassembled and is on display in the dinosaur hall of the museum. The remaining pieces are deteriorating, which prompted the idea to recreate the original digitally.