Deserts Could Power the Whole African Continent
	The incredible amount of energy released by the Sun on a daily basis in the African deserts, if harnessed, could not only provide the whole African continent with electrical energy but might also be enough to power some parts of the European continent as well. Calculations show that the Sun produces about 1.5 barrels of petrol worth of energy for every square kilometer of desert. And as it turns out, Africa has plenty of desert areas. [ ... [read more >>]
	06 June 2008, 06:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Hydraulic Hybrids Work
	Fossil fuel reserves, petrol in special, are becoming increasingly scarce around the world with rapid economical development of poor countries, which greatly influences petrol prices in areas all over the world. Not only that, but burning fossil fuel increases the pollution of the planet, thus accelerating the climate change and the global warming effects that are now on the verge of taking over the Earth. There are a lot of alternative ... [read more >>]
	29 May 2008, 08:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Quantum Theory Test Uses Electrons
	Rydberg's constant, is a physical measure specifying the exact light frequency given off by an atom while an electron jumps from a certain energy level to a lower one. This number is critical for light spectroscopy techniques trying to determine the concentrations and types of chemical elements inside distant stars or even in studies measuring the amounts of pollutants in Earth's atmosphere. Max Planck Institute for Physics and N ... [read more >>]
	30 April 2008, 09:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

It's Not a Bird. It's Not a Plane. It's a Flogo
	This is the motto of a new company started by Francisco Guerra, specialized in making machines that are able to create Flogos – flying logos – out of a mixture of soap-based foams filled with helium gas. The main goal of the company is to create cloud-like logos of basically anything, then sell them as advertising. "Flogos are a revolutionary way to market products, services and events," says Francisco Guerra, the owner ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 03:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Menaces to Danube Delta
	Danube Delta represents the largest wetland inside European Union. It is the nesting, stop or wintering place for over 300 species of birds, whose areal stretch from Africa and Asia, beyond the Polar Circle. This place harbors Europe's largest pelican colonies. Despite the fact that the place represents a Biosphere Reserve, it has been experiencing many aggressions. During the communist times of Romania (until 1989), large areas o ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 09:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Ultra-efficient Nuclear Fuels, too Unstable for Use
	Nuclear fission reactors produce high amounts of relatively clean electric energy by burning nuclear fuels, such as uranium. Higher-efficiency nuclear fuel is required for the next generation of nuclear reactors, which will burn longer and stronger to produce even higher amounts of energy. However, researchers say that this may prove to be a big problem in case of a critical situation, since this type of fuels could prove to be m ... [read more >>]
	10 April 2008, 05:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

At Least One Decade Will Pass Before Solar Energy Becomes Efficient
	Petrol price is now beating every record possible and there's no sign that its ascension will stop anytime soon. On the other hand, alternative renewable energy sources seem to remain inefficient. Nonetheless, researchers argue that, in the next decade or so, fossil fuel dependency will be a thing of the past. "Solar can potentially provide all the electricity and fuel we need to power the planet. The Holy Grail of ... [read more >>]
	09 April 2008, 09:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Cleanest Vehicle: BMW Hydrogen 7
	It's official, BMW's Hydrogen 7 prototype is world's cleanest vehicle! Tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory reveal that the hydrogen-powered engine of the BMW Hydrogen 7 surpasses that of the super-ultra low-emission vehicles, a standard for low emission vehicles today. According to mechanical engineer at Argonne's hydrogen vehicles testing facility Thomas Wal ... [read more >>]
	31 March 2008, 04:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Build a Green Car, Win 10 Million Dollars
	The X Prize Foundation is a non-profit prize institute that designs and manages public competitions for the benefit of humanity. During the course of its past activity, the X Prize Foundation held competitions such as the Ansari X Prize for Suborbital Spaceflight, the Ansari X Prize for Genomics, the Automotive X Prize and the Google Lunar X Prize. The ultimate reward for meeting the conditions posed by the X Prize in their challenges usua ... [read more >>]
	22 March 2008, 04:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Storage Method Turns Hydrogen Metallic
	Although being the most abundant and lightest element in the universe, hydrogen is one of the most difficult to store in bulk. Take classical gas storage containers for example. The temperature and the pressure inside them must be closely correlated to ensure that the container is able to hold. Maintaining the right pressure is easy, however maintaining temperature is somehow problematic because it requires a input of extra energy. This si ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 10:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Blow Things Up Eco-Friendly Style
	Blowing stuff up is probably one of the most entertaining activities known to us. We just can't help it, it's in our human nature. Every year, millions of tons of fireworks and other pyrotechnic substances are being detonated for various purposes, and most of the remnant materials and byproducts of the reaction are either released into Earth's atmosphere or scattered on the soil. That wouldn't be such a big deal, howeve ... [read more >>]
	17 March 2008, 11:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Arab Emirates Say They Will Build Pollution-Free City
	Now that's really unexpected! I always thought that the first pollution-free city will be build in the United States, not in the middle east. I guess this should be an example for a country that considers itself the most technologically advanced in the world, but is still being the biggest carbon dioxide emitter and has been dodging international regulation related to carbon dioxide emission for more than three decades. Take ... [read more >>]
	22 January 2008, 05:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Say Good Bye to Nuclear Waste!
	Uranium dioxide is the world's most common radioactive substance, alongside the natural uranium molecule. Most of this nuclear waste results in the nuclear reactors of the nuclear power plants, during the process of nuclear fission, or nuclear fuel 'burning', which involves splitting the uranium atom through causing instability in the atomic nucleus, by bombarding it with a fast neutron particle. As the atom splits ... [read more >>]
	17 January 2008, 05:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Recycling Business Gets Boost from Cell Phones
	Now, don't get any crazy ideas by believing that your mobile telephone device has been manufactured from anything but recycled materials. Do you believe that old machinery such as airplanes just disappear into the darkness overnight? No... they get recycled like a great part of the materials our days. Do you know how expensive it is to extract new aluminum metal from the ground, or how much precious metal is being used every year for ... [read more >>]
	14 January 2008, 09:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Beijing Covered by Massive Pollution Wave
	On Thursday, the capital of the Republic of China was overtaken by a massive wave of pollution, even though the authorities strongly stated in the last months that the air quality in Beijing was improving. In order to protect the population of the city from the increased levels of pollution, the Chinese government issued a warning that the citizens should protect themselves as well as they can and if possible to spend as much time possible ... [read more >>]
	28 December 2007, 08:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

9 Issues About Contamination and Habitat Destruction
	1.What makes too many people on this planet for too few resources? The demographic boom, increased carbon dioxide emissions, the thinning ozone layer, deforestation and soil erosion. 2.The global warming will raise in 100 years Earth's temperature by 1.4-5.8o C, and this is already increasing the sea level. The first human settlement wiped out by this could be the village of Lateu (Tegua island, Vanuatu). The dwellings have been r ... [read more >>]
	05 December 2007, 10:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Crisis: How Does it Affect Us?
	It has not any color, smell, taste or calories, but water is a vital element for all life forms. No human, animal or plant can live without it. From elephants to bacteria, water is essential and nothing can replace it. A human must consume 2.5 liters of water from food and beverage to remain healthy. No water means no life. Without water, no livestock can be grown and land cannot be cultivated. There's no food without water. Fortu ... [read more >>]
	17 November 2007, 03:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fish Consume Could Harm the Boobs
	Fish are advertised as a healthy food, an easy to assimilate protein-rich meat, full of vitamins (like vitamins A and D), calcium, phosphorus and low cholesterol fats. But there are also species of fish which may cause health issues. A new research made at University of Pittsburgh found that channel catfishes coming from waters heavily polluted with sewer and industrial wastes could cause breast cancer. Extracts of channel catfish captu ... [read more >>]
	12 November 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Does Pollution Turn Men Into An Endangered Species?
	There should be a worldwide sex ratio of 106 newborn boys to 100 newborn girls. Boys are anyhow more fragile and by puberty, the ratio will be 1:1. Even 1:1 at birth is not good, but when this drops to one boy for each two girls, this is disastrous. This is the case of the Chippewas of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, an 850 members community, inhabiting the shores of the St. Clair River outside Sarnia, Ontario. The main suspect for this ... [read more >>]
	31 October 2007, 15:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Scientists Create Fluorescent Fish!
	After fluorescent pigs, now fluorescent fish have been created. This happened at the National University of Singapore by injecting red, green and orange fluorescence genes coming from a jellyfish into the fish female sex cells. The researchers did it with the aim of using the fish for detecting environmental pollutants. Now, the engineered fish are also sold for pets! They are marketed as GloFish, but they are just a fluorescent variet ... [read more >>]
	27 September 2007, 04:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Pollution Kills 40% of the World's Population
	If you are afraid of HIV, malaria, cancer or obesity induced diseases, you’d better find out what's the direct or indirect human killer worldwide: water, air and soil pollution. 40% of humans are exterminated by it. "Such environmental degradation, coupled with the growth in world population, are major causes behind the rapid increase in human diseases, which the World Health Organization has recently reported. Both factors co ... [read more >>]
	15 August 2007, 06:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Automatic Tailgating, the Future of Highway Traffic?
	According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Statistical Records Office, there are approximately 62 million registered vehicles in the U.S. including trucks, heavy machinery and construction motorized vehicles which are more or less road-legal. This means that even the wide and straight roads in America will soon become overcrowded and some of them are already. Traffic in major cities is a real headache not only for the drivers w ... [read more >>]
	16 July 2007, 08:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Distant Planets Found to Pollute Their Suns
	Astronomers have recently analyzed the chemical composition of distant stars and discovered intriguing evidence of pollution on their surface, caused by the planets orbiting them. It seems that dwarf stars display iron enrichment on their surface, most likely caused by planetary debris thrown in space and falling onto them. "It is a little bit like a Tiramisu or a Capuccino," says Luca Pasquini from ESO, lead-autho ... [read more >>]
	10 July 2007, 04:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Track Pollution Sources? Just Look at the Sun
	Pollution on Earth is a very real threat to all lifeforms and its negative effects on organisms are well known, so countermeasures will have to be taken, if we all want to survive on the Blue Planet as we did before. But how do you find a source of pollution located far from where the effects are noticed? A group of scientists at Colorado State University are trying to do just that. They want to learn how the various sources ... [read more >>]
	20 June 2007, 03:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Could We Dump Greenhouse Gases into Space?
	Many people are beginning to realize that global warming is not going to go away by itself, as engines that burn gasoline emit pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, that cause global warming. Moreover, fossil fuels that took millions of years to form are rapidly depleting and can't regenerate overnight. For example, U.S. vehicles consume 383 million gallons of gasoline a day, or about 140 billion gallons annually, around t ... [read more >>]
	05 June 2007, 10:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Making Houses From Fly Ash Bricks
	A new discovery shows that bricks made from fly ash are very stable and much safer than initially thought. When they were first discovered, many theorized that these special bricks would leak small amounts of mercury into the atmosphere, thus posing a major threat for humans. A team of researchers, led by Henry Liu, a longtime National Science Foundation (NSF) awardee and the president of Freight Pipeline Company (FPC), developed the n ... [read more >>]
	23 May 2007, 06:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Device Sucks up Carbon Dioxide 1000 Times Faster than a Tree
	Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas that we release into the atmosphere when we exhale. It is also the greenhouse gas responsible for up to 26% of the greenhouse effect on Earth. Some of it occurs naturally in the atmosphere, while most of it results from human activities such as burning of fossil fuel and coal. Since we can't stop breathing, it's clear that we must do something to reduce the amount of CO2 released into ... [read more >>]
	01 May 2007, 10:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Gel Swells up 500 Times to Absorb Dangerous Pollutants
	A team of Japanese chemists led by Kazuki Sada of Kyushu University have developed a new gel that can increase its volume 500 times when coming in contact with solvents. A gel is a colloidal system in which a porous network of interconnected nanoparticles spans the volume of a liquid medium. In general, gels are apparently solid, jelly-like materials. Both by weight and volume, gels are mostly liquid in composition and thus e ... [read more >>]
	30 April 2007, 04:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Gold Nanoparticles Used to Detect a Toxic Metal - Mercury
	Throughout history, mercury has widely been used by alchemists that were trying to produce gold. Now, the roles have changed, and gold is what helps scientists find mercury. In the litmus test, litmus is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from certain lichens, especially Roccella tinctoria, often absorbed on to filter paper. The resulting piece of paper or solution with water becom ... [read more >>]
	27 April 2007, 07:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Intergalactic Pollution Made Life Possible
	Pollution on Earth is a very real threat to all lifeforms and its negative effects on organisms are well known, so countermeasures will have to be taken, if we all want to survive on the Blue Planet as we did before. Did you known there is such thing as "intergalactic pollution"? Warm gas escaping from the clutches of enormous black holes could be the element that made life possible, according to new results from ESA' ... [read more >>]
	20 April 2007, 08:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Antarctica's Ozone Hole Will Fill Itself Up ?
	Ozone O3 is an allotrope (variety) of oxygen, much less stable than the generally found O2, and it is responsible for protecting living organisms by preventing damaging long-wavelength ultraviolet light from reaching the Earth's surface. But not all ozone is good. The beneficial one is situated in the upper layer of the atmosphere, the stratosphere, but there is another type, located in the troposphere, the atmosphere's lo ... [read more >>]
	10 April 2007, 04:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Evidence of Global Warming on Mars
	In the light of new research, scientists have shown that dusty tornadoes called dust devils and gusty winds have helped the surface of Mars become darker, allowing it to absorb more of the sun's rays. The research comes from US planetary scientists, who suggest the Red Planet warmed by about 0.65C from the 1970s to the 1990s, similar to Earth's 0.6C average temperature rise during the 20th Century. "It could be coin ... [read more >>]
	05 April 2007, 02:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Houses of Tomorrow Could Be Made from Trash
	Recycling prevents useful material resources being wasted, reduces the consumption of raw materials and reduces energy usage, and hence greenhouse gas emissions, compared to virgin production; it’s a key concept of modern waste management and is the third component of the waste hierarchy. Recyclable materials, also called "recyclables" or "recyclates", may originate from a wide range of sources including the home an ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2007, 06:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sugar, the Solution for Chrome Pollution
	Water pollution is a large set of adverse effects upon water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans and groundwater caused by human activities. Although natural phenomena such as volcanoes, storms, earthquakes etc. also cause major changes in water quality and the ecological status of water, these are not deemed to be pollution. Industries discharge a variety of pollutants in their wastewater, including heavy metals, organic toxins, oi ... [read more >>]
	30 March 2007, 05:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia