Designing Bugs that eat Plastic It is a well known secret that plastic hardly breaks down and almost all of the plastic ever made still floats around somewhere. With the great pacific garbage patch now twice the size of Texas and over 500 billion plastic bags produced a year – which take about a 1000 years to decompose – plastic is well on its way of becoming a basic material in the Earth’s ecosystem. Earlier, we’ve discussed some of the dramatic effects of this material and suggested how a future microbe able to digest plastic could thrive on the vast amount of plastic ‘food’ available in the biosphere. It might take a million years, however, for a plastic-eating microbe to evolve. But why wait for evolution? 16-year old high school student prodigy Daniel Burd already developed a microorganism that can rapidly biodegrade plastic. Daniel presented a his results at the Canadian Science Fair in Waterloo, Ontario where he won the first price for his study.
The Ocean Cleanup - Boyan Slat In 2011, together with friend Tan Nguyen, Boyan Slat embarked on writing his final paper in the last year of secondary education, researching the possibility of remediation world’s oceanic garbage patches. During this project, they performed analyses on concentration of particles between 90 micron and 333 micron, plastic/plankton separation, plastic depth measurement devices and amount of plastic within the top layer of the gyres. Spending over 500 hours on the paper (instead of the required 80 hours), it has won several final paper prizes, including Best Technical Design 2012 at the Delft University of Technology. Boyan continued the development of his concept during the summer of 2012, and revealed it several months later at TEDxDelft 2012. At iSea Clash of The Concepts, The Ocean Cleanup was awarded the second prize by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment.
7 Alternative Fuels and Fuel-Powered Vehicles With $4.00/gallon gas prices a not-so-distant memory, alternative fuels are all the rage. But what about the vehicles that run on them? Between hydrogen fuel cells, bio diesel, electricity and compressed air, the industrialized world is hard at work creating the next generation of non-oil consuming vehicles. Compressed air (Image via DanceWithShadows) Perhaps the most tantalizing of all the alternative fuels is compressed air. Vegetable oil (Image via Biodiesel.org) Environmentalists everywhere have been salivating at the idea of running a car on vegetable oil ever since the idea was first proposed, and we have now taken the leap from concept to reality! Hydrogen fuel cells (Image via ImagesMe) The prospect of hydrogen-powered cars has been enticing eco-friendly motorists for years. Ethanol (Image via InternetAutoGuide) Most of us are already using ethanol in our vehicles, as federal law requires a certain percentage of it to be in the gasoline we buy. Water (yes, water!) Electrical power
Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic It's not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last May's Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic. Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn't considered. Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing. Editor's note: There are two high school students who have discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms. Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster? The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them.
Ocean gyre The five major ocean gyres A gyre in oceanography is any large system of rotating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis Effect; planetary vorticity along with horizontal and vertical friction, which determine the circulation patterns from the wind curl (torque).[1] The term gyre can be used to refer to any type of vortex in the air or the sea, even one that is man-made, but it is most commonly used in oceanography to refer to the major ocean systems. Major gyres[edit] The following are the five most notable gyres:[2] Other gyres[edit] Tropical gyres[edit] All of the world's larger gyres Tropical gyres are less unified and tend to be mostly east-west with minor north-south extent. Atlantic Equatorial Current System (two counter-rotating circulations)Pacific Equatorial Current SystemIndian Monsoon Gyres (two counter-rotating circulations in northern Indian Ocean)[3] Subtropical gyres[edit] Subpolar gyres[edit] Climate change[edit]
10 Very Rare Cloud Pictures Showcasing cool pictures of rare clouds caught on camera. Clouds fill the skies above us and are part of our every day lives but often go unnoticed. However, there are some clouds that are so rare that you will be very lucky to see them in your lifetime. This is a list of the top 10 most rarest cloud formations (in no particular order) that for those lucky enough to see them, were caught on camera. For those of you more interested in clouds, we recommend Cloud Book: How to Understand the Skies 1. These rare clouds, sometimes called mother-of-pearl clouds, are 15 - 25km (9 -16 miles) high in the stratosphere and well above tropospheric clouds. They have iridescent colors but are higher and much rarer than ordinary iridescent clouds. Nacreous clouds shine brightly in high altitude sunlight up to two hours after ground level sunset or before dawn. Their unbelievably bright iridescent colors and slow movement relative to any lower clouds make them an unmistakable and unforgettable sight. 2. 3.
Plastic-eating bacteria found in 'ocean desert,' scientist says Scientists have found an organism that may be eating plastic in the ocean, according to a report in Nature News. But whether the bug is green or mean remains to be seen, a scientist told CNN on Wednesday. It has been proven that microbes can degrade plastic, said marine microbiologist Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. What's significant is that the plastic is being degraded in a nutrient-poor area of the sea, an "ocean desert," Mincer said. The bacteria, found in a region of the North Atlantic Ocean called the Sargasso Sea, is clearly breaking down the plastic, but scientists don’t know if the byproduct is environment-friendly waste or a toxin. Examining items such as a fishing line and plastic bag, Mincer discovered the living cells entrenched in the plastic, seemingly gorging on it, he told Nature News. "We are seeing the plastic particles as a type of artificial reef that certain types of microbes can colonize," Mincer said.
The Fallacy of Cleaning the Gyres of Plastic With a Floating "Ocean Cleanup Array" As the policy director of the ocean conservation nonprofit 5Gyres.org, I can tell you that the problem of ocean plastic pollution is massive. In case you didn’t know, an ocean gyre is a rotating current that circulates within one of the world’s oceans – and recent research has found that these massive systems are filled with plastic waste. There are no great estimates (at least scientific) on how much plastic is in the ocean, but I can say from firsthand knowledge (after sailing to four of the world’s five gyres) that it’s so pervasive it confounds the senses. Gyre cleanup has often been floated as a solution in the past, and recently Boyan Slat’s proposed ‘Ocean Cleanup Array’ went viral in a big way. The nineteen-year-old claims that the system can clean a gyre in 5 years with ‘unprecedented efficiency’ and then recycle the trash collected. Editor’s Note: This piece was written in response to a story published in 2013. Photo by Stiv Wilson/5Gyres.org What about the science?
Kurzy prvej pomoci - Slovenský Červený kríž Kurz inštruktora prvej pomoci - 24 hodín Slovenský Červený kríž je držiteľom Rozhodnutia Ministerstva zdravotníctva SR o vydaní osvedčenia o akreditácii Kurzu inštruktora prvej pomoci č. 23795-2013-OZdV zo dňa 14. 6. 2013. Zdravotnícki pracovníci (s vyšším odborným alebo vysokoškolským vzdelaním v zdravotníckych štúdiách), ktorí majú záujem stať sa inštruktormi prvej pomoci môžu absolvovať kurz inštruktora aj v Slovenskom Červenom kríži v Bratislave. Učebný plán a osnova 24 hod. kurzu.Cena kurzu je 265 € (7 983,40 Sk).Prihlášku na kurz nájdete fileadmin/user_upload/dokumenty/Kurzy_prvej_pomoci/prihlaska_na_kurz_IPP_2013.doctu Aktuálny termín kurzu je 6.6. - 8. 6. 2014 v Bratislave. V prihláške prosíme uviesť termín kurzu, na ktorý sa prihlasujete. Bližšie informácie vám poskytneme taktiež počas pracovných dní medzi 9:00 a 15:00 hod. na čísle 02/5710 23 02 alebo e-mailom silvia.erdelyiova(at)redcross.sk. Kurz prvej pomoci - 8 hodín Kurz pre autoškoly Európsky certifikát - 16 a 33 hodín
Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months | Wired Science Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months. The Waterloo, Ontario high school junior figured that something must make plastic degrade, even if it does take millennia, and that something was probably bacteria. (Hey, at between one-half and 90 percent of Earth’s biomass, bacteria’s a pretty safe bet for any biological mystery.) The Record reports that Burd mixed landfill dirt with yeast and tap water, then added ground plastic and let it stew. Burd says this should be easy on an industrial scale: all that’s needed is a fermenter, a growth medium and plastic, and the bacteria themselves provide most of the energy by producing heat as they eat. Amazing stuff. Image: Andrew Green See Also:
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