Tag Archive

Getting Our Nitrogen Fix

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Our ability to pull nitrogen from the air fed a growing human population. Can 21st century biotechnology refine the process while reducing environmental impact?
In 1968 the entomologist Paul Ehrlich published a foreboding manifesto called The Population Bomb, in which he argued that the explosive growth of the human population would lead, within the [...]

Advance In ‘Nano-Agriculture:’ Tiny Stuff Has Huge Effect On Plant Growth

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With potential adverse health and environmental effects often in the news about nanotechnology, scientists in Arkansas are reporting that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could have beneficial effects in agriculture.

Their study, scheduled for the October issue of ACS Nano, found that tomato seeds exposed to CNTs germinated faster and grew into larger, heavier seedlings [...]

Another Inconvenient Truth: The World’s Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma

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Solving climate change, the Sixth Great Extinction and population growth… at the same time
By 2050, the world will host nine billion people—and that’s if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would [...]

Yellow Is the New Green – Sewage Treatment Wastes Energy

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IN the far reaches of Shaanxi Province in northern China, in an apple-producing village named Ganquanfang, I recently visited a house belonging to two cheery primary-school teachers, Zhang Min Shu and his wife, Wu Zhaoxian. Their house wasn’t exceptional — a spacious yard, several rooms — except for the bathroom. There, up a [...]