Smart Energy

The El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico is a tropical rainforest where a strain of the microbe Enterobacter lignolyticus was found that can tolerate an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass for microbial-based biofuel production. (Credit: Photo by Kristen DeAngelis)

In the search for technology by which economically competitive biofuels can be produced from cellulosic biomass, the combination of sugar-fermenting microbes and ionic liquid solvents looks to be a winner save for one major problem: the ionic liquids used to make cellulosic biomass more digestible for microbes can also be toxic to them. A solution to this conundrum, however, may be in the offing.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Berkeley Lab, have identified a tropical rainforest microbe that can endure relatively high concentrations of an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass. The researchers have also determined how the microbe is able to do this, a discovery that holds broad implications beyond the production of advanced biofuels.

“Our findings represent an important first step in understanding the mechanisms of ionic liquid resistance in bacteria and provide a basis for engineering ionic liquid tolerance into strains of fuel-producing microbes for a more efficient biofuel production process,” says Blake Simmons, a chemical engineer who heads JBEI’s Deconstruction Division and one of the senior investigators for this research.

Adds Michael Thelen, the principal investigator and a member of JBEI’s Deconstruction Division, “Our study also demonstrates that vigorous efforts to discover and analyze the unique properties of microorganisms can provide an important basis for understanding microbial stress and adaptation responses to anthropogenic chemicals used in industry.” Read the rest of this entry »

“Today I lost my best friend,” guitarist Steve Cropper wrote on his Facebook page. “The World has lost the best guy and bass player to ever live.” Cropper, who was on the same Blues Brothers tour in Japan, said Dunn died in his sleep. Dunn was 70.

Having natural habitat in farming areas that supports ladybugs could help increase their abundance in crops where they control pests and help farmers reduce their costs, says a Michigan State University study. Read the rest of this entry »

Image from bagitmovie.wordpress.com

A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

In 2009 an ambitious group of graduate students led the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) to the North Pacific Ocean Subtropical Gyre aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon. During the voyage the researchers, who concentrated their studies a thousand miles west of California, documented an alarming amount of human-generated trash, mostly broken down bits of plastic the size of a fingernail floating across thousands of miles of open ocean.

At the time the researchers didn’t have a clear idea of how such trash might be impacting the ocean environment, but a new study published in the May 9 online issue of the journal Biology Letters reveals that plastic debris in the area popularly known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” has increased by 100 times over in the past 40 years, leading to changes in the natural habitat of animals such as the marine insect Halobates sericeus. These “sea skaters” or “water striders”—relatives of pond water skaters—inhabit water surfaces and lay their eggs on flotsam (floating objects). Naturally existing surfaces for their eggs include, for example: seashells, seabird feathers, tar lumps and pumice. In the new study researchers found that sea skaters have exploited the influx of plastic garbage as new surfaces for their eggs. This has led to a rise in the insect’s egg densities in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Read the rest of this entry »

Listen to this guy walk the bass! Awesome fingerstyle guitar playing.

Matt Pike, a contractor living in Marshall, North Carolina, realized just last weekend that he needed to build a coop for the quickly growing 20 chicks that call his farm home.

The coop is made up of two 4′ by 8′ pallets, a salvaged tin roof purchased at a flea market, assorted lumber, and shingles made from empty beer cans. Matt bought the chicken wire and the latches for the gates, and spent less than $40 on the whole shebang, which he built in less than ten hours.

Follow the link for pix and more.

via Homemade Chicken Coop with Beer Can Shingles Was Built in 10 Hours for $40 : TreeHugger.

Early birds, save your creative challenges for just before bed. Your least productive time of day may be the perfect opportunity for a moment of insight, according to a study from a recent issue of Thinking & Reasoning…. Mareike Wieth, an assistant professor of psychological science at Albion College, and her colleagues divided study participants into morning types and evening types based on their answers on the Morningness Eveningness Question­naire… [and] subjects’ performance on tasks requiring creative insight was consistently better during their nonoptimal times of day.

via Sleepy Brains Think More Freely: Scientific American.

At work at WSU I try to employ (in the loose sense of the word: we don’t pay but they do get course credit) student interns from the Murrow College of Communications. We’ve had some fantastically talented and industrious students come work with us, primarily as news and marketing writers. Rachel Weber was our intern a while back. She’s since graduated but while she was at WSU she started a blog. The blog has morphed since she’s graduated and is now called “Rachel in the Real World.” As if college weren’t real! In any case, she’s a witty-as-hell writer with a wonderfully wry sense of humor, so I do recommend you check her out. She’s started a new feature called “What Does It Taste Like Wednesday.” Here’s the low-down:

We are people. People eat. And even though we go to the grocery store all the time, I never really stop to look at how many different foods exist (acknowledging, of course, that so much of it is the same: modified corn). That is, until my aunt and I took a pit stop at Safeway last night. While browsing through gefilte fish, she inspired me to start What does it taste like Wednesday. No, it isn’t about the flavor of the actual week day, but instead the opportunity to embrace delicious, odd, never- before-tasted-in-my-life “cuisine.” Two rules: 1) I can’t have eaten or remember ever eating the item. 2) No purchases over $5.

Her first foray was into something called “DONA MARIA, NOPALITOS TENDER CACTUS”:

After duking it out with can openers, oven mitts and finally a corkscrew, I popped open the yellow lid to smell vinegar and what I think would be okay to describe here as tangy. What does it taste like? Like a light kick to the back of my throat leaving a lingering spice–like the tequila of edible plants. A crossbreed between a pickle and a hot pepper in the texture and shape of the green bean and length of a worm… And like many things in life, once you get through the spikes, it isn’t so bad.

Great pics, too!

This is from Skye’s DVD, Solo Performance on the Sonoma Coast.