Creating Better Bees
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 08. 3.07
We missed this when it aired a few weeks ago but — because of our recent fixation on the colony collapse disorder stories — thought it was worth highlighting again. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the story to-date, this KQED report explores the efforts of two California scientists — UC Davis biologist Susan Cobey and UC Berkeley conservation biologist Claire Kremen — to resolve this complex issue. Cobey's focus in on creating hardier, more productive honey bees through selective breeding while Kremen studies how native bees help make honey bees more productive.
Via ::KQED QUEST: Better Bees: Super Bee and Wild Bee (show website)
See also: ::Sweet News: Organic Bees Are Thriving, ::Big-City Bees
It can also burn a variety of other fuels including hydrogen and can easily be fitted into existing gas turbine models without any major redesigns. Further research is being conducted to make carbon-neutral renewable fuels such as those from landfills and waste treatments also compatible with the technology.
The LSI principle defies conventional approaches. Combustion experts worldwide are just beginning to embrace this counter-intuitive idea. Principles from turbulent fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and flame chemistry are all required to explain the science underlying this combustion phenomenon, said Robert Cheng of the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the device's inventors.
The DOE has high hopes for the LSI: it is now actively testing it for its ability to burn syngas a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide and hydrogen fuels to see whether it could be incorporated into the world's first near-zero emissions coal power plant, FutureGen. The LSI is one among several combustion technologies being evaluated for use in the plant's 200+ MW utility-size hydrogen turbine.
Via ::ScienceDaily: Ultraclean Combustion Technology Developed For Electricity Generation (news website)
See also: ::New Device Burns Fuel With Almost Zero Emissions, ::The Quasiturbine: Promising To Revolutionize Engines, ::Scuderi Air-Hybrid Engine
bees aren't the only pollinators.