• The Environment

    Wave Powered Boat Crosses Pacific Successfully

    By Posted on 7.8.2008 5 Comments

    It was all smooth sailing for seafaring extremist Ken-ichi Horie. That wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for when he set sail for Japan from Hawaii in the world’s most sophisticated wave-powered boat, named the Suntory Mermaid II.

    9.18.2008 at 08:42pm - Comment by joe.c

    If he had used sails people would have said "It's just a sailboat!" The point was that the mechanical energy from the ocean's waves could be harnesed as a motive force.

  • The Environment

    Duplicating Meat

    By the Editors of E - The Environmental Magazine Posted on 9.8.2008 11 Comments

    Dear EarthTalk: What's the story with animal cloning? Is the meat industry really cloning animals now to "beef up" production? -- Frank DeFazio, Sudbury, MA

    9.18.2008 at 08:32pm - Comment by joe.c

    Eggman002: The point behind livestock cloning is the same as that of using growth or milk-producing hormones; to control and increase the yield and thereby increase the amount of profit that you can make from each animal. Let's say that you raise 1000 cattle, and 100 of them are bigger than the other 900. Wouldn't the idea of copying those 100 head of cattle 10 times be more attractive, from an economic point of view, than leaving it to nature and chance?

  • The Environment

    The Stinkiest Fuel on Earth

    By Corey Binns Posted on 9.18.2008 17 Comments

    Will Brinton, the founder of Woods End Laboratories, a bioenergy consultancy, predicts a future without landfills. Instead we’ll use table scraps and sewage to power our homes. Just dump the waste into a household digester, and bacteria will break it down and release the natural gas methane. Farms could sell their copious poop-based energy supplies back to the grid. But how much energy do animals yield? We ran the numbers and found that you might want to consider a pet elephant.

    9.18.2008 at 08:03pm - Comment by joe.c

    Why is it that the chicken produces more methane per pound, but the dog produces more kilowatts per pound? I would have thought that the methane from each waste product would have the same amount of energy in it? And, as far as fertilizer goes, we already use too much of it, which is why we have such a large dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Better to take the manure off the farm to make methane and stop growing fertilizer-hungry corn for ethanol.



Download Our iPhone App

Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing



Follow Us On Twitter

Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed



Become a Fan On Facebook

Share links with friends, comment on stories and more


December 2009: Best of What's New

In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.

Check out the best of what's new here.

Popular Science Photo Pool


Share your photos in the Pop Sci pool at www.flickr.com!
tags_sprite.png
POP_embeddedForm_cover_May09.jpg