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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(19)
Resource Depletion: (1)
Biology Breach:(8)
Recovery:(4)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ global warming  ~ climate impacts  ~ contamination  ~ faster than expected  ~ economic myopia  ~ arctic meltdown  ~ stupid humans  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ weather extremes  ~ efficiency increase  



ApocaDocuments (4) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
[see full week] ~ [see full Recovery scenario and stories]
Sun, Feb 14, 2010
from Health Day:
Witnessing Uplifting Behavior May Spur Good Deeds
Seeing someone else do a good deed appears to inspire you to do the same by making you feel uplifted, new research suggests. In an experiment, researchers recruited volunteers who watched a "neutral" video clip of scenes from a nature documentary or a clip from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in which musicians thanked their mentors. The participants then wrote essays about what they watched, were paid for their time and asked to indicate whether they'd want to take part in another study. Those who saw the Oprah Winfrey clip were more likely to volunteer to take part in another study. The positive, uplifting emotion that makes people feel good and may inspire them to help others is known as "elevation," the researchers explained in a news release about the experiment from the Association for Psychological Science. ...


But what if it's only Oprah that has this power to inspire?

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Feb 13, 2010
from TED, via Mongabay:
Bill Gates: ban coal and invest in clean energy technology
The planet needs "energy miracles" to overcome the dual challenges of meeting energy demand and addressing climate change, said Microsoft founder Bill Gates during a speech Friday at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. "What we're going to have to do at a global scale is create a new system," Gates said. "So we need energy miracles."... Gates said the world needs to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050 and suggested researchers spent the next 20 years developing new technologies and the following 20 years implementing them. He said coal and natural gas should be phased out by 2050 and touted carbon capture and storage technology and wind, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal, and nuclear power. According to CNN Gates focused on reprocessing reactor waste into clean energy. ...


Let's make that "10 and 10," and zero by 2020, shall we?

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Feb 12, 2010
from ScienceDaily:
Chemists Create Synthetic 'Gene-Like' Crystals for Carbon Dioxide Capture
UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic "gene" that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels and the increased acidity of oceans.... "We have taken organic and inorganic units and combined them into a synthetic crystal which codes information in a DNA-like manner. It is by no means as sophisticated as DNA, but it is certainly new in chemistry and materials science." The discovery could lead to cleaner energy, including technology that factories and cars can use to capture carbon dioxide before it reaches the atmosphere. "What we think this will be important for is potentially getting to a viable carbon dioxide-capture material with ultra-high selectivity," said Yaghi, who holds UCLA's Irving and Jean Stone Chair in Physical Sciences and is director of UCLA's Center for Reticular Chemistry. "I am optimistic that is within our reach. Potentially, we could create a material that can convert carbon dioxide into a fuel, or a material that can separate carbon dioxide with greater efficiency." ...


My potential excitement is just around the corner!

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Feb 11, 2010
from New Scientist:
Sun-powered water splitter makes hydrogen tirelessly
The inorganic materials used in the University of East Anglia's system are more resilient. Their first generation proof of concept is "a major breakthrough" in the field, they say, thanks to its efficiency of over 60 per cent and ability to survive sunlight for two weeks without any degradation of performance. "In fact the 60 per cent figure is probably a worst-case scenario," says Nann. "This is still a preliminary study."... By the standard measure of the probability that a material will absorb a photon that hits it, each cluster is 400 times better at netting photons than organic molecules used in previous systems. "That's why it works so well," says Nann. ...


Let's throw money and minds willy-nilly at this!

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