Obama’s Research Challenge
Obama wants to invest in science and technology, but a divided Congress and looming budget cuts could make it difficult to keep his promises.
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BP to Plead Guilty to Felonies in Deepwater Horizon Spill
BP PLC has agreed to plead guilty to felony charges and pay $4.5 billion in penalties, including $1.26 billion in criminal fines, stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers in 2010 and unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The energy company will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of…
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Al Gore Calls on Barack Obama to ‘Act Boldly’ on Climate Change
Former vice-president and climate champion urges re-elected president to immediately begin pushing for a carbon tax
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Does Big Money Equal Better Science?
The search for the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern has taken years of research and cost billions. It is a prime example of big money being spent on fundamental research into scientific principles, that critics say provides no answers to the problems the world faces today. In these austere times and…
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A New Chapter of Solar Energy Conversion and Storage?
Using the power of the sun and ultrathin films of iron oxide (commonly known as rust), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers have found a novel way to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough, published this week in Nature Materials could lead to less expensive, more efficient ways to store solar energy in…
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Obama Will Start 2nd Term With Unfinished Climate Business
President Obama has some unfinished business to attend to, and taking care of it will require help and support from corporate leaders across the country. When he ran for president in 2008, Obama made three big promises: end the Iraq War, extend health care coverage to all Americans, and take federal action to reduce the…
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Obama Finally Talks Climate Change; Green Industry Wants More
In celebrating his reelection, President Obama finally touched on a topic that he and Republican rival Mitt Romney rarely broached during the campaign: Climate change. During his acceptance speech, Obama make a strong play to win over the green sector, ranking environmental action high up on his priority list. “We want our children to live…
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Lack of Science Capacity Threatens Africa’s Development
The “remarkable recent economic growth” in many African countries may be able to sustain science through domestic funding (rather than through external sources) — but a lack of scientists and research capacity is threatening to reel back that economic growth, a meeting has heard. The gross domestic product (GDP) of many African countries has been…
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The First All-Carbon Solar Cell
Stanford University scientists have built the first solar cell made entirely of carbon, a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today. “Carbon has the potential to deliver high performance at a low cost,” said Zhenan Bao, senior author of the study, which was published online in the journal ACS Nano. “To the best of our…
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Bill McKibben Does the Sandy Math
As a writer and activist Bill McKibben has devoted his life to tackling the threat posed by man-made climate change. As Hurricane Sandy brought normal life on the East Coast to a standstill, McKibben’s Twitter feed went into overdrive — a veritable deluge of storm updates and political commentary. He just took some time out of a very busy day…