http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest EcoWorld Posts from Guest Contributors Fri, 08 May 2009 19:17:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It didn’t command headlines but an important piece of legislation passed recently that involves water research. The House of Representatives on April 23 passed H.R. 1145, the National Water Research and Development Initiative Act of 2009. It’s designed to coordinate national research-and-development efforts regarding water use, supply and demand. The problem ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/05/08/capitol-hill-gets-realistic-with-water-research/ No doubt, cleantech companies were upbeat when the White House stimulus package allocated 13 percent of the total $104 billion stimulus package for green technology. Much of the economic stimulus will flow to cleantech infrastructure, but exactly where will it go? Cleantech sectors, which were big winners, include smart grid technology ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/05/01/federal-stimulus-and-cleantech-infrastructure/ As a physicist, my belief is that one of the reasons that intelligent energy policies have not gained sufficient traction is that we are allowing those with political agendas to define some key energy terms. Probably the most significant concept that we have unwittingly gone along with is the definition of ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/04/29/is-nuclear-power-renewable/ Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported recently that the production of ethanol fuelstocks may consume as much as three times more water than previously thought, depending on where they’re grown. They found that ethanol fuelstock grown in Iowa uses the least water — about 6 gallons of water for each ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/04/17/bioethanol-regional-scourge/ There's no better way to take the pulse of innovation than to survey R&D spending. And there's no better time than during a downturn, because history tells us that this is the opportunity for businesses to gain advantage by investing and growing. Two recent R&D surveys, one from the Wall Street ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/04/10/rd-betting-on-mistakes/ The U.S. water market is $95 billion ($425 billion globally). Of that $95 billion, $24 billion is spent on industrial wastewater purification and recovery. Innovative water technology startup Crystal Clear Technologies has developed a novel approach to separate out toxic contaminants such as arsenic, copper, uranium and selenium. The technology is ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/04/03/removing-toxic-metals-from-water/ Not a direct part of the economic stimulus package, and only extended by Congress (as of March 20th) for another 60 days, a significant source of funding for primary research by startup greentech companies has been from the EPA's National Center for Environmental Research (http://es.epa.gov/ncer/) which manages the funding of ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/04/02/funding-cutting-edge-greentech/ A global water crisis is expected by 2025 unless economically viable ways of purifying water can be developed. One of the major threats to water supplies is contamination, from saltwater from industrial waste, from pesticides. New sensors would help. Research labs are working on sensors specially designed to deal with monitoring and ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/03/27/revolutionary-water-sensors/ Researchers at Duke University have come to respect the power of nano-engineered buckyballs. In one project, the engineers found that ultrafine mesh coatings made of carbon buckyballs can hinder the ability of bacteria and other microorganisms to colonize the membranes that filter impurities from water. This is one of the major ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/03/20/nano-coatings-stem-water-pipe-clogs/ For decades, California has epitomized America's economic strengths: technological excellence, artistic creativity, agricultural fecundity and an intrepid entrepreneurial spirit. Yet lately California has projected a grimmer vision of a politically divided, economically stagnant state. California has returned from the dead before, most recently in the mid-1990s. But the odds that the ... http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/editor/guest/2009/03/18/death-of-the-california-dream/