• Geologists warn of warming-induced landslides flattening cities

    There are 39 cities around the world with populations greater than 100,000 — and an untold number of smaller towns and villages — which are situated within 100 kilometers of a volcano that has collapsed in the past and which may, therefore, be capable of collapsing in the future; thinning glaciers on volcanoes could destabilize vast chunks of summit cones, triggering mega-landslides capable of flattening cities such as Seattle and devastating local infrastructure

  • Unease grows about China's rare Earth elements monopoly

    Rare Earth elements are quite abundant in the Earth’s crust, but environmental concerns and aggressive subsidies by China’s government to Chinese manufacturers have led to a Chinese near-monopoly: 90 percent of the world’s rare Earth elements are now being mined and processed in China; growing unease with this Chinese dominance has led to renewed efforts around the world to develop alternatives to rare Earth elements, and find environmentally sound ways to mine them

  • The world is running out of helium

    It has taken 4.7 billion years for the Earth to accumulate our helium reserves, which we will have exhausted within about a hundred years of the U.S.’s National Helium Reserve having been established in 1925; there is no chemical way of manufacturing helium, and the supplies we have originated in the very slow radioactive alpha decay that occurs in rocks

  • Japan develops vehicle motor free of rare Earth elements

    More than 90 percent of rare earths worldwide are produced in China; China had restricted exports of crucial rare Earth elements in order to cripple certain segments of the economies of other industrial countries; in response, Japanese automakers develop new engines

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  • Is rare Earth elements war in the offing?

    China has just 37 percent of the world’s estimated reserves of rare Earth elements (REEs), but a whopping 97 per cent of world production of REEs now comes from China; only a few other countries have REEs on their territory, but environmental and cost issues have so far made mining REES unattractive; the biggest threat may come from the availability of elements needed in agriculture, most particularly phosphorus

  • Using bacteria to create self-healing concrete

    Cement production has an impact on the environment as it is very energy intensive, accounting for about 7 percent of the total anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 emissions; in addition to the energy consumption from production and transportation, air pollution, as well as land use and impacts on the landscape from related mining activities are also matters of concern; means of increasing the service life of concrete structures would make the material not only more durable, but also more sustainable — and researchers find that embedding certain bacteria in the concrete promises to do just that

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  • New cement absorbs CO2

    Concrete — the essential material used by the world’s $3.8 trillion construction industry — accounts for 5 percent of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions; each ton of cement emits about 800 kg (1,763 lb.) of CO2 during manufacture — and every year, some 3 billion tons of cement turn into nearly 30 billion tons of concrete, a British start-up has devised a new cement — based on magnesium silicates rather than limestone — that absorbs and stores CO2 when it is produced

  • New Florida museum is glass-covered hurricane-proof fortress

    The new Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is designed to withstand category 5 hurricanes; the roof is 12-inch thick solid concrete; the walls are even thicker, at eighteen inches; the glass, which makes up big sections of the outside of the museum, can hold up to a category 3 hurricane; if that glass breaks, letting rain, wind, and debris into the facility, the art will still be safe: storm doors will shield the galleries on the third floor, and the vault, which is on the second floor (all of the art is placed on the second and third floors, above the 30-foot storm surge of a category 5 storm)

  • High-tech opportunities of lab-produced silk

    Tougher than a bullet-proof vest yet synonymous with beauty and luxury, silk fibers are a masterpiece of nature whose remarkable properties have yet to be fully replicated in the laboratory; thanks to their amazing mechanical properties as well as their looks, silk fibers have been important materials in textiles, medical sutures, and even armor for 5,000 years; Tufts researchers are getting close to producing silk in the lab

  • Good business: Developers make buildings more disaster-secure than building code requires

    A Florida developer hopes to get more business by making his building hurricane-proof; with debris-resistant windows on all thirty-five of its stories, the developer says the building would withstand a Category 5 hurricane without significant damage; the extra hurricane proofing built into the Miami building shows that sometimes the private market can overtake the public sector when it comes to building design and safety standards; for example, in New York and Washington, D.C., some developers have put in anti-terrorism safeguards that exceed building codes

  • New electronic fiber make smarter fabric a reality

    A soft, flexible fiber with a 1,000 times more capacitance than a co-axial cable could lead to smarter textiles; these smart fabrics could sense their environment, store, transmit, and process information — as well as harvest and store the energy necessary to do all this

  • Fibertect absorbent can clean Gulf oil spill's crude, holds toxic oil and mustard vapors

    New material — raw cotton-carbon Fibertect — can absorb oil up to fifteen times its weight; the material can clean up crude oil and adsorb toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon vapors which sicken oil spill clean-up crew members; also, the material has been tested to successfully remediate mustard vapors such as those found from dumped munitions

  • Next-generation HazMat boots made of leather

    The rubber boots that emergency personnel wear when responding to situations where hazardous materials (HazMat) are present may be functional, but they are not very comfortable; with the availability of new textile materials and surface treatments, researchers are confident they can develop a comfortable — and functional — leather boot for use in both fire-fighting and HazMat operations

  • Purdue University membrane technology could help cleanup oil spills

    Purdue University researchers developed a new type of membrane which may be used to clean up oil spills such as BP’s massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the technology could be used for a variety of other applications, including water purification and industrial uses

  • Yarn passes in-vehicle flame test

    Fire in an enclosed space, such as an aircraft, is extremely dangerous as occupants can die from smoke inhalation before there is any danger from the flames. Flame-retardant materials delay the spread of fire, but these typically contain halogenated substances that emit thick black smoke and toxic gases; new material developed which meets halogen-free flame-retardant regulations