Green Screen

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Green Screen offers news and stories about global ecological conditions and monitors the events, research and trends impacting Earth's environment.

Whitney Campbell
16 posts

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  • April 22, 2013
  • 11:18 AM
  • 62 views

A Moment in the Sun for Biomimicry

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Already inspired by botany, solar panels imitate photosynthesizing plants with their conversion of the sun's light into usable energy. Through this process, flowers and shrubs seem effortlessly self-sustaining, but designers of solar panels must innovate ways to capture with a cell what plants can innately.... Read more »

Barr, M., Rowehl, J., Lunt, R., Xu, J., Wang, A., Boyce, C., Im, S., Bulović, V., & Gleason, K. (2011) Direct monolithic integration of organic photovoltaic circuits on unmodified paper. Advanced Materials, 3500-3505. DOI: 10.1002/adma.201101263  

King, R., Law, D., Edmondson, K., Fetzer, C., Kinsey, G., Yoon, H., Sherif, R., & Karam, N. (2007) 40% efficient metamorphic GaInP∕GaInAs∕Ge multijunction solar cells. Applied Physics Letters, 183516. DOI: 10.1063/1.2734507  

Krogstrup, P., Jørgensen, H., Heiss, M., Demichel, O., Holm, J., Aagesen, M., Nygard, J., & Fontcuberta i Morral, A. (2013) Single-nanowire solar cells beyond the Shockley–Queisser limit. Nature Photonics, 306-310. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.32  

  • March 25, 2013
  • 11:55 AM
  • 138 views

Clean Coal Gets a Sponge

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the combustible, black rock we call coal was formed from the vast peat bogs of flooded forests. For centuries, people have burned lumps of coal for smoky fuel, such that opposition to its pollution had been voiced as early as the fourteenth century. Today, as anti-coal movements emphasize a role in climate change and miners cope with unemployment, a novel, microporous material may challenge objections to coal by cleaning up its carbon emissions.... Read more »

  • February 21, 2013
  • 11:45 AM
  • 184 views

Species Invaders: Assessing Pest Tech

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Lately in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota legislators have been heatedly debating the best plan for preventing bighead and silver carp from overrunning the state's reserves. Although there are now no populations of these or any other Asian carp species in Minnesota's waters and branch of the Mississippi River, a handful of the fish have been caught recently, with countless schools of non-indigenous carp teeming downstream in Iowa.... Read more »

  • November 16, 2012
  • 01:02 PM
  • 213 views

The Disposable Dilemma

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Expendable objects were not innovated recently. Although washi are now linked to origami, for instance, people have been using the small sheets as disposable facial tissues since at least the seventeenth century, when the litter of Hasekura Tsunenaga's retinue reportedly surprised French courtiers. Similarly, around 200,000 to 400,000 years earlier, hominins near present-day Tel Aviv temporarily used flint flakes to carve meat, later startling archeologists with the "short-lived usage&........ Read more »

  • September 17, 2012
  • 01:41 PM
  • 344 views

Leafy Green Power

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Ever since his debut in the comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1929, Popeye has loudly touted his penchant for spinach and lauded its ability to impart strength. Although the sailor man backed Instant Quaker Oatmeal briefly in the 1980s — singing the jingle "I'm Popeye the Quaker Man!" — his devotion to spinach has been as steadfast as his love for Olive Oyl.... Read more »

Hernández, A., Schiffer, T. A., Ivarsson, N., Cheng A. J., Bruton, J. D., Lundberg, J. O., Weitzberg, E., . (2012) Dietary nitrate increases tetanic [Ca2 ]i and contractile force in mouse fast-twitch muscle. The Journal of Physiology, 3575-3583. PMID: 22687611  

Leblanc, G., Chen, G., Gizzie, E. A., Jennings, G. K. . (2012) Enhanced photocurrents of Photosystem I films on p-doped silicon. Advanced Materials. PMID: 22945835  

  • July 26, 2012
  • 01:36 PM
  • 355 views

Coral Reef Relief?

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

When it is this hot outside, there really is no place I'd rather be than at the beach, and I'm not alone. During the sweltering days of summer, heaps of people beat the heat by heading to the nearest sandy coast. Some may even take the plunge to scuba dive and snorkel in the shallows of coral reefs, endlessly surprising with their whimsical forms and colorful marine life. But how do coral reefs themselves handle hotness? With rising temperatures consistently being reported for oceans e........ Read more »

  • June 25, 2012
  • 12:14 PM
  • 342 views

S.O.S. Save Our Seagrass

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

As this year's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development concluded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yesterday, it seemed that many participants and attendees were frustrated by the meeting's final agreement.1,2 Often referred to as the Rio 20 Earth Summit, these talks among nearly 100 world leaders appear to have resulted in a weak consensus and the backing of a declaration that lacks structures for implementation and neglects many urgent environmental concerns.... Read more »

Fourqurean, J. W., Duarte, C. M., Kennedy, H., Marbà, N., Holmer, M., Mateo, M. A., Apostolaki, E. T., Kendrick, G. A., Krause-Jensen, D., McGlathery, K. J. . (2012) Seagrass ecosystems as a globally significant carbon stock. Nature Geoscience,. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1477  

Lewis, S. L., Lopez-Gonzalez, G., Sonké, B., Affum-Baffoe, K., Baker, T. R., Ojo, L. O., Phillips, O. L., Reitsma, J. M., White, L., Comiskey, J. A., Djuikouo K, M. N., Ewango, C. E. N., Feldpausch, T. R., Hamilton, A. C., Gloor, M., Hart, T., Hladik, A. (2009) Increasing carbon storage in intact African tropical forests. . Nature, 1003-1006. DOI: 10.1088/1755-1307/6/8/082009  

  • May 8, 2012
  • 11:44 AM
  • 449 views

Buzz Kill? Bee Populations and Pesticides

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

A swarm of studies have recently been released concerning Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and considering the serious implications of their findings, it's all of our beeswax. These experiments, including two published in Science1,2 and one forthcoming from the Bulletin of Insectology,3 demonstrate the threat to hive survival stemming from a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. Individually, I think each study is convincing, but when taken together, the consensus provides overwhelmin........ Read more »

Henry, M., Béguin, M., Requier, F., Rollin, O., Odoux, J.F., Aupinel, P., Aptel, J., Tchamitchian, S., . (2012) A common pesticide decreases foraging success and survival in honey bees. Science, 348-350. PMID: 22461498  

  • March 26, 2012
  • 11:43 AM
  • 493 views

Bioplastics in Bloom

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

When imagining the world without a dependence on petroleum, I tend to think of objects like solar panels, electric cars, and wind turbines — the things that could potentially replace the parts of the current oil-energy infrastructure. But what about the other items made from petroleum that could be replaced by alternative materials? What about bicycle tires, nail polishes, compact discs, surf boards, lipsticks, tool boxes, and shower curtains?... Read more »

  • December 8, 2011
  • 03:40 PM
  • 496 views

Turning Over a New Leaf

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Autumn's leaves have mostly fallen here in Brooklyn, but nearby at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Daniel Nocera and his colleagues are making foliage they hope will have a long future. Instead of a natural leaf's tissues, chloroplasts, and vascular structures, these artificial leaves are each made from a thin sheet of semiconducting silicon with different materials bound to either side: a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy on one surface and a cobalt-based catalyst on the o........ Read more »

  • November 14, 2011
  • 01:42 PM
  • 470 views

Climate Change Heats Up

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Every couple of years since 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations (UN) has released an assessment on the status of global warming. I remember first reading about the IPCC in 2007 — the year the organization co-won the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore — so my attention was piqued when I heard hundreds of scientists would be meeting to discuss their upcoming report on global warming in Kampala, Uganda, next week. Their ........ Read more »

  • August 26, 2011
  • 12:03 PM
  • 878 views

The Comeback Cove

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Great news for conservation is always exciting, so when I read about a remarkable wildlife rebound in this month's issue of PLoS ONE, I couldn't resist sharing it here. ... Read more »

  • July 18, 2011
  • 03:35 AM
  • 775 views

Microalgae: The Next Big Thing In Green Power?

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

When German botanist Friderico T. Kützing first described the microalga Botryococcus braunii in the 1849 book Species Algarum, I doubt he expected that 150 years later scientists would still be exploring its potential. It's equally probable he didn't anticipate the alga's significance for renewable energy either, which I was rather surprised to learn about myself.... Read more »

  • June 30, 2011
  • 03:30 PM
  • 538 views

The Fracking Fracas

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

An emerging technique for extracting natural gas from shale is revealing some ideological fissures among US policymakers, while what is known about its environmental impact is shaky at best. ... Read more »

  • November 30, 1999
  • 12:00 AM
  • 521 views

The Comeback Cove

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

Great news for conservation is always exciting, so when I read about a remarkable wildlife rebound in this month's issue of PLoS ONE, I couldn't resist sharing it here. ... Read more »

  • November 30, 1999
  • 12:00 AM
  • 299 views

Bioplastics in Bloom

by Whitney Campbell in Green Screen

When imagining the world without a dependence on petroleum, I tend to think of objects like solar panels, electric cars, and wind turbines — the things that could potentially replace the parts of the current oil-energy infrastructure. But what about the other items made from petroleum that could be replaced by alternative materials? What about bicycle tires, nail polishes, compact discs, surf boards, lipsticks, tool boxes, and shower curtains?... Read more »

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