Latest Articles

Food Studies: the science of cookie texture

Water activity and moisture migration sound complex, but make all the difference between chewy and crispy cookies.

Guilty as charged: proof of 'human fingerprints' on climate change

A Yale report showed Americans want evidence from experts that human activity causes climate change. Here are eight handy charts proving our impact.

Republican anti-EPA jihad, explained

National Journal's Ronald Brownstein has an excellent column on the unusual party discipline of House Republicans have displayed in recent votes against EPA regulations.

This amazing off-grid hobbit house cost less than $5,000 to build

Self-taught builder Simon Dale constructed this straight-out-of-a-fantasy-novel house in four months for less than $5,000. The house is designed for low-impact building and low-impact living: it was made from reclaimed lumber and salvaged materials, and the Dales live off the grid, with a compost toilet, a green roof, spring-sourced water, and natural heating and cooling. […]

‘I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways,’ says Danish politician

Denmark is going to be the best cycling country in the world. Cycling leads to better public health, a cleaner urban environment, and helps us reach our climatic goals. So I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways!

So sayeth Margrethe Vestager, the new Danish minister of the economy and the interior. Vestager wants to increase the share of trips taken by bicycle 50 percent in 10 years, with at least half of those trips representing a replacement of a car with a bike.

Look! Up in the sky! It's an inflatable wind turbine!

In the department of cool inventions you'll probably never use, the inventor of the Segway has come up with an idea for an inflatable wind turbine.

Its main advantage is that it's mobile: imagine parking your EV and sending your inflatable wind turbine up into the sky to charge it while you're at work. It could be moved to take advantage of the best winds as they shift, and, more to the point, It could also be mounted on top of a building or on the side of the road in order to double as a billboard.
 

Wall Street and ethanol cause starvation, say scientists

Today's supervillains are soooo boring. If only they'd wear tights and touch entrapped damsels’ hair in a way that made us uncomfortable, we'd be up for patriotically pistol-whipping them, Captain America style. Instead we find out that Wall Street and ethanol -- a diffuse network of trading computers and a colorless inebriant, respectively -- are the reason billions are going hungry in the developing world. How are we supposed to launch a hideously expensive vendetta-war against that?

Make a speed-displaying vest for cycling at night

There are a lot of bike accessories that will let cars know you're there. But it can still be hard for them to tell whether you're speeding up or slowing down — which can make it tough for even a well-meaning driver to keep a safe distance. Mykle Hansen's speed vest is designed to reduce […]

Critical List: DOE’s loan guarantee head out; some beluga whales are toxic

Jonathan Silver, DOE's loan guarantee czar, is the first government employee to lose his job over Solyndra. leaving the government because the loan guarantee program doesn't have any money left, anyway.

Solyndra's also screwing the rest of the cleantech industry.

The BP spill is still affecting Louisiana, where the oyster season could be delayed and shrimp harvests dropped 99 percent.

A judge ruled that the EPA was a little too excited about regulating West Virginia coal mines and should have gone through more formal rulemaking on guidelines to dump coal waste into streams. Another part of their work, on water quality, is still at issue, which means coal companies could lose in the long run.

Could you go without processed foods for a month?

For even the most health conscious among us, a diet free of processed foods presents a challenge. Give it a try this month.