San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to create one of state’s largest solar photovoltaic plants was approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors Tuesday passed a proposal giving clearance to Recurrent Energy to Construct a 5 megawatt solar photovoltaic plant and sell energy to the city at a cost of [...]

This undated image provided Montana State University shows CT technician, Tanya Spence preparing to run a 75 million-year-old turtle fossil through a CT scanner at Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman, Mont. Paleontologists say a prehistoric turtle uncovered in a remote area of southern Utah is just the second ever found to still have a clutch of [...]

Scripps researcher Kerri Pratt with aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ATOFMS) aboard a specially outfitted C-130 aircraft operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the skies over Wyoming. Scripps-led researchers made the first direct detections of airborne bacteria in clouds aboard the aircraft, and reported the results in the May 17 online edition of [...]

Paint it white: Health chiefs say to stay cool we should adopt the same measures as homeowners in Mediterranean countries such as Greece It’s a tried and tested way of keeping homes cool in Mediterranean countries. But many might feel the latest official advice is just a little bit over the top for Britain, where [...]

Breathing in polluted air may wreak havoc on our DNA, reprogramming genes in as few as three days and causing increased rates of cancer and other diseases. So says a new study that tracked DNA damage in 63 steel-foundry workers in Brescia, Italy, who, under their normal factory conditions, were exposed to particulate matter. The [...]

Komodo dragons kill using a one-two punch of sharp teeth and a venomous bite, scientists have confirmed for the first time. The find dispels the common belief that toxic bacteria in the Komodos’ mouths are responsible for ultimately killing the dragons’ prey. An animal that escapes a Komodo’s initial attack soon weakens and dies. The [...]

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia plans to build the world’s largest solar power station with an output of 1000 megawatts in a A$1.4 billion (US$1.05 billion) investment, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Sunday. The plant would have three times the generating capacity of the current biggest solar-powered electricity plant, which is in California, Rudd said [...]

* Coke to test “plantbottle” in North America this year * Says up to 30 pct of new bottle comes from plant material NEW YORK (Reuters) – Coca-Cola Co said on Thursday it has developed a new plastic bottle that is partly made from sugar cane and molasses, raising the bar in the battle for [...]

Northern hemisphere sea levels ‘will rise the most’ if Antarctic sheet disintegrates The melting of one of the world’s largest ice sheets would alter the Earth’s field of gravity and even its rotation in space so much that it would cause sea levels along some coasts to rise faster than the global average, scientists said [...]

A new study shows that wind farms and nuclear power plants are substantially better for avian wildlife than fossil-fueled power stations. One could be tempted to think, after reading the more than 600 studies about wind farms and the deaths of birds and bats read by this author the past year, that the evidence linking [...]